This is, without a doubt, the best time of the year. I’ll not hear otherwise.
We’re all falling back into the routine school brings to us, directly or indirectly. For me, that means my job just got much more action-packed. While most people would probably flip a desk when they get stuck working every Friday night for the foreseeable future, I’m in my element.
I also happen to write all or most of a big preview every year, which is a blast.
I’d be lying if I said I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into our annual Football Guide. First, nobody makes me bleed my own blood. Second, I haven’t teared up since the first time I got through Chapter 6 in Red Dead Redemption 2. When it’s this hot and humid outside, though, no man alive can go more than five minutes at a practice without glistening like Hulk Hogan in the ‘80s. I definitely put a lot of sweat into it.
There’s no shortage of optimism at everyone’s practice field this time of year. It’s contagious. This is the one time of year where everyone’s got the benefit of having a blank slate in front of them. There’s always something special about that first game you play, at least going into it. Doesn’t even matter if it’s the preseason game you’re counting. I think we’re all just so glad to have football back that, no matter what you told yourself about your team’s prospective future, there’s that little part of you that still gets excited when the band (or in Plant City’s case, the pre-recorded pump-up song) gets going and the team makes its grand entrance onto the field. There’s too much pomp and circumstance to not hit you in some way, even if you’re someone like me who’s bound to the “no cheering in the press box” rule. I like to see all of our teams do well and stay hyped for four quarters. I just have to have a poker face and call it all just as it happened.
Plant City head football coach James Booth told me early this week he thinks Class 7A football is the best in Florida, if not the best anywhere. I’ve seen enough to co-sign his opinion. In this class, in this neck of the Florida woods, we’ve got access to some of the best high school football games you’ll ever see outside of neutral sites like, say, a state championship game. If you want to triangulate it to the greater Plant City area, we produce some of the best athletes in the country. Two of the last four Guy Toph Award winners came from here. Four and five-star recruits come from here. One of these days, we’ll get football state champions out here. I’ve worked in Hillsborough County, Polk County, Lee County and Collier County. This one is, pound-for-pound, tops for me.
I don’t know everything about every team in the Tampa Bay area. But I know plenty about the three that matter most to you readers. I want you all to be prepared for the start of the regular season next week. I want anyone who picks up that section next Thursday to be able to hold their own in a water cooler talk about the game. I want you to not only know what you’re getting yourself into by rooting for a team, but also to know what positives you can look at before anyone plays the year’s first meaningful snap. I know those aren’t always easy to find, so I’m doing my best.
We’ve got preseason games tomorrow night and I hope you’ll all make some time to go see our kids put in work, even if the final score doesn’t matter. I’ll be in Dover for the first game of the Phillip Prior era and I can’t wait to get back on the sideline.