Call it Steve Harvey at the Miss America pageant, or Stephen A. Smith giving the ‘San Diego’ Chargers a fictional town and lineup in 2018. Call it the Three Stooges. Whatever the punch line might be, veteran Mississippi Magazine readers know the pain. Each season, with a sickening 100% “unsuccess” rate, The Geek manages to have the critical details wrong about a JeffCo program – picking on an unlucky team with the barrage of errors! – until fans are compelled to step in and help the site make corrections. Meanwhile, the painful hours go by in which early-bird readers are gleaning all the wrong info from an article.
It’s not a matter of geography. The Geek’s worst reporting errors have struck teams in the Tri-Cities where TGG grew up and often resides. The Herky Blackcats and Festus Tigers have had so many supposed “injured” kids performing, and “healthy” kids injured, over the last several years, that coaches, trainers, and the live-game journalists who catch lineups better than The Geek may just as well throw up their hands and stop trying to tell folks about their Fridays. The Seckman Jaguars have earned conference titles while The Geek bluegill-fished in Rock Creek and still didn’t notice. Once, he said Payton Brown handed off to Austin Patterson.
This summer, it’s been the Fox Warriors. It’s nuts how fraught with errors our Fox coverage has been in August and September, since Fox was one of the “mystery teams” that finally began streaming all of its home games on MSHSAA TV in 2025. It’s bonkers that Mississippi Magazine made fewer mistakes on Fox before one could see the Warriors play so often from home! Not to sound blubbery, or cliche, but The Geek humbly begs the pardon of Warrior Nation – and especially the student-athletes – for making it seem like he didn’t believe Fox was as worth keeping track of as 2026’s other contenders.
First, in preseason, we cast Fox’s bruising two-way TE/LB Gavin Pecoraro as a finesse athlete, someone who would roam the defensive backfield hunting interceptions before running zany Jet Sweeps on offense. Pecoraro must have a gentler outlook on life than most of the Dirty Dozen’s fierce linebackers, or he would have traveled south on I-55 to kick one reporter’s butt for listing him on a “Diva” position like WR-DB. That is the type of too-typical preseason blunder that gets cleaned up around here following weeks of Matt Bates’ starting lineups from Live Stream STL (he grabs all dozen eventually). TGG also remembers spelling the youngster “Pec-A-raro” a few times, which is maybe funny as opposed to a scandal. But then, it got worse.
In the badly published “First Draft” of this Week 4’s Friday Night Predictions, your wayward author gave Ladue 2025’s victory over Fox on Warson Road, when really it was the Red & White that scored the 26-20 road victory over last Friday’s rematch rivals. The Geek had already flipped over one 2025 score by accident in this year’s Quad County reporting (it happens to final scores on the internet, but we try to confess each time it is the site’s fault), but to reverse last season’s Fox-Ladue score?! Fox-defeats-Ladue was not only a vital upset over a program that’s simply outstanding on home turf, it was Arnold’s second-most important victory of 2026 behind the Quarterfinal win, and perhaps the Warriors’ third-most important -performance- of 2025 beside the Q-Final and the OT tilt with Seckman High. How could an in-depth preview whiff on THAT, with so many easy reminders just clicks away?
It is “The Demon.” The Demon is the unseen force that has slapped Mississippi Magazine in “Murphy’s Law” style, making sure that a dumb, cringey, and embarrassing mistake will lead an article the wrong way any possible time that it can. The Demon finds weak points in all of our site’s plans, like a Defensive Coordinator who blitzes Fox’s option runs, taking advantage of blind spots in what has become a careful editing SOP. For example the reason why Ladue and Parkway North are so confusable for THIS blog is because Ladue was Fox’s -Week 9- opponent in 2025, and The Geek doesn’t report Week 9s. Fox-PNHS was 2025’s last regular-season recap, and then it was on to the win over Poplar Bluff. At least Fox-Ladue is earlier in the new slate, because the Warriors played well enough in Week 4 to make you think that “upset” will take place again sometime soon. If Parkway North calls again, we hope that’s in Weeks 1-8, since Arnold has shown the potential to beat the Vikings also.
The Demon burned the Magazine in those blurbs on Pecoraro, too. Once our pro editor – a helpful hand who used to cover NHL games at The Arena – was done fact-checking the 2026 Suburban League preview, it was ready to post on site. But TGG (with The Demon smiling over his shoulder) wanted to add a few more colorful bits to the final cut, like fun preseason guesswork and goofy advice for JeffCo coaches. The Geek noticed that the TE paced Fox High with two touchdown catches last season, while remembering him as being in the end zone when the Fox and Farmington kids started hugging one another last Week 11. “Well, heck,” TGG decided quickly, “I can add this guy to these “Jet Sweep” candidates. He is making long catches on a never-pass-it offense, and they trust him to cover Farmington’s receivers in the end zone. Of course, any player always hunkers next to the offensive line at Fox, like a Tight End. That’s Fox, haha!” (Nahhhh, you don’t need to check that fella’s scouting profile, smirked The Demon. It wouldn’t matter if he bench-presses 10,000 lbs., has 5.0 speed, and prefers to play TE-LB.)
