One other Big Idea for Mississippi Magazine is a Friday Night Scoreboard. This one might take until the 2026 season to implement, but we’re working on it, because The Geek does not want another version of Scorestream – and God bless Scorestream! – but rather something along the lines of the great scoreboard STLToday used to run on Friday nights back in the day. We need those old-fashioned live box scores back.
It would be expected, cliche even, to go on to say, “scoreboards haven’t been friendly to Herky lately.” What’s not expected is how Dunklin has handled this offseason, retaining head coach Blane Boss when it looked to all the world like he was out the door already. The Gridiron Geek thinks it’s a dreadful mistake, but not because Boss is a bad coach or a bad guy or anything. There might be an NFL analogy to make.
Remember the NFL’s “anthem kneeling,” or “flag kneeling” controversy? This sports reporter had a weird and unpopular take on that whole deal (imagine that!). Kneeling didn’t seem like such a disrespectful thing by itself, not to the flag, or the song, or anything, because kneeling is taught to all athletes as a sign of respect – they kneel when there’s an injury on the field and it’s not out of disdain to the kid who’s hurt. NFL audiences rightly sensed that the kneeling of 2017-2020 had a partisan political bent to it, though. (The next POTUS from the opposing party made it legal for cops to be racist with the 1993 Crime Bill, and yet very few celebrity athletes took the time to kneel before the flag between 2021-2024.) It also became apparent that even if the fans were booing in bad faith, there was a simple solution to the entire mess that the NFL was in.
If the fans didn’t want it, it shouldn’t have happened. The fans of a pro sports team rule the roost. They pay the bills, they make the games into events, and in the Green Bay Packers’ and other cases, they own a chunk of the team itself. If the fans didn’t want NFL players to wear the color purple, then the Minnesota Vikings needed to find new jerseys to wear. You have to listen to the fans because they’re irreplaceable.
There was a similar logic for Herculaneum after 2024’s disaster of a season – or at least there should have been. Too many student-athletes at Herky don’t want to play for Blane Boss or his coaching staff. A swift-footed playoff winner from 2023 turned into a dull, hapless 1-9 in short order, a mark that would send most head coaches packing. The Varsity Blackcats’ upperclass numbers have been whittled down, its number of impactful linemen has been falling, and team leaders are leaving “<3″s on social-media posts that criticize Boss’ style with the kids. That’s all Mrs. Aylesworth wrote when it comes to the decision to stick with Boss or move on. For a Class 3 team not to have more annual football tryouts than Herculaneum is absurd. Boss hasn’t necessarily made the problem worse, but the problem has gotten worse in his tenure.
Coach Boss, objectively, might be the coolest guy and the best motivator in the world. It doesn’t matter. If Herky’s kids don’t dedicate themselves to football because they don’t want to work for him, then it’s incumbent on Dunklin to make a change before the issue gets out of control. What if a dozen more students drop off the team in 2025-26? Does the Herky administration think that it can win football titles with unhappy players?
QB Keaton Reeves needs a Class 3 type of supporting cast, and he’s probably not going to get it. There are close to 40 names signed up on Herky’s official roster at MSHSAA this summer, but less than 5 are seniors and no more than 15 are upperclassmen, demonstrating how Herky has had promising kids join up and then vanish. We hope that everyone sticks who’s supposed to play in Reeves’ final crack at a winning year.
The Geek would be more charitable about Herky’s choice to keep having a smaller football team, except that Boss is reacting to his hot-seat position by playing politics and trying to throw the media off. The coach made certain to tell the Jefferson County Leader “We’ve had darn good numbers this summer,” but he was talking the % of remaining troops who showed up in summer, not the “numbers” of kids set to perform. Boss also blamed “a play Windsor didn’t have on film” for the Blackcats’ debut loss last year. Mississippi Magazine will let that one speak for itself.
Herculaneum pigskin has one fighting chance this year, and that’s in a substantially large underclass. Over a dozen freshman appear to have joined up alongside a decent sophomore contingent. Of course, we can’t absolve Boss for a low football morale on campus just because there are a lot of Frosh and JV kids who want to hit the big time. They have yet to be coached by the HC who irritates the Varsity kids. But for the time being, it is some kind of a numbers-boost for a school that desperately needs it. Maybe the frosh class at Dunklin likes Boss’ coaching style, replete with the simmering anger that he seems to carry around like a rabbit’s foot. Maybe they’ll stick around in full force into 2028.
Boss could redeem himself by giving the youngsters a chance, whether or not they’ve spent 3 summers “doing it the Boss way” or whatever you have to do to get along by the Smokestack. Give that frosh-sophomore corps a chance without testing them for pro-Blane-Boss-ness, because they’re your only hope to stay the “Boss” after this season, which could be another catastrophe for R-5 in the Quad County Conference.
