Football Polls 2017 “Plus”

This week marks the season premiere of the “SportsTalk” high school football poll…with an added twist this year!

First, some insights about our high school football poll featuring teams in the RCN-TV footprint in the Lehigh Valley.

Unlike polls that consist of a couple representatives within the same organization, our poll is much more varied with input from many different people over a wider scope.  Our voting panel consists of local media members from different outlets, along with local coaches and athletic directors from across the entire district.  The voters are not identified (unless they appear on our “SportsTalk” TV show and podcast and chose to reveal themselves) so they can give their honest impressions without any worry of outside pressures or “bulletin board” material, and we rotate different pollsters from different schools each year, including guests from our biggest to our smallest schools.

This year we feature a “Super Seven” of pollsters for big school poll and seven for our small school poll, featuring a mix of media members (both from inside and outside of RCN) and local head coaches in each grouping–from different corners of the District XI region.

Despite the change in the PIAA classification, our poll remains with the standard, tried-and-true format that we have utilized for many seasons.  We will take the 400-male enrollment number as the cutoff for schools within the District XI/RCN footprint.  All schools above that number qualify as “big schools” in our poll. These schools consist of Parkland, Liberty, Allen, Easton, Emmaus, Liberty, Dieruff, Freedom, Stroudsburg, Pleasant Valley, Northampton, Nazareth, E. Stroudsburg-South, Whitehall, Southern Lehigh and Bangor.

“Small schools” (below 400-male enrollment) consist of Saucon Valley, Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern, Wilson, Palisades, Palmerton, Salisbury, Notre Dame, Pen Argyl, Northern Lehigh and Catasauqua.  Each pollster will identify their top five teams in each group—the top school gets five points, the second team gets four points and so on, with an average score determining the order of teams in the poll.

Now for the “plus.”

Every other week we are going to ask four local media members to pick four of the most anticipated games for that weekend.  We’ll keep track on how each of our pollsters are doing throughout the fall season–and we encourage you to let us know what you think of our prognosticators picks, either by calling in to our Thursday night show, or by emailing us at RCNsportstalk@rcn.com.

You can also comment on anything we talk about on “RCN SportsTalk presented by ‘The Morning Call’ ” live on Thursdays, On-Demand and by listening to our podcast available elsewhere on our RCN-TV website.

For the RCN viewers watching us in the Washington DC region, we are once again featuring your high school football teams with highlights and news on the different programs on our Thursday show.

Also, don’t forget to check back to the “SportsTalk Shop” for more sports interviews, high school football news, rumors and insights, our polls and picks and features on fall sports teams in the RCN viewing area over the coming weeks, plus interviews, video highlights and game previews!