This will not be the last Jefferson County Power Poll of this October. But it’s perhaps the first time that the FULL WEIGHT of our county’s awesome new power in Friday Night Lights has hit home, hopefully to everyone watching and not just this reporter. Kids, parents, and coaches from teams like Festus and St. Pius X, who probably can’t fathom that their achievements would not lead to weekly undisputed #1 rankings by now, must wrap their brains around one fact: Ranking #4 in JeffCo is better than ranking #1 used to be. We have got two Show-Me Bowl contenders still battling to earn bragging rights. It has never been like this before.
100 Years, Morty! 100 years. When, oh when, in 100+ autumns has local football ever had so many powerful, pugnacious, and plum incredible teams as it has right now? The JCTV era, when Hillsboro and Fox and Northwest’s teams all contended at once – a bag o’ shells, friends. Herky from 1995? That was only one school, Clive. This is the greatest that it has ever been in JeffCo – hands down!
The Jefferson County Power Poll is trying to start ranking teams in “Whole Numbers” only. Parts of the local sports media have gotten rightfully and regretfully impatient with the Power Poll’s lack of clarity in the Gold, Silver, and Bronze department. Will both Festus teams be tied forever? Will Hillsboro – and Highway A – get the benefit of the doubt over the Suburban League’s biggies? Good golly, there’s only one week left in the regular season. It’s time to make decisions even if some feelings get hurt out there.
Trouble is that our 2026 Festus Tigers just won’t lose sight of the pace car. Festus has held onto #1 or T-1 in the Power Poll more often than any Dirty Dozen brand since 2024. You want to squint at the Varsity Tigers and find flaws, because of the strange way that Midmeadow Lane has ascended in the local and state rankings again. FHS began the season 0-2 before going on its current extended win streak. The Tigers’ blue-chip starting QB went down. The offense, defense, and especially the special teams are inarguably picky about playing at their best. But gosh darn it, the Black & Gold keeps making opponents look flat and uninspired, and we rank -those- teams down for it, only to find out later how deadly an opposing offense the Tiger defense had shut down. Hannibal’s recent “28-13” midgame score with Jackson is just one example – St. Mary’s upsetting DeSmet is another one.
Then you’ve got the Seckman Jaguars, who have made phenomenal strides in the past month. Imperial’s crushing win over its conference rival Overland last Friday was more impressive than Festus shutting out Hillsboro in midseason, given that Hillsboro came into the Festus game with injuries, while Ritenour ran into The Valley while it was roaring hot. For Brody Kube’s squad to demolish the Huskies lineup that beat Pattonville – Imperial’s blowout nemesis from September – showed that Seckman has developed crazy-fast from an ailing team into a potential November noisemaker, riding behind a four-game win streak.
Northwest has a claim to fame – the Lions defeated the Jaguars in the last head-to-head matchup. The shinier Seckman looks, the better Northwest’s accomplishments look. Not to mention that 7-1 Cedar Hill has won its last five games in a row without allowing a meaningful point since early September. It’s insane how records such as 7-1 and 6-2 are getting to be so routine around JeffCo. Meanwhile, the Fox Warriors retain a fascinating chance to get to a District final, dampened slightly by Week 9’s standings.
Don’t forget the St. Pius Lancers. How do we overlook a team that’s coming off its signature regular-season road win of a generation? The 6-2 Varsity Lancers have been vying for undisputed #1 in the Power Poll for a while now. They are So Close after Week 8’s huge win and the other results from last Friday, except for that pesky Hannibal-Jackson showcase, and St. Mary’s becoming elite in Class 5 – two developments that paint FHS’s ’26 season in a WHOLE new light – accompanied by Seckman’s underrated defense giving 0 points to another St. Louis team with a talented quarterback.
The Gridiron Geek is extending this year’s regular-season rankings period through Week 12, so that there’s time to work out the tie at the top, or welcome a Suburban League team into the top-two. The Power Poll will appear in videos, as a companion in other articles, and in ‘IIHF Power Rankings’ shorthand-style, but they’ll be here. We owe it our state hopefuls to declare a No. 1.
1 (T) – St. Pius Lancers
One thing that’s going to help – potentially – get St. Pius over the hump into being the #1 most respected program in JeffCo is that the Lancers are stacking a “secret” elite 2026 schedule, inside of the Lancers’ schedule that you see with your naked eyes. Try squinting at St. Pius X’s regular-season dates until everything disappears except Week 1 and Week 7 and Week 9. That’s Farmington High, preceded by Gibson Southern, and followed by Valle Catholic’s un-flippin’-believably epic lineup of ’26.
