Coach Preston

Leandre Stutzman from Franklin-Simpson - Morehead State Dalton Hunter - Lyndsey Wilson College That is 29 college signings in the last 7 seasons. Not bad for a school of 850 kids. Good kids that work hard. We have been blessed.

Congratulations Coach McPeek.

Good luck to Coach Grizzle and my friends at Hazard.

I wouldn't be surprised at any name on that list. It is a great program with great tradition, tremendous facilities, evidently a fantastic feeder system as well as some tremendous coaches still on staff. Competing against Brandon's teams is very much like facing Chuck's teams. I have much respect for the teams he places on the field. We had five losses from 2016 to 2018 with 3 State championship appearances. Three of the 5 losses were to South Warren. Talented but coached extremely well on both sides of the ball. Good luck with the search.

He should be on a roster next fall if he wants to play. An exceptional football player for sure. Good luck in the future young man.

If you are looking at it from a pure nostalgia point of view i can understand that. But when you are coaching and trying to get your team in the best scenario a two hour ride for a district game is not good nor is a 3 hour bus ride for the 3rd or 4th round. It is what it is (I get that). I just don't agree with the idea of 'I would just be happy to be going'. We want to go and be in position to win. Doesn't always happen. Not trying to argue your point just wanting to explain mine. I played ball for a long time and have coached for a long time and I don't recall or have I heard many if any good stories about riding through the middle of the night for 3 hours or longer as being anything exhilarating, exciting or fun. Again, not a knock on your perspective just explaining it from this old average coaches point of view.

These travel distances were one of the reasons we were told that the playoff format was changed. So we could all save money and not travel as far.:idunno: And to create excitement for round 3 and 4. I wonder how excited the fans are to make those 2 1/2 to 3 hour drives.

Congratulations to Coach Rains and his team!

Last Friday night I had a player down and injured on the sideline. To make a long story short. I was 'cussed' at by at least two middle aged women (not Franklin-Simpson fans) because I asked them to please step back and allow our paid PT to work on our kid. One even said she was a nurse of 20 years then went on to start yelling at us cursing etc...all the while there were at least 6 little girls and boys (elementary age) sitting with them near the fence. As i said to them they should be ashamed of the example they were providing for such young kids. So they responded with more of the same. And why...because they wanted to direct me on what to do with a student-athlete. I really think they meant well at first but when I asked for room for our PT they just went off. By the way our guy was fine and played the rest of the game and had a good night. I'm only sharing this story to point out that people are often ready to pounce on coaches at the drop of a hat. Oh well. I slept good. My player, his parents and I are close and I have know this kid since 5th grade.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. I like our team and kids. We will continue to do our best and improve weekly. It's nice to be in the conversation. Thanks for discussing our team.

I really do think linebacker Connor Rogers (made the Blue-Grey All-American Team) and Chase Gooch (1st team All-State in 2018) as well as Leandre Stutzman are special players (FCS offers). We have some other good ones as well. No apologies needed. Good read and always interesting. Thanks for taking the time.

Mike Fox - Oldham County seems to have turned that school around. Mark Peach - Anderson County - has made Anderson a force to be reckoned with again. Johny Poynter - Bath County - from out of obscurity to a solid respectable winning program under Johny Ray Graham - Harrison County - immediate turnaround. Dale Estes - Campbellsville - has made them steady. Todd Adler - Logan County - I think he is getting a lot of support. Jeff Griffiths - Warren East has made them better pretty quick. Brad Hood - Allen County - dedicated and his teams are always well prepared. Mark Dixon - Hazard - good group of assistants as well. They are always in the discussion in their class. Johny Hines - Pulaski County - much respect. Jerry Lucas - Collins - top notch coach/person. Good thread to keep going Chief!

Brandon Smith - South Warren. Has a very good group of coaches helping him as well. Chris Wolfe - Male High School Mark Brown - E'town Josh Jaggers - Larue County I can't really say how they are supported in each case. But all these are doing an outstanding job.

Mine is/was the 1991 4A State Championship game. I was fortunate enough to be sitting next to Dennis Lampley (Trinity Head Coach) while watching Clark County defeat (I believe it was) St. X. If memory serves me correctly Clark County had defeated Trinity the weak before. I was still in college. I think I was with Ray Graham and he knew Lampley and we ended up sitting with him throughout the game. He could call almost every play Clark County was going to run before the ball was snapped. Needless to say that had a major impact on me as a young guy wanting to be a high school football coach. It was really impressive to see his energy for the game from a coaching perspective. He was really excited to see that game and I now understand how he was playing that game out in his head as he commented on each play. Oh and he also knew everything X was going to do as well.