For example, Clark Struckhoff is going to be Herky’s power rusher this fall, in addition to one heck of a bright spot for the Blackcats’ defense. That’s a pretty good idea, but it won’t help to open up Reeves’ crafty set of pitches, reverses, and passes unless there’s a few fast, agile kids to run the other wide-open plays. They’re not available from the senior class, but they might be lurking in those Frosh-JV ranks. Boss claimed in the same newspaper interview that his sophomore Lenny Eaves could be “the fastest athlete in the county,” which is exciting for Herky even if it proves to be hyperbole. The good news is that coaches don’t normally say stuff like that about kids who they’re not going to play. What if Herculaneum’s got a new “Thunder & Lightning” combo that saves the day (and the coach) with a great rushing year? We hope so.
On the state level in Class 3, it’s going to be a struggle of the old versus the new. Seneca has played wonderful pigskin for decades on end, but some of Blair Oaks’ teams of the past several years have “dynasty” written all over them. Then there’s the re-addition of Valle University to the Class 3 ranks this autumn, due to MSHSAA’s promotion system and another round of Valle championships in Class 2’s District tournaments.
The Geek may shock this season’s blog readers by having kind things to say about Valle. Yes, that’s right, The Geek could be developing a soft spot for “Valle University aka Valle U. aka The Olympic Athletes of Valle Catholic.” Valle U. head coach Dex R. Stacky Judd Naeger would punch TGG for saying so (and for other reasons) but Mississippi Magazine maintains that when a private-school dynamo loses by a final score like “St. Vincent 24, Valle 7” it helps to legitimize all of the “Valle 55, Anywhere High 7” scores that fall in between. We’ve chided Valle U. for having stacked teams on the field, but at this time last summer, Valle clearly, absolutely, and positively did not have a stacked team of any sort.
Valle U. took that loss to St. Vinny’s on the chin and moved forward, scoring 122 combined points against lesser foes in the next fortnight. By the end of the year, the Warriors looked like the Warriors, getting bothered at St. Pius X before pulling away in the second half, just like in the old I-55 Conference days. Valle’s smart, disciplined kids still fought a memorable 2024 District Championship Game battle with victorious Bowling Green on their worst day – or at least on their worst day since that humbling defeat to St. Vincent on home turf last September 6th.
This blog never had a problem with how good Valle U. can be on the field – scout’s honor. Our problem was with Valle’s choice of competition in Class 1, and the prevailing fact that seasons of 44-0 victories do not teach children a single thing even if they’re lifting a trophy at the end. It’s merely been an exhibition. Valle Catholic can truthfully claim not to “recruit” players from far away – they don’t need to! Valle U. has a near-monopoly on legacy sports families from St. Genevieve, each new generation born and reared to be Warriors from the cradle. It benefits exceptional teams to be promoted when they’re too good for a weight class. The Show-Me Bowl has gained a lot from Valle in Class 2.
(One upset Valle booster called the Warriors’ promotion out of Class 1 “communist.” Haha! Getting promoted because of your excellence is as All-American as anything gets. Valle kids know that even when the grownups forget, which is why they fought Lamar like nobody’s business.)
Imagine that every legacy sports family living near Festus High School religiously sent their kids to FHS. Festus would have every Ruble, every Eisenbeis, every Blankenship, etc. Now imagine that Festus football team played at a school with 150 students in it, competing against the smallest schools of Missouri in Class 1. Festus would “win” 99 out of 100 championships in a row. Who cares? It’s not a heartfelt story. Competitive sports are designed to match similar athletes to create good drama. Valle just needed to get with the program on that.
Now that Valle U. is playing in great games against similar teams, there’s no reason to dislike the Warriors at all. We’ll keep some of Valle’s wink-wink-style nicknames around, mainly for tradition’s sake, but The Geek will use them sparingly now that we know how tough the Warriors are.
Can the Olympic Athletes ever win a Class 3 state bracket? Probably not, but it will be fun to watch them try. It helps Valle U. a ton that Cardinal Ritter, Country Day, and even Lutheran North remain too good to drop back down into Class 3, the actual size of the first two schools and one size larger than the real size of the latter Class 4 champions’ private school. Seneca may not remain on Valle and Herculaneum’s side of the MSHSAA Final Four path, because Missouri has been tinkering with its bracket too much already, and coaches are starting to speak up. Competing with the eastern half of Class 3’s field, Valle U. could vie for a state-final bid now that its greenhorn jitters of ’24 are gone.
Oh, and our Class 3 preview wouldn’t be complete without touching on Park Hills Central’s hangover to end all hangovers. Why, the CHS Rebels turned into a shell of themselves last autumn, losing to a so-so St. Genevieve team in only the second round of the District playoffs. The Geek doesn’t follow Flat River enough to know exactly what went wrong, except that the Rebels had a double-whammy of substantial graduations plus injuries to thin out the roster more. Park Hills’ nice list of 15+ seniors should help get 2025’s Rebels back on their feet, after Park Hills won only about half as many games last autumn as CHS did in 2023’s run to a Class 3 state championship.
You worry about it happening to Festus after the Show-Me Bowl. It didn’t really happen to Hillsboro last year, until Preston Brown went down and the Hawks ran out of steam. Is there a cure for the state-playoff success hangover? That’s a better topic for our Class 4 preview this Thursday.