Hill Valley has been in two tight scrums with contenders to win state titles this year, and SPX might enjoy a third hard battle against Valle this weekend. Then you’ve got a potential Week 14 matchup against Country Day or Lutheran North, two porous defensive teams who can nonetheless pile-up points while they boast of prior Show-Me Bowl appearances. In short, the Lancers are performing against a gauntlet of Midwestern giants – just in “broken up”-style with lots of tune-up games in between.
It’s like a Sci-Fi story to think that we’ve gotten so good at Friday Night Lights, two teams from the same neighborhood have faced a set of state-title hopefuls without going winless – or being dealt a single blowout loss – and we can’t even rank either of them the genuine #1 at this time. SPX will have played three Show-Me Bowl-level teams as of late Friday … and it might not be 0-3.
Good old “Valle U” is so great this season that if St. Pius X somehow conquers the Warriors at Father Dalton Redux, the Lancers will be the Dirty Dozen’s absolute No. 1 with full Benefit Of The Doubt privileges until if-and-when a special lineup falls in defeat again.
1 (T) – Festus Tigers
From The Department Of Corrections: The Geek’s mixing up of Liam O’ Brien’s (senior) and Quinnten O’ Brien’s (junior) classes had to have been a product of sheer fatigue last Saturday. 12 games, three conference showdowns, a watershed win for Hill Valley, plus returning players and massive winning streaks made for one heck of a Week 8 weekend – but Mississippi Magazine has taken great care to call Liam a senior and Quinnten a junior since this summer. Very kind of “Mom” to step in and correct Week 8’s goof for us.
2026’s substitute starters who became instant local stars, from Quinnten-O to Cohner Baer to St. Pius X’s “Plan B Nose Guard” Jackson Jercinovic, have been so hard to keep up with that this reporter’s brains are scrambled. Festus High leads the wonderfully exhausting win-streak race at 6 over Northwest (5) and Seckman/Herky (4). One consolation is that it’s nice to know Tanglefoot’s parents aren’t upset about the Power Poll, given that R-6 couldn’t even get to the #1 undisputed rung after beating Hannibal in Week 7. Who knew that Seckman would join St. Pius X in going absolutely wild in midseason, just as JeffCo threatens to have its best November ever. We are doing this injured, folks – it doesn’t sound real, but our schools are truly achieving the impossible.
RB Kamden Yates snuck up on the STL region – and Mississippi Magazine – with more profound rushing stats that our Festus at Poplar Bluff recap missed. Yates, in a play-calling turn that surprised The Geek, and also others who might have kept watching throughout the final 36:00 if we knew what Midmeadow Lane’s senior speedster had in store for it, remained the Poplar Bluff scrum’s workhorse even after Bennett Spraul threw his hat in the ring as a rusher, galloping for 200+ while producing four TDs on a whopping 29 carries. Not everyone whiffed – our friends at Gateway Sports rated Yates’ effort as the STL Metro’s best of the week.
It seems crazy to feed Kamden about 30 rushes with the playoffs starting in a fortnight, especially since Aiden Schirmer’s alarming absence from the two-way stat line indicates that another injury could hamper the Tigers’ backfield in days to come, while putting pressure on the team’s other outstanding linebackers such as junior Aric Luo and senior Braydon Wilkes. But FHS knows that Sikeston is putting its own “pressure” on Highway A’s teams at the regular season’s finish line. If there is still any hope to watch Midmeadow Lane’s healthy starting corps of 15-20 kids by Week 12, it may depend on staying ahead in the district race and qualifying with a bye and a chewable #1 versus #4-5 semifinal bid. If R-6 has to go harder, sooner, the injury woes might worsen, somewhat ironically making it A-1 to keep scoring as many precious TDs as possible in the very short term. Sikeston could pass Midmeadow Lane with a blowout victory, combined with a < 13 margin outcome for Festus in Week 9, win or lose for the boys.
They’re bound to growl like Terrible Tigers again soon. Kirksville is a Trap Game road opponent who we think the boys will be more than ready for this Saturday. Moving on to tackle District 1’s perilous field could help to sharpen the Black & Gold if it survives.
3 – Seckman Jaguars
Seckman’s got all the talent, all the momentum, and the well-deserved kudos going into one last conference showdown in Week 9. With even more running back talent thriving on a corps that Jaxson Jablonski has returned to, the Jaguars look better and better.
