James Nicholas
Briarwood Football
Kyle Parmley
By the time you read this, we will be smack in the middle of football season. High school, college and pro football are all in full force by now.
As the season goes, some teams ascend, some teams peak early and plateau and some teams are unable to pull themselves out of a rut and eventually bottom out.
There is a reason you play 10, 12 or 17 games in a season. Each game represents a chance to show off your team’s progress throughout the season. For some, that’s a great thing. For other teams, it brings further disappointment.
But one of the funniest things to me is that after the first week or two of a season, we all come to the table with the hottest of opinions.
This team is terrible!
This team is amazing!
This coach should be fired!
Why do we do this, all based on one game? Why does everything have to be the greatest of all time or the worst of all time? There is plenty of space in between both of those places.
After game one, we are ready to crown national champions and fire coaches on the spot. And yes, sometimes the first game of a season is certainly an indication of the direction a team is going that season.
If you’re a fan of a high school team, sometimes your team is going to go 6-4 and squeeze into the playoffs. Sure, you wish they were good enough to win the state championship, but some of the best coaching jobs come from teams in this area.
If you’re a college football fan, sometimes your team is going to go 8-4 (that sounds like a dream for Auburn fans and a disaster for Alabama fans at this moment, but it won’t always be that way). And that’s OK some years. As long as the right people are in place and there is a vision toward the program’s values, you can see that dream season coming in the not-too-distant future.
It’s just human nature, but we are all prisoners of the moment at times. We label things as one extreme or another.
For example, I was at the 2013 Iron Bowl and witnessed Auburn’s game-winning field goal return. So, it’s hard for me to ever say that a finish to the game is the wildest one I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what can top that one as “the greatest finish I’ve seen.”
A great example of this is the 2014 season, when the Hoover High School football team lost its first two games. The Bucs were playing a pair of high-caliber out-of-state opponents, but I’m sure many supporters were anxious about the team. But Hoover didn’t allow a point in the next two games and ripped off 12 straight wins to capture a state championship.
In this 2023 season, there will be some great teams and some awful teams, but the majority of them will fall somewhere in the middle.
That coach you were worried about after the first game may lead his team to the state championship.
But I must say, the hot takes are always wildly entertaining.
Kyle Parmley is the sports editor at Starnes Media.
