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It’s time when only the top teams in the state of Pennsylvania are still in action (plus those that still play traditional Turkey Day games).
It’s also time for our final “Big School” poll (we did the final “Small School” poll in our last entry), AND…
It’s also time for our football experts (and myself) to make our final high school football predictions, and out last chance to avoid doing something incredibly embarrassing to ourselves (or at least, those of us who are not in the best of shape).
So before we unveil our final “Big School Poll” of the 2019 campaign, here’s a look at how we saw things for these team way back in early August–a few weeks before the season began.
“Big” Schools Poll–PRESEASON
1) Freedom
2) Parkland
3) Nazareth
4) Easton
5) Emmaus
Other schools receiving votes: Northampton
For the largest school districts within the District XI/RCN-TV footprint, they qualify as the “big schools” in our pigskin poll and consist of Parkland, Liberty, Allen, Easton, Emmaus, Liberty, Dieruff, Freedom, Stroudsburg, Pleasant Valley, Northampton, Nazareth, Whitehall, Southern Lehigh, East Stroudsburg-South, and Pocono Mountain East & West.
Now, here’s our final results…
“Big” Schools Poll–FINAL
1) Nazareth
2) Parkland
3) Freedom
4) Easton
5) Northampton
Just like with the smaller schools last week when we correctly identified ALL five of the top teams before the season got underway–we had six teams teams being mentioned in our pre-season picks and all five schools in our final poll selected back in early August. In getting votes at both the beginning and end of our poll correct, I have to once again congratulate our “pollsters” (as I seem to do every year!) for doing a tremendous job with their pre-season opinions and choices on who would be the top schools in 2019!
Now, here are our RCN football experts (along with myself) weighing in on four of the biggest high school games this weekend…
| The “PICK 4” | St. Joe’s Prep vs. Nazareth |
Southern Lehigh vs. Archbishop Wood |
Lehigh vs. Lafayette | Lehigh vs. Lafayette TIEBREAKER (total points scored) |
| Gary Laubach | St. Joe’s Prep | Archbishop Wood | Lafayette | 33 |
| Tony Cocca | St. Joe’s Prep | Archbishop Wood | Lafayette | n/a |
| Keith Groller | St. Joe’s Prep | Archbishop Wood | Lafayette | 30 |
| John Leone | St. Joe’s Prep | Archbishop Wood | Lafayette | 27 |
| Chris Michael | St. Joe’s Prep | Archbishop Wood | Lehigh | 31 |
Tune into this Thursday’s “SportsTalk” for more on these games, and insights on the Patriot League’s football championship this weekend, the new NCAA basketball campaign and more!
