Hillsboro 55, Festus 6

Saturday, November 12
USPS Envelope Half-Sealed
NO STAMP

Dear MSHSAA,

Thank you for the apology in my inbox following MSHSAA TV’s attempt to broadcast the Class 4 District Championship Game at Hillsboro High. I thought I’d respond with a note of appreciation, since last night’s Pay-Per-View fiasco confirmed to those of us who cannot stand for how MSHSAA has needlessly tinkered with Missouri pigskin over the last 10+ years that we’re not crazy, and that our criticism is more than valid.

Missouri football has come a long way since Hazelwood was winning the Show-Me Bowl on KPLR TV with ex-Missouri Tigers stars on commentary. (Seems like y’all made enough money to keep it going back then, even though nobody was paying $10.) Week 12’s amazing list of upsets, like Park Hills Central beating Valle, CHS beating Poplar Bluff, and both Jefferson City teams losing on the very same night, demonstrates that our state’s prep ranks have never been richer. Friday’s Pay-Per-View stream (and the specter of PPV prep sports) shows that MSHSAA’s decisions have gotten consistently worse in the same time-span.

You may guess that a blogger who got his start in the business covering Festus-Hillsboro would have had reasons for staying home on Friday night, other than cold weather. I was having some family members and interested local parties, including a former Tri-City mayor, over to watch the title game on MSHSAA.TV (what a crap idea, eh?), and it was approximately 6:45 PM – when the PPV stream was supposed to have started – that our fun really began.

We didn’t get to see the first 2 or 3 touchdowns Hillsboro scored. Instead, we got to see the butt of a portly actor in a bank commercial for 25 minutes. The man’s butt may not be as legendary as George Michael’s, but its frozen image alongside a warning that “the broadcaster has stopped the stream” seemed to account for about $2 of the $10 that we spent to watch the game on TV. Little did we know that the frozen bank commercial was anything “butt” finished showing up.

The HHS-FHS stream began “working” just in time for Austin Romaine to run for a pivotal touchdown and expand Hillsboro’s lead to 28-6, setting alight another Leon Hall blow-out with a TD that must have been exciting to watch. Perhaps the Division 1 senior made a cool gesture to his teammates or the band or the cheerleaders as he crossed the goal line with what felt like a lock-down guarantee on a Hawk championship. Of course, on MSHSAA TV, what we saw instead was SOME WALL INSULATION AND A TWO BY FOUR, as an earthquake which seemed to strike only the press box at Hillsboro High School kept causing the (only) camera to shake so violently, it could’ve made a network cop show seem like a Stanley Kubrick flick.

MSHSAA TV’s most “artsy” moment of the night came in the 3rd quarter, when the “earthquake” camera began auto-switching to another camera with a very different color-filter, so much so that it made the teams appear to be wearing new jerseys! Because the $10 PPV stream was so far behind the radio broadcast, my party began to panic, thinking the poor dumb cracker who made it there alone when his PPV team bailed broadcast crew on-hand might have given up and put 2021 footage on. Who would have blamed them?

Then a thick fog enveloped the field, or at least a “bleach” camera filter that bored Junior High students snuck into the press box to mess around with. It was enough to remind viewers of the “Fog Bowl” between Chicago and Philadelphia in 1998, and was decorated with huge captions on the screen like “TIMEOUT,” in case there were any cats, dogs, or 3-year-old children watching who might’ve seen teams huddle for 60+ seconds and not quite put-together that there was a time-out. The fog also clouded-out sections of Hillsboro’s neat halftime show, while the Pay-Per-View stream also blocked off that video with the totally 100% necessary “HALFTIME,” since cats and dogs are smarter than the people running your PPVs.

Finally, it was time for BANK BUTT to return in all its glory. MSHSAA TV’s paid (?) crew in charge of selling $10 exclusive footage to 1000s of alumni decided that 2 quarters of NYPD Blue hard work was enough, and once again displayed a “Broadcaster Has Stopped The Stream” label on-screen for the whole 4th quarter, complete with the rear-end shot of a very unsuccessful actor pretending to schmooze at a bank.

In summary, this is what we believe our $10 purchased on Friday, other than the urge to donate Go-Pros and premium Twitch accounts to local football parents:

$4 – BANK BUTT
$3 – The 50-yard-line with players running off-camera on either side of it
$2 – The Earthquake and The Fog, and we don’t mean John Tenta and Stephen King
$0.50 – Hillsboro winning a Class 4 District Championship
$0.50 – Hillsboro celebrating the championship behind a wall and a two-by-four

If MSHSAA will be kind enough to send an exact $9.50 refund, then I will promise never to criticize PPV as an cheap, dirty means of exploiting teenage athletes again, or even write that if MSHSAA is going to exploit student-athletes (and their grandparents) then they should at least offer a product worth the money.

