After numerous false starts and financial problems, the Herbstreit Ohio vs USA Challenge has finally announced its slate of games for Labor Day Weekend.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an article from Pittsburgh on Brother Rice’s game against Penn Hills.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/highschool/football/s_513864.html

Michigan State hosted 26 teams yesterday at its 11th Annual 7 on 7 Passing Competition.  There were 18 Class A schools and 8 smaller schools.  I counted seven schools that were on my Top 25 Pre-Season Watch List (Brother Rice, Dearborn Fordson, Detroit King, Farmington Hills Harrison, Grandville, Sterling Hts. Stevenson and Detroit Renaissance).   I was able to watch all of those teams except Fordson and Renaissance.      Read the rest of this entry »

Fans who can’t wait for the season to begin should head up to East Lansing this Saturday, June 23, for the 11th Annual 7-on-7 Competition.  Unlike local 7-on-7 leagues, which started this week, the MSU event is more organized and there are officials and scoring.  The final games are played in Spartan Stadium.   I’m not sure how many teams will be there, but I think it’s a fairly high number  Each team plays four games (11:15, 12:20, 1:25 and 2:35).  Teams that advance to the stadium play again at 3:45.  Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve mentioned before, when I develop my Top 25 Teams list I put a lot of emphasis on strength of schedule.  I admire teams that make a special effort to schedule the most difficult competition they can find.  Conversely, I feel that too many teams and conferences put too much effort into making sure their teams make the playoffs by scheduling cupcake schedules.  I find that the mega conferences all too often hurt their teams by not scheduling any games outside of their own conferences.  The OAA and MAC conferences are the worst offenders.  The MEGA has gotten better in recent years.  The Ottawa-Kent Conference does a great job of scheduling teams from different areas of the state.  All of the teams on the top 15 list have scheduled tough non-conference games (many out-of-state or outstate) followed with very competitive conference schedules.  There’s no sure road to the playoffs for the teams on this list.  Read the rest of this entry »

What’s up with the Cincinnati Bearcats?  In recent years, they have picked up some pretty good players from Michigan.  But, they appear to be doing even better this year.  Check out the Top 30 Players on Rivals.com.  As usual, Michigan is doing well with early commitments from three of the top seven players.  But Cincinnati has four of the top 30 with verbal commitments and seven more from the elite list who have the Bearcats on their wish list.