Are you ready for some football?

This is the cover photo
It was a marathon, not a sprint (a favorite cliche of coaches everywhere) but we're finally finished with the annual high school football preview section. It was 48 pages this year, down from 56 last year, but we had 14 more half pages to fill because the ad department didn't sell as much as years past. (I don't care what anybody says, high skewl footbawl - properly pronounced using chewing tobacco - is recession-proof). So there were some headaches, but fortunately we've only seen - or heard about - one mistake (knock on wood). There were 26 stories, including 17 team previews, 4 region previews, a column on statewide storylines, and some trend stories specific for this season. (Brad and I did the whole section,. I wrote all of it, and he laid out all of it.)

Fortunately, several teams are down, so we might have one or two teams make a postseason run, but hopefully they won't get in the way of Thanksgiving or play into December.

Now the season begins with Week 0 tomorrow, and of course there's a good chance of rain. Almost every Friday last season was threatened with rain. Looks like same song, different verse this year.

Of course, for all you techni-gurus, you can keep up with all of this stuff on the worldwide online computer box thingy (as some locals call it). You can become a fan on Facebook of GoFridayFootball. Follow updates on Twitter, @GoFriFootball, and go to the whole shooting match, at www.gofridayfootball.com.

In the words of the everyone's favorite football fan, Hank Williams Jr., "Are you ready for some football?"