You may also want to send a UFC fighter to break my Pinocchio nose and uncross my fingers.

Yours sincerely,
TGG

It’s official – 2022’s Varsity Hawks are not just another District champion from Jefferson County. Class 4’s state playoff field would be wise to prepare for Hillsboro as if the Hawks are a favorite to win the eastern bracket, and reach this year’s Show-Me Bowl on the maiden week of December. Heck, maybe they are.

The Geek wrote in Week 7 that Hillsboro’s campaign had gone as if a St. Mary’s or a Lutheran North were dropped into the middle of Mississippi Conference and C4D1 competition. After looking at the Week 12 scoreboard, TGG isn’t so sure. St. Mary’s had considerably more problems with Fenton than Hillsboro had dismissing 2 equally proud programs over the last 2 weeks, even though the Dragons were able to post a blow-out score of 48-3 with methods similar to Tennessee throwing bombs in the 4th quarter vs Mizzou.

Lutheran North and Valle University falling on the same week emphasizes that CBC and Cardinal Ritter’s seasons are the exception, not the rule, for manufactured private-school lineups in the 2022 playoffs. Hillsboro’s run to the Show-Me Bowl tournament hasn’t just been outstanding – it’s well timed, too.

HHS just out-scored its District rivals 112 to 6 using Mississippi Magazine’s favorite offense of all, the “Muskegon” triple-option setup with QB Preston Brown taking snaps from the Pistol formation. But as much as TGG would love to launch into a sermon about the nerdy points of Hillsboro’s new-and-improved style, Park Hills Central coach Kory Schweiss’ impromptu sermon-of-faith from Friday deserves to stand alone. Besides, pundits can pin the Hawks’ breathtaking “112-6” superiority on a high-powered offense only to an extent in a season in which Leon Hall’s defense is playing its very best football since the program came into being. The Gridiron Geek ascribes Hillsboro’s epic rise to phenomenal defense, special teams, and key actors who’ve raised their individual games and mental focus to new heights at the perfect moment.

Austin Romaine, for instance, has grown into Jaxin Patterson’s equal as a game-breaking rusher. (We apologize to 6th-Hour teachers, who may have to endure a hell of an intramural spit-ball war between the pair now.) Hillsboro’s point-a-minute rally in midgame that cancelled-out any hope of an Festus comeback (or a dedicated 2nd-half camera operator) was led by a Fresh 6-pack of TDs. Romaine may not nearly be a fresh-man anymore, but the senior’s threat as a home-run batter in the backfield is now as deadly as that of Hillsboro’s most celebrated A-back. Patterson’s amazing stamina as a 3-unit athlete, Griffin Ray’s presence as a full-time defensive player, and the speed of the Brown brothers in the secondary has also helped Romaine put together an astonishing year as a tackler and QB-hunter…and he’s not finished yet.

Bill Sucharski can now be ranked with elite High School coaches of the Midwest. Sucharski’s idea to put Hillsboro in a new formation from which it can pass-block when necessary isn’t exactly a unique idea. Even the stubborn, purist coaches of Army West Point and The Citadel have begun to experiment with shotgun formations – Air Force is essentially running a Boise State-style “multiple” attack under HC Troy Calhoun. However, the fact that Sucharski – defying a whole century’s worth of prep-football coaching “wisdom” – chose to keep the Varsity Hawks’ aggressive, knifing plays from under-center is a stroke of genius.

Teaching triple-option plays from many formations and snaps is supposed to be impossible. Much like Lamar Jackson’s success as a rusher from behind center, 50 previous years’ worth of coaches shot-down the notion with backhanded waves. Paul Johnson himself has reasoned that trying to teach college kids a multiple version of his original Flexbone playbook is a fool’s errand, allowing the Pistol quarterback Vad Lee to leave the 2017-18 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets instead of putting in an offense to suit Lee’s talents.