…but the Jaguars don’t have a #1 ranking or even a tie for #1 … yet. There’s a method to the madness, but it still hurts to have to rank any of these outstanding teams beneath another one. When everybody is winning it comes down to strength-of-schedule, although, heck, Seckman’s strength-of-schedule is getting sterner too. There’s just too much local success to go around.
It’s horrible that Seckman has to sit “1.5” rungs below the tie atop the Power Poll, because the 2026 Jaguars have risen from despair to light The Valley on fire. We’ve said that the top-half of this season’s field was so good, and so comparable, that there wouldn’t be many lopsided contests in a six-way tournament – that each campus could earn No. 1 status as easily as half-a-dozen WWE superstars can be booked to lift the belt at any time. If that’s true, then the Jaguars jumped way over the field by shutting Anthony Odom and Ritenour out, less than a month after 7-1 Seckman’s only defeat so far.
What keeps Imperial from jumping over Festus has nothing to do with not wanting to land in French Village, or anything directly to do with the Jaguars, Tigers, or Lancers’ latest performances. It’s the fact that the Lancers and Tigers opponents Farmington, St. Mary’s, Gibson Southern, Valle, and Hannibal are doing special things, the latter 2025 MSHSAA Class 4 runner-up defying its 3-5 record to make Jackson’s first string work overtime. The Tigers and Lancers are 2-4 against those brands since last October, without a single lopsided loss. Seckman’s four best opponents of the last calendar year have been Northwest, Pattonville, Ritenour, and Fox … not quite the same stratosphere all around. However, a conference title would look shiny on the Jaguars’ resume for #1 in ‘Week 16.’
Kube’s crew is under pressure in Week 9, needing a win over Parkway North to earn league hardware. But it isn’t a direct league title game the way that Jefferson-St. Vincent, or Northwest-Oakville is, due to Parkway North losing to Ritenour and Pattonville.
4 – Northwest Lions
Northwest has won five times in a row, a winning streak comparable to that of Festus or Herky’s, and the NHS Lions are probably about to lift Suburban League hardware by chopping down the Oakville Tigers on October 23. Cedar Hill’s Power Poll status has been dinged by tough competition drying up since the Lions played University City and McCluer North, giving Northwest another less fortunate “streak” of weeks without Quality Wins relative to Festus, Seckman, and St. Pius X. Another crack at Seckman should be coming soon, provided Cedar Hill does Imperial a solid and knocks Oakville down a bit in the district standings, while Seckman wins as a favorite (sorry, Coach Baer!) over Parkway North’s frustrated Vikings. If Northwest loses to Oakville High in a minor upset, then MSHSAA’s semifinal pairings may include NHS-OHS. The Lions are not really that obsessed with Oakville, they just want to elegantly dispatch of the Tigers before moving on to fight Seckman. Nobody wants to spend Weeks 9-thru-11 under an oak tree.
5 – Fox Warriors
We’re keeping eyes on the C5D1 race, the Week 10 bye scenario, and a District Points Calculator provided by a helpful Mr. Tim William of Fox Football (there’d be sweetheart emoji tags of both if this was Facebook, but at the least, we can link folks to the calculator). Fox needs to get an easy win in the bag at Parkway Central, and avoid scoreboard watching until later.
#6 – Hillsboro Hawks
Farmington was expected to wallop Hillsboro, but not exactly in the way that it did. If Hillsboro can’t steadily move the chains against very tough defenses in the playoffs, it won’t matter if an opponent is less high-octane or high-tempo than the Black Knights. Leon Hall would simply be in danger of losing 24-9 instead of 55-9. Poplar Bluff provides a get-well foe for Hillsboro this weekend.
#7 – DeSoto Dragons
DeSoto’s plight in Class 4, District 1 is pretty much ironed out already. Cannon Kisner’s club will have to visit Bonne Terre to meet the North County Raiders in a Week 10 quarterfinal, even if they pass up NCHS in Week 9, due to a head-to-head loss early this season. That’s why the Dragons are probably going all-in on beating a tough Herculaneum lineup, and notching what would be DeSoto’s landmark third straight winning regular season under HC Russ Schmidt, who has brought the program alive again.
#8 – Jefferson Blue Jays
Jefferson clings to a #8 ranking by having defeated Herky and Perryville by decisive scores. The seat will be getting very warm, and potentially have a Blackcat fly over the top of it, if Dunklin and DeSoto have a barnburner while Jefferson disappoints against St. Vincent. If the historical record holds true, however, Jefferson High is more likely to make Week 9’s upset effort than Herky.
