Editor’s Note: Mississippi Magazine will not post a recap of 2023’s MSHSAA Show-Me Bowl whether Hillsboro and Park Hills Central win or lose their championship bouts, since TGG considers himself drowned-out at such hours as the Sunday after a Show-Me Bowl. Our blog fills a void of local football coverage that will be filled-in from all corners this weekend. There will be 15 recaps of the Show-Me Bowl on Sunday before we can say “Full-Time Once a Year Football Reporters.” So we won’t labor to compete with that, but Hillsboro folks and other readers can find TGG’s takes on the ’23 finals very soon after in a final Jefferson County Power Poll. 

Friday, December 1st: Park Hills Central vs Seneca (Class 3 Championship)

The Gridiron Geek has spent time wondering why MSHSAA doesn’t kick off its half-dozen 11-Man Football championships in a logical order, like having Class 1 battle it out first, then Class 2, then Class 3, before finally putting the Heavyweights on by Saturday night. It would fit our “Rasslin’, Boxing, and MMA” theme of putting Orange Cassidy in a preliminary match and John Cena in the main event later on. It would be easier tor folks to remember where their Class division falls on the Show-Me Bowl schedule, and so on. But it ought not to take Thomas Edison to figure out why MSHSAA uses an “odds and evens” method for the SMB’s 2 days instead.

Presumably, a first day of small-school championships could produce a disappointing ticket sale, while a second day of Class 4-thru-Class 6 would overwhelm the same ushers and volunteers who were bored beginning their weekends, as the larger communities’ fat crowds cloistered up at the Faurot Field (or wherever) box office.

Besides, Friday morning’s Class 3 Show-Me Bowl – which leads off the whole she-bang as 2023’s 11-man title games go – is nearly as special for Mississippi Magazine to report on as one of our own 12 teams’ state championship bids on Saturday will be. Local pigskin fans have been waiting for Friday morning’s kickoff almost as long as the Park Hills Central Rebels have. Park Hills Central has had so very many electrifying Rebel rosters get eliminated in the District or State playoffs that some of us began to think this day would never come.

Credit to reader Nichole Smith for recalling why 2023’s Class 3 class is more special than CHS’s berth alone makes it. Friday morning’s Seneca Indians (Can we all just meet at one big restaurant, and rename 100-to-200 Missouri teams something besides “Indians?” The Geek is part Kaskaskia injun, which means that he’s politically safe to host such a helpful meeting. We could make – gulp – reservations in advance.) The Herculaneum Blackcats’ nemesis in the 1995 Show-Me Bowl, the last time a Jefferson County team made it to the final of any enrollment class since Hillsboro this season, was none other than Seneca. The easy way CHS handled a noble Herculaneum team in Week 11’s District playoffs underlines how much Flat River football has grown up since Herky’s golden years. But the Seneca Indians are growing up too, defeating the Lamar Tigers in midseason and Nevada High on Senior Night of a perfect 13-0 campaign thus far. Those outcomes may cast Seneca as a solid favorite over the Varsity Rebels, who were not deep enough to avoid losing 3 games in a row back in September-October. The Rebels couldn’t even beat St. Genevieve before the leaves fell, but outlasted Blair Oaks, a Class 3 team performing at Hillsboro’s level, in the 2023 state semifinals to earn today’s shot at a Missouri crown.

Once the CHS Rebels were healthy enough to slot 2500-yard man Jobe Bryant out at WR again, Flat River’s boys made up for lost time. We’re learning that the momentum of a MSHSAA season matters a TON more than maybe it used to. Championship rosters like Park Hills and Kearney have experienced shaky starts before finding a form that’s destroyed proud institutions like Borgia and Jeff City on route to the ’23 Show-Me Bowl. In fact, Central’s  already matched the rare feat of A.J. Ofodile’s Colombia Rock Bridge Bruins of 10 years ago in going on a protracted losing streak against rival programs, then rising like Lazarus and romping all the way to state.

A smokestack’s stubborn streak that got HC Stan Helms and the Herky Blackcats to the 1995 Show-Me Bowl also proved to be their undoing against Seneca. Helms had shown – FINALLY! – a willingness to try some new tactics in the classic Herculaneum-Warrenton semifinal from that Class 3 campaign, holding off QB Jon Lewis’ outside rush attempts until Warrenton led 20-7 and The Geek thought he was about to scream, THEN giving Herky’s multi-sport star the green light for half-of-a-dozen scintillating gallops down the sideline and a winning touchdown. But when interviewed on KJFF about the Seneca state final game to follow, Helms weirdly waved-off suggestions that Herky’s defense should pay extra attention to a 3-Star or 4-Star recruit Seneca had scoring all its touchdowns in ’95: “Ehh, as soon as you worry about one guy, some other player will get you.” That’s not always true, though, is it? If you play Hillsboro and stop somebody named Brown, then those “other” guys have a harder challenge because they’re used to relying on a crack offensive backfield. You wouldn’t want to say, “Ehh, if we worry about Preston Brown, some other guy might jump up and get us.” Seneca couldn’t do much on 1st or 2nd down against HHS’s awesome defense of 1995, but the Indians pitched out to their 4-Star rusher – the one Herculaneum refused to key on – for about 17 conversions in a row on 3rd-down-and-long, and beat the Herculaneum Blackcats’ second Show-Me Bowl finalist in 4 seasons by a final score of something like (TGG turned off the radio in dismay) 38-21.