But a fool could notice that if “complex” playbooks like the Run & Shoot remain so simple before the snap that coaches call-in the same plays to the QB over and over again, then teaching boys how to adjust before the snap of an option play shouldn’t be too difficult – after all, it’s kids knowing how to adjust to a defense’s choices at full-speed that’s the real knack of an option play. HHS hardly loses that benefit from merely putting its fantastic new QB in a better position to make plays. Brown’s passing ability came into full focus late in the 2nd quarter on Friday night, as the Festus defense took its only quality minutes of the entire scrum, forcing Hillsboro into multiple 4th-down situations in spite of a short field. Quarterbacks at HHS are supposed to grit their teeth and plow into the line harder when that occurs. Sucharski’s concept helped Brown convert every single 1st down and produce a TD drive with laser-throws and scrambles.

Imagine an ordinary “we shot ourselves in the foot” type of MSHSAA skipper were coaching the Hillsboro Hawks, and wanted to “transition” his offense to more of a wide-open look for Preston Brown. Why, he’d explain to Leon Hall’s boosters that the triple-option concept invented in 1996 is a “caveman” style compared to the progress that can be made with the “modern” spread offense invented in 1932. No significant effort would be made to keep Hillsboro’s trademark identity. Like with Herculaneum’s sudden turns to a pass-first over the decades, coaches would decide that it just isn’t possible to teach kids how to walk and chew gum. Therefore, as schools go to a more wide-open system, complicated pass-routes are phased in, and deceptive running plays are primarily phased-out. That’s probably why St. Louis football dominated the MSHSAA scene with beautiful styles like Sumner’s counter-motion offense back in the day, yet now controls much of the bracket with All-Star teams that run basic, no-frills systems for their fast athletes to run around in. Options and laterals are considered a risky ploy that clogs up the works.

It’s up to District 1, 2, and 3’s public teams to find a secret weapon that STL’s private schools won’t touch, and at long last, Coach Sucharski has found one. The instances of a prep team trying something like Hillsboro’s scheme in the ’22 playoffs are rare, but wow, does the ledger include some shocking success. The Muskegon Big Red owe their championship reputation from putting a Flexbone QB in the Pistol with 4 receivers, and becoming the first service-academy style team to set passing records in Michigan. Pulaski Academy put in more plays, more options, and more laterals in the mid-2010s, and went from an interesting experiment in 4th-down tactics to an annual champion of Arkansas. The Varsity Red Devils of Pike, Indiana put in a shotgun-spread offense and a Pistol offense and an under-center triple option playbook early last decade, and waltzed into the ESPN Top 100 playing more disciplined ball than a Wishbone team. Coach Sucharski is crazy enough to be the Missouri’s first head coach to try something similar with a roster comparable to those of CBC, St. Mary’s, and Cardinal Ritter. “112-6” in 96:00 is the result.

For the Festus Tigers, the season-ending loss represented another step backward for a defense that struggled to give its talented offense a chance throughout 2022. But there’s more hope for Midmeadow Lane’s defense than just the return of Eli Ortmann, Mason Schirmer, and Dante Bridgett next year. Friday’s scoreboard, just as it must be widening Hillsboro High’s eyes to the prospect of a vulnerable Class 4 state bracket, also showed just how short-lived a given unit’s struggles can be on the prep level.

Remember how dismal St. Charles West looked on defense at FHS Senior Night? That was October, 2021, no more than a calendar year in the past. In case a match against Cole Rickermann and Arhmad Branch seems like an unfair litmus-test for a defense, the 2021 Warriors also gave-up 50 points to Winfield (ouch), 28 points to a dull Potosi team, and 3 touchdowns to tiny St. Charles High. This season, Lutheran North’s bugaboo opponent (alas, the Crusaders did appear to have some roster issues in 2022, perhaps thanks to a weak recruiting pool bad grades or something like that) from Week 12 turned the Winfield outcome around by 70+ points, and held 3 lively offenses to a combined 24 points in C3D3.

Hillsboro’s defense is a good role model. The Hawks’ incredible Class of 2023 was still responsible for some shaky defensive efforts as late as last fall, even though the unit was the only group at Leon Hall that stood noble as Festus and North County rained bombs in the District playoffs. But it only takes a glance at the District Championship historical record to see that HHS has a totally different kind of beast in ’22. Cape Girardeau was a survival test for the Blue & White in 2017’s District Final. This year, the Tigers – while having snagged a surprise a District title in Class 5! – hardly made the HHS Hawks break a sweat.

Just think, Hillsboro is doing all of this at a time in autumn that was supposed to bring a “downturn” at HHS. The only “downturn” associated with Sucharski’s team at this hour is a shrinking “point spread” on St. Mary’s over Hillsboro in Week 13’s state playoff showdown. In fact, we’re not sure St. Mary’s is still the favorite to prevail at all. More to come on what could be Leon Hall’s best-ever postseason in this week’s preview.