#9 – Herculaneum Blackcats
It’s time for 2026’s JCTV Bowl, and unlike football on Jefferson College TeleVision back in the day, the Herky-DeSoto matchup has flourished across MSHSAA schedule change-outs to become a fun event and a potential really good contest in almost any season. JCTV went from live-with-halftime-interviews to live-without-any-replays, to tape-delay without any replays, to a sorry set of moth-eaten reruns when the project ran out of funding, making everybody feel rotten for “Bullet” Bob Harrison, and other pioneers of county pigskin on TV. We’ve said it before, but the JCTV Bowl is a link to the heritage of the county’s old JCC.
#10 – Grandview Eagles
Who could imagine the Grandview Eagles moving up in the Power Poll, after the catastrophic injury woes of late summer and early fall! We’re so happy for the student-athletes at GHS that they had yet another landmark effort against St. Vincent, this one not a victory, but still critical in the sense that it showed the Birds of Prey can look like themselves again versus premier opposition. Mississippi Magazine could end up wearing out its stock of COTY medals, all hangin’ on Coach Hanger, if this continues.
#11 – Windsor Owls
It’s supposed to be Rock Creek, not rock bottom. Windsor’s frustrating loss to Fredericktown did not appear to come in a landslide of injuries such as western Imperial coped with this summer; Jett Black and Jack Kuda are on their feet, and RB Ethan Cobb, who led with 136 yards against the Blackcats, has been a featured Flex-back for much of the year. But it’s not the best sign that former RB Teagan Gannon was shuffled onto the defense without further rush attempts from the backfield this October.
Windsor is ailing for bodies on the defensive side. The Owls don’t have nearly as many tacklers in the stat column as Class 3’s Herculaneum in ’26.
#12 – Crystal City Hornets
Mississippi Magazine is taking a hard turn on its Crystal City coverage. The Geek disavows just about everything he has said about the Varsity Hornets this season. Forget about all of it – it will all be erased, edited, or changed in the next weeks as time allows, for the lonely folks who go back and read the older editions. TGG has misread the room, gotten it wrong, and upset the community.
The backlash from Crystal City over our recaps of the 2026 season has been swift, severe, and shocking. The MSHSAA Facebook Group has rarely been so stricken by angry Comments, unsettling text messages, and a “shunning” of the site from sharing or interacting on social media. Grandview, our other Class 1 school and CCHS’s closest thing to a conference rival these days, has had a similar, sour reaction of disapproval, even though The Geek has stood next to Grandview kids who cheered Bradley’s Farm visitors to score a win over their district foes. Nobody has liked the Hornets coverage from this year, so it’s going to change.
It’s heartbreaking on a personal level. The Geek has probably lost his Sunken Place privileges. He won’t be there to watch the moon rise at Crystal City’s field for a long time, since 2026’s backlash has been so emotional that TGG would want to wear disguise in the stands at this point. Crystal City Football would likely have preferred that Mississippi Magazine’s server outage from this Monday had been a permanent one. CCHS is furious that we’ve overvalued the wins-and-losses, while questioning its coaching staff.
But – as a matter of journalism – this episode might have revealed some really good things about Crystal City’s program, its families, and its fan base. Yes, the coaches too! Mississippi Magazine is guilty of not recognizing all of the great stuff that’s coming out of it.
Crystal City’s coaching staff appears to be IN SOLID. The passionate support that the current CCHS regime has from its community is one of the touching stories of this season, because you don’t usually see campus boosters so defiant in defending coaches on a losing streak. Heck, this site has spent lots of time defending our coaches from boosters’ attacks as they were on winning streaks, Seckman’s head coach Nick Baer and Festus coach A.J. Ofodile being two that come to mind. There was no backlash to the site’s pronounced critique of NHS’s Scott Gerling over his lineup choices, or Blane Boss over his harsh postgame interviews. Crystal’s support for the direction the Hornets program is going in is greater while under the duress of 2026’s 1-7 record than any supporters’ cry to stop picking on Gerling or Boss when they were doing better than that. Crystal thinks it’s going in an even better direction now than before. TGG should be reporting that honestly. Hornet Nation believes it is going in the best direction possible with its program.
There ought not to be so much agonizing about what Mississippi Magazine’s opinions have been, anyway, since it’s ridiculous to think that we could get Crystal City’s latest regime changed out, even if TGG had that kind of influence and wanted to do so. When a program’s brass gets more support from campus after losing than others get after winning, the grown-ups are doing a great job and pleasing everyone. CCHS is taking the big-picture outlook toward its disappointing outcomes on the field. That’s fair and noble.