The contrast for Seneca ’23 is that Seneca CAN’T key on any one Park Hills playmaker because there’s too many of them, at least now that the Rebels have all hands on deck. QB Casen Murphy has a season statistics-line like Lutheran North’s Dakari Hollis, with exception of a handful of boo-boos that let you know Murphy performed in a genuine Varsity team scenario on a local lineup. Receivers like Kannon Harlow can make more noise than Jack Harlow’s flat-line coma of an NFL Thanksgiving halftime show, and Bryant is simply all over the field. Seneca cannot key on any Park Hills athlete even if it wants to. The Indians will be forced into the Helms Method, approaching the game with a defense that expects to have success but might not know exactly how.

That Murphy-Harlow-Bryant trio could prove to be MSHSAA Class 3’s version of Troy Aikman, Emmett Smith, and Michael Irvin this season. We don’t know if they’ll carry CHS to a state championship over the deeper and more consistent Seneca today, but they’re darn sure to make it interesting. PREDICTION: SENECA 31, REBELS 24

Friday, December 1st: Marionville vs North Platte (Class 1 Championship)

Mississippi Magazine congratulates Archie High School for defeating Worth County in Thursday’s 8-Man Show-Me Bowl (well, there were probably closer to 30-40 men, all told), which has a nice ring to it following The Geek’s decision to nickname St. Louis CITY SC “The Archies.” (Several media folk would cry “More Geek Vanity!” about that, but brand new soccer teams do NOT give themselves nicknames per tradition, because they allow their supporters and media to provide nicknames that can either stick or be discarded by popular use. But the only reason The Geek believes his “Archies” nickname will stick as at least a backup CITY name is that weirdly, among millions of St. Louis CITY supporters who give themselves names like “The Silly Club,” virtually zero CITY fans came forward to suggest a nickname in 6 months. The club was going to go without a nickname, therefore FanDuel threw up our hands and gave it one.) The Archies Archie won a close 8-Man contest, 40 to 26.

“The Marionville Comets” has a nice ring to it too. TGG has a long-time S/O named “Meredith,” and her name is 10x prettier if you pronounce it like Richie Wise singing “a maiden of Merion kind.” Plus the wise-guys who fill up The Geek’s text messages on Friday nights have been chirping about wanting to see a team called the “Comets” all year. But now that we’ve seen them, it’s a bit harder to feel warm-and-fuzzy about Marionville, which beat St. Vincent out of what would have been a seminal state-title bid for the Perryville school. There’s always a least a couple Show-Me Bowl games in a year’s series that are lopsided, and Class 1’s championship could potentially qualify, given that Marionville’s big romp of St. Vinny’s is augmented by 11 or 12 other big romps. Nobody has gotten airborne enough to touch the Comets, while opposing NPHS has labored to beat even some 1-9 clubs.

But we’re fascinated by Portageville’s near-win over Marionville in the State Q-Finals. Portageville plays like an all-grown-up version of Fredericktown and isn’t tied into utilizing any one specific star to get the job done. Perhaps a North Platte team of survivors can survive without embarrassment. PREDICTION: MARIONVILLE 36, NPHS 12

Friday, December 1st: Cardinal Ritter vs Republic (Class 5 Championship)

Republic High’s Tigers have arguably put more signature Ws on the table than any Class 4 thru Class 6 team in the Show-Me State. This is a squad that defeated Branson, Joplin, and Carthage in the regular season, before triumphing in one-score games over Lebanon, Helias Catholic, and Webb City all in a row to arrive at Mizzou.

Is Cardinal Ritter about to fall behind, fall apart, and get exposed like HHS exposed Lutheran North?

Tigers, Bo-Ma-Ye. PREDICTION: ACTUAL HIGH SCHOOL TEAM 38, CARDINAL RITTER 24

Saturday, December 2nd: Hillsboro vs Kearney (Class 4 Championship)

The Gridiron Geek has been of 2 minds about the Kearney vs Hillsboro final all along. On one hand, Kearney almost seems to represent “The Wall” that we’ve seen Park Hills Central, Fox High, and even Valle U. run into in playoff games with a tremendous leap in degree-of-difficulty, and a bone-crunching offense that could be found running out the clock on a tired Hawk defense late in the game. Kearney destroyed Nevada, a school that managed to go toe-to-toe with likely Class 3 champion Seneca, in a 35-0 Turbo Clock bout 2 weeks ago. Hillsboro’s been in close games with the type of lineups (including Festus R-6) that KHS demolishes.

