Football Polls: “Half-time 2017”
This week marks the midway point of the “SportsTalk” high school football poll.
For most weeks this fall, there’s been consistency as to which teams will make our polls and in which spots each will land in our high school football poll in the Lehigh Valley RCN-TV footprint. While always feeling we are very fortunate to have some exceptionally good pigskin prognosticators, there usually is some movement between our pre-season poll and the mid-way point in the scholastic football season.
This year? Not much movement at all.
A quick reminder about how our polls are constructed. Unlike polls that consist of a couple representatives within the same organization, our poll is much more varied with input from numerous people over a wider scope. Our voting panel consists of local media members from different outlets, including RCN’s Gary Laubach, Tony Cocca and Dennis Laub, Morning Call’s Keith Groller, David Mika from EasternPAfootball.com and others.
We also include 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 choose 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 smallest schools.
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.
Every other week we have been asking four local media members to pick the winners in four of the most anticipated games for that weekend. We’ll keep track on how each of our pollsters (tune in to each “SportsTalk” show as we post their standings, as well as the teams) 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
And…if you have a beef with our pollsters’ opinions or dislike our game projections? Tune into “SportsTalk” and call or email us with your thoughts!
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!