The biggest key is that the student-athletes of the Sunken Place are 110% on board with the new direction of 2025-26. They’re joining in such enthusiastic numbers, reportedly, that still more joined the Hornets this midseason. The kids are being taught to have fun and not sweat the ugly scoreboards, which is terrific, and would be the #1 good news, except that Crystal City is always in a numbers crisis without as many bodies as the Hornets would like. You’d rather see an enthusiastic high-numbered roster performing in a 1-9 season at CCHS than 15 lonely seniors at 7-4, getting ready to turn the lights off when they graduate. Gathering enough youngsters to help Crystal City pigskin go on permanently is THE most important goal of any season, and it’s been met in ’26. Suppose it’s just more fun to play for the Hornets these days, whatever the reason, or the record? GREAT. Get ’em suited.
Hearing from the Crystal City brass – while looking for a ticket to a safe, well guarded resort in Reno – has been an educational part of the backlash, also. We won’t use this space to reveal any off-the-record beatings info, but it’s fair to talk about what it all shows.
Crystal City doesn’t just think it has another successful team on the horizon – the Hornets are even a little cocky about it. The Geek was surprised to see CCHS assistant coach Zac Weber’s unusual level of moxie when he appeared in the MSHSAA Group (CCHS hasn’t deleted that, so we’re hoping it does not offend anyone to mention something that the Hornets wanted everyone to see) early this month, to say that the Duchesne Pioneers weren’t as much of a threat as Mississippi Magazine implied they were. We’ve seen coaches take segments of podcasts to talk down any STL Metro football media that makes picks and predictions … because their brand is favored often and they’re afraid that will make opponents mad. St. Pius X was the site’s “confidence outlaw” for a while, since SPX would enthusiastically tout a Friday Night Prediction that had the Lancers winning, or they would share one that had the Lancers underperforming, and declare that they would outplay the pick. Crystal City has taken that a step further, by not even caring if opponents find a coach’s remark favoring the Hornets’ shot to win. That’s a brashness that can help set CCHS’s program apart.
The reason Mississippi Magazine questions the coaching of our losing teams – sometimes, and never without lots and lots of praise to go with it – is because we don’t blame kids for losing games around here. Seriously, you have to point out the flaws in something when a school is in the doldrums, and whatever happens at Mississippi Magazine, that will never, ever be directed at the kids. If some Dirty Dozen quarterback throws 10 interceptions in a game, we’ll question his eye doctor for doling out the wrong contact lenses, making our QB color-blind to jerseys. When such a tactic does more harm than good, it is time to reverse the course. Thankfully, there are more things to talk about than player/coach performances … such as the epic atmosphere at Crystal.
The Gridiron Geek would deeply apologize for everything, except, well, we’re not sure that Bradley’s Farm is a big fan of that either. Crystal City’s leadership has indicated to Mississippi Magazine that it thinks our style of correcting errors – in which we apologize, correct, and move into the next article – makes TGG look bad, and it makes the site look small and unpopular. We certainly are small, and unpopular, and hardly an influence on anyone – Crystal City’s wholesale rejection of Mississippi Magazine, and its unanimous motive of going full steam ahead with its current system and playbook – media be darned! – is evidence of that.
If apologies are now bad political form at CCHS, that has a potential October-of-2016 feel to it. Hopefully, Crystal City’s campaign to win football games will claim as many “electoral” victories as Teflon Don.
Crystal City is in for the long haul, and there won’t be any coaching overhaul, so it was never a neat idea for a site to have opinions about that in the first place. The Geek is happy to apologize or not-apologize or do whatever to start making up for it. If it takes 10 years, fine – this reporter will still be here doing his thing. Even if no one from Crystal City reads the blog again, our coverage idealistically gives JeffCo’s all around fans, and the fans on other campuses, a glimpse at GHS and Herky’s great rival.
Week 9 Jefferson County Power Poll
1 (T) – St. Pius Lancers
1 (T) – Festus Tigers
3 – Seckman Jaguars
4 – Northwest Lions
5 – Fox Warriors
6 – Hillsboro Hawks
7 – DeSoto Dragons
8 – Jefferson Blue Jays
9 – Herculaneum Blackcats
10 – Grandview Eagles
11 – Windsor Owls
12 – Crystal City Hornets
Photo Credits: Gateway Sports Hub, Jaguars Football Booster Club Facebook, St. Pius X Lancers Facebook