Whew…that was fun!
First of all, a huge “thank you” to the media members and head football coaches that participated in a…well, rather “wild” high school regular season-worth of polling. In a dozen years of covering scholastic sports and running a poll, I’ve never seen the number of different teams mentioned in a poll, nor seen as many different teams ranked number one in a single season—not to mention almost every voter’s “polling card” looked different—both from other voters and from themselves—from week to week.
We enter the playoff season with two clear “number one” teams in our poll and five different “number one seeds” (thanks to the expanded playoff system) through the teams in the five classifications in our area. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one or two of them fail to capture a District championship, due to the extreme parity in the area.
Speaking of the post-season, we hope you’ll tune in for our playoff preview edition of “RCN SportsTalk presented by The Morning Call” this Thursday and on our Friday podcast. This week’s panel includes Morning Call high school football writers Keith Groller and Steve Miller, who will offer up insights, news and predictions on as many football playoff games in our area as time will allow.
Before we can move on to the playoffs, however, it’s time for the unveiling of our final high school football poll of this incredible 2016 regular season
Big School Football Poll–FINAL
1) Emmaus (10 – 1st place votes)
2) Parkland
3) Whitehall
4) Freedom
5) Pleasant Valley
Small School FB Poll — FINAL
1) Central Catholic (eight -1st place vote)
2) Bethlehem Catholic
3) Saucon Valley
4) Notre Dame
5) Palisades
Thanks also to everyone who took the time to comment on our football polls throughout the season. You may recall a few years back I was thinking of ending the poll, only to be surprised how many people enjoyed reading and seeing our local experts’ opinions on the local teams.
By the way– and, if we get enough feedback–I’m entertaining the thought of doing a first-ever high school basketball poll this winter. If that’s something that you, our area high school sports fans, would be interested in, please email us at rcnsportstalk@rcn.com and we’ll see if it generates enough interest. (Note: this would mean MUCH MORE work for me, but I’m willing to work late on Monday nights if it’s something you’d really like to see 🙂 ).
Now that our football polling is completed, don’t forget to check out and bookmark the RCN football playoff schedule here on the RCN-TV website and check back often for our schedule as we follow your favorite teams deep (hopefully, if they keep winning) into the state playoffs!