But on the flip side, we’ve learned this season that A) Coaching and B) Momentum are a couple of X-factors that loom larger in Missouri pigskin than ever before. From a tactics POV, Kearney’s tall, long defensive front can be submarined by the Hillsboro Hawks if HC Bill Sucharski chooses to go back to the under-center option playbook Hillsboro’s kids grew up playing. If Kearney High gets into a chicken-fight with Hillsboro on the line-of-scrimmage, attempting to negate the weird “advantage” gained by a shorter offensive line using submarine-tactics taken straight from (of all things) Navy’s playbook, then Preston Brown can audible into a Pistol-look with 4 wide receivers, and toss the ball over a Kearney defense that doesn’t know if it should jump or lay down.

HHS’s momentum also matches Kearney’s. The jittery vibes out of Leon Hall following 29-28 and 48-35 playoff victories in the previous 2 rounds seemed to hint that Hillsboro could be having another trademark drop-off in late autumn. The District Championship Game was the first time we can remember watching Hawks starters assisted to the sideline with injuries, and Pacific’s offense made twice as much hay in Week 13 as it did versus Sullivan’s unsuccessful playoff team this season. But the Hawk offense was still getting better all along, carrying the Leon Hall program to a semifinal bid while the defense licked its wounds. By the time Lutheran North showed up unprepared to match Hillsboro’s discipline and precision, the Hawks were on top of Planet Earth again.

It’s a battle of attack vs counterattack, as if Kearney is Manchester United and the Hawks are Nottingham Forest. Is it time for a Jefferson County team to steal from the rich, and give our poor old county a state title? Not to disappoint anyone, but we’re afraid that a real-life scientific final score pick on Hillsboro-Kearney still feels impossible to make under the circumstances. Hillsboro’s whole style is fresh and new, and ready to sink or swim against a Kansas City region’s defense that has probably never seen anything quite like it before. Whether the Hillsboro Hawks can become the first team not to have 10+ tackles broken by Kearney rushers remains to be seen, but we know that Sucharski’s dynamic new scheme gives Preston Brown’s offense every chance to be successful in this moment if Kearney’s defensive front does prove to look clumsy vs that Hawks buzz-saw.

These 2 opponents have ZERO rivals-in-common and may as well be from opposite ends of the globe insofar as Missouri pigskin goes. It looks like a pretty good matchup if for no other reason than being impossible to predict, so we’ll revert back to the “Jefferson vs Lift For Life” method and call for a WISH-CAST to make Hillsboro folks delighted just as the big battle’s less than 24 hours away.

There’s only one small issue with that. We’d be forever guilty if Kearney’s kids get “Bulletin Board” material out of this, browsing the web in boredom during Friday’s action at Mizzou. We know from TE Gavin Hite’s remarks to the Jefferson County Leader that Mississippi Magazine’s dour pick of another ACTUAL HIGH SCHOOL TEAM losing to Lutheran North may have helped to motivate HHS to beat the tar out of sloppy Lutheran North in Week 14. None of The Geek’s loyal readers from past-and-present Hillsboro rosters would forgive us for helping out Kearney’s state title bid like that, especially if KHS skips over stuff (people do!) and just sees the CAPS.

So a quick note to any Kearney Bulldogs who are reading – The Geek only knows enough to make serious predictions on about half of this year’s Show-Me Bowl games, and you’re too far away to make Hillsboro-Kearney one of them. For all we know you’re about to win the Class 4 title like Miami beating Denver this season, though we’d say it’s highly doubtful given your head coach’s worry after watching the Hillsboro Hawks on film. Some “predictions” in our column today are just meant to make our local readers happy, and do NOT QUALIFY as genuine Bulletin Board material. You’ll need to visit a Webb City message board to find better ammo.

Heck, there aren’t any bulletin boards at Columbia hotels, anyway. We’re not even sure if COLOMBIA’s hotels would still have them in 2023. PREDICTION: HILLSBORO HAWKS 35, KEARNEY BULLDOGS 34

Saturday, December 2nd: Valle University vs Lamar High School (Class 2 Championship)

It’s sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fun when Valle U. runs into The Wall. Lamar can pile-on as many mop-up bricks as it pleases. PREDICTION: ACTUAL HIGH SCHOOL TEAM 100, VALLE U. 12

Saturday, December 2nd: Christian Brothers College vs Liberty North (Class 6 Championship)

TGG changed his pick for Class 6 – which is hopefully a more “serious” forecast no matter how far away Liberty North may be – after seeing what’s happened to more than one private-school powerhouse in the ’23 postseason. CBC has fought through a whole series of tiring, grueling battles to get back to the Show-Me Bowl, while Liberty North hasn’t been touched outside of having to conquer a Godzilla in KC Rockhurst. If even-still more prestigious recruited teams of MSHSAA are going to start getting cut down just like Lutheran North and Lift For Life, it could start Saturday when a fresher club takes on the CBC juggernaut. PREDICTION: LIBERTY NORTH 27, CBC 10

ENJOY THE 2023 SHOW-ME BOWL EVERYONE!