Column: Starting football season with predictions

Published 10:19 am Friday, August 24, 2012

It’s a football Friday, and that means that it’s time to kick off another season of prediction columns.

The AISA and AHSAA schedules are offset by a week this year, so that means that while Crenshaw Christian is traveling to Chambers Academy for a game that matters, Luverne, Highland Home, and Brantley are all playing in jamborees.

We all know that the point of a jamboree is not necessarily to “win,” but to put players in a real game situation to see how they perform before it counts.

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I expect all three of our teams to have a good showing, but it’s not all about the points in the preseason.

As such, I won’t be picking a winner for those three teams this week.  I’ll start with them next week.

 

CCA at Chambers Academy

The Cougars have a pretty long trip ahead of them as they travel to Lafayette to face Chambers, but I don’t think that will be a problem.

I understand there’s been some turnover at Pike Lib during the offseason, but the Cougars looked impressive last week in their preseason game.

Considering two of the team’s leading offensive players didn’t participate — Shaun Lewis and Gavin McKenzie — the offense still clicked right along.

The defense was also stout, and I don’t know that you can ask for much more than that in a preseason game.

Chambers played last week too, but it was in the AISA’s optional 11th game, which actually counted.

They lost to Eastwood Christian, which has apparently fielded a team this year for the first time in school history.

That’s not a good sign.

Combine that with CCA’s showing last week, and I think the Cougars take this one.

CCA 42, Chambers 6