Pecoraro was never a wide receiver, he just ran out wide and received. The senior’s obvious talents as a slower-paced, muscular receiving threat on offense (hello Clayton Snudden?) aside, it helped The Demon wreak havoc that any play-action pass catcher in the Fox offense – once Arnold finally chooses to throw it versus a defense frozen in Nitrogen – looks like he’s running 2000 miles per hour, and you can’t often tell when they’ve been benching 10,000 pounds.
The one thing learned via the blunder the Fox linebacker corps a ‘WR-DB’ corps is that Arnold’s linebackers are versatile enough to be trusted with many things, like catching TD passes. It’s one way that a laboring lineup was able to rise above and go toe-to-toe at Ladue in two straight years.
It would be a dishonest waste of time to promise Fox and 11 other teams, “No more errors! That’s it, we’re locking in!” and so on. Even if we tried to design a candid, legitimate Friday Night Lights analysis blog 100% free of errors at all cost, it wouldn’t work because some information is not ascertainable. High School football will probably always have an aspect of mystery about it, made greater when coaches are just as glad to keep it that way, such as when their programs leave nothing but blanks next to a roster’s names on HUDL or STLToday or even their school’s own site, assuming that the names are even there. The Geek has had administrators from far away tell him to “do a little more research,” and one can only hope that they know it would take enormous amounts of research, not just a “little” research, to get everything right for every MSHSAA team’s mention.
For anyone who asks, no, Mississippi Magazine can’t simply reach out to our choice of local big-shots to get the skinny on each week’s action. A “Harvey Updyke Jr.” of a sick superfan duplicated accounts and sent 10+ complaints to Facebook admins a few years ago, after The Geek called out the weird prejudice of 0.00001% of the community that had kept everyone else from having a good time. (If they’ll poison a tree at Auburn, they’ll ruin a blog in Missouri.) That nightmare got The Geek banned on Meta as a private user, scared to so much as leave personal contact info which could be tied to that “copyright violation” of a 1986 Chicago Bears photograph (like they would actually care!). TGG only gets to exchange info with newcomer coaches, parents, and pundits when they’re lucky enough to know how to say hello – by using Messenger to reach “Christine Kennedy” at the MSHSAA group.
Much of the local sports media spent years being hostile to Mississippi Magazine. They trolled our posts, thumbed their noses at live events, and used it as an example of bad journalism, before saying “Smith rushed for two touchdowns” and calling it a day. It made the site into an outcast, a rogue, and a rebel left to its own devices. On top of that, the style of Varsity coverage that they were “gatekeeping” had a minimum of in-depth analysis in it, frustrating The Geek that he couldn’t even swipe many incisive stories from reporters who did not believe in them. The site’s team has spent days trying to squint at fuzzy footage to identify a kid, without a source in the world to assist.
Good news: It’s changing. To a great extent, it already changed! The Jefferson County Leader had always kept things simple and 100% “Youth League” soft-pedaled, since newspapers have mad fact-checking responsibility, plus the JCL used to cover Eureka pigskin in the Hassan Haskins years, just to make editors tremble over their keystrokes. But then, a few seasons ago, the JCL’s reporter-in-chief Russell Korando got the knack of Dirty Dozen gridirons and never looked back, bringing the house down with lines like, “Hornets fullback Caden Raffery, the belly-play weapon of Coach Dan Fox, could tear a truck apart with his hands.” Meanwhile, Live Stream STL’s latest gear and its camera angles are making our teams look very sharp, right down to clearly identifiable jersey numbers (FINALLY!) as Gateway Sports Venue and other video crews go insane each Friday starting on Jamboree Week. Mississippi Magazine is no longer a rebel, if it ever was one, for making predictions and posting Power Rankings. JeffCo fans have more rankings, predictions, and picks to look over than ever. Gosh, ain’t that a ton of fun?
Then there’s the real shocker – Mississippi Magazine is being welcomed as of 2026. Our cross-promotional cooperation with Gateway Sports Hub is a treasure such as our gang never imagined in the days when people were generating fake Facebook names, like “Breem Sandoval,” just to send more complaints to Meta and get our promotions shut down. Better yet, schools’ programs have been joining with The Geek to distribute our coverage of every school in the Dirty Dozen, not merely their own organization. Gee, that’s only the REASON this site was launched, to help fans cheer for more than just their Alma Mater!!! Jefferson County’s coaches, by and large, have begun to embrace the site as a gainful outlet to send extra nuggets to.
Nothing can be done to turn a chicken-scratcher into a less reckless writer. But, a lot can be accomplished by people working together, to help get the facts straight and spread the word about our hotbed south of STL. In the future, do not be alarmed if TGG’s got Nehemiah Glanville toiling on the Fox offensive line, blocking for “Ryan Pribish” and “Jude Joggerst.” At last, such legions of friendly volunteers are looking over Mississippi Magazine that any boo-boos will be fixed fast. Just come back in three-to-four hours after you find something ridiculous, unless it was DeSoto’s prediction against St. Vincent in Week 1.
You can trust the Magazine’s reporting on Fox for the sole reason that … it’s not just The Geek behind the stories anymore! This writer tearfully appreciates that. Cue The Beatles – we’ll get Fox and 11 other teams right With A Little Help From Our Friends.
Photo Credit: Paulo Pinho Instagram