Coaches I first want to acknowledge that I have read quotes from our commissioner saying there would be a consideration of geography in playoff round 4. I have not yet heard the plan and maybe I missed it being explained. Also, I want to thank Chuck Smith, David Buchanan, Craig Foley and Kevin Wallace for responding to my questions over the last few days in regards to playoff structure. I also appreciate Johny Poynter and Josh Jaggers thoughts they have shared with me about the playoff structure. I, like most of you, am against playing our district opponents in the first 2 rounds. We as coaches should not have to accept a little change to repair what passed last week. Round 4 issues must be addressed in the upcoming meeting with the commissioner this week in my opinion. This scenario/opinion I am sending you is my humble opinion based on 29 years of coaching with 27 at the high school level. Topic: Seeding round 4 My biggest concern with any plan using seeding is not with seeding but with seeding that will have travel from the West side of the state to East or just the opposite prior to the championship game. I posted this last year and I'll stick by my issue this year. Scenario: A team out West (and FS is not real far West by the way) is seed 3 or 4 in the semi-finals and has to travel to say Corbin or Johnson Central. So to make that 5 hour trip (or longer) a school has to decide to travel on Thanksgiving Day and find hotel rooms (and the money to pay for those rooms, meals) and kids are now on the road instead of with Family on Thanksgiving day. Then after arriving the school (coach) has to find something for the team to do to occupy their time on Friday (you gotta check out of those hotel rooms fairly early) until a couple of hours before the game (so your team is completely out of sorts compared to their normal routine) so the kids won't be resting mentally etc. So you go to play the game against a team that is well rested that was at home for Thanksgiving with family, friends and spent Friday watching film, resting, walking through, getting motivated by staff and whatever. Or we could choose to put our team on the bus to travel 5 hours or longer on game day. Again many of the same issues will still exist. Do you travel 5 hours or longer and arrive 2 hours before the game? The kids are spent from that bus ride. Emotionally they will struggle. There is no doubt about it. And don't forget they have been sitting crumpled up on that bus for all those hours. And I assume the two teams are fairly even or close enough to make a decent game. Please don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of thinking "I would just be glad to have my team in the semi-finals". Once you are there you want to win!! But with all this to overcome the traveling team is put at a huge disadvantage and therefore most likely ends their season that night. Now let's say this team somehow overcomes this scenario and wins the game on the road. So now I have to have my kids on a 5 hour (or longer) bus ride home that night (and hopefully there will not be lightning delays like we had in the semi-finals this past season) (safety concerns etc for the long day for bus drivers etc.) or we come up with money for hotel rooms and meals for a second night. So let's say we get back home on Saturday afternoon or we drive half the night. This team now has to prepare (coaches and players) for the State Championship game. We (they) are mentally and physically drained at this point going into Sunday preparation and Monday practice. So we now get ready to go to Lexington for the championship. Now our school has to find more money for more team meals, rooms, busses, etc to make a 3 or 4 hour trip ( or longer for a team way out West like Mayfield). All of this and let's say we are going to Lexington to play a team 2 hours or less from Lexington (or maybe they are in Lexington) that was very likely playing at home themselves on Thanksgiving weekend with all those advantages the home team I just described will have due to the cross bracket seeding of the semi-finals of East Vs West. I am sure their are several other scenarios that could be worse than what I describe here or better. But for sure we have always played on our side of the state to represent that side of the state in the finals and to somewhat help with not having these scenarios like the one I have described. One of the questions I have discussed with football advisory committee members is are we doing what is good for football in Kentucky? I do believe these coaches are giving good advice to the KHSAA. I do think seeding of some sort is Ok. But I don't think seeding the East vs. West in the semi-finals creates a fair scenario for the traveling schools most of the time. One thing that comes to my thoughts on this is: Ok your are the lower seed so you travel and deal with the problems of traveling several hours on Thanksgiving day or the day after because you earned a lower seed. But in my opinion being a 3 or 4 seed should not put the kind of roadblocks in front of your team that are this extreme. If nothing else a Neutral site should be set up like we do for the finals. Or we seed the West side of the state all the way to the semi-finals to play each other and the winner goes on to the championship and do the same for the East side of the state. It is unfortunate that sometimes some of the top teams are in the same district or region or side of the state. But my opinion is that the KHSAA is going to far to try to aid the "top 2" teams to make it to the finals to avoid those 2 teams playing early in the playoffs (round 3 or round 4). And finally I will add that I am very discouraged that we are going to decide who the best 2 teams are based on a computer program rankings. It just feels like we are taking the 'high school' out of high school football to some extent in order to CREATE certain match ups in the finals. If we (Franklin-Simpson) would have believed rankings etc the last 2 seasons we would have just stayed home and not bothered playing the state championship game because we were already beaten by Johnson Central before we got there. And I will add this - If we had went through the scenario I described above I don't know if we could have overcome all the travel time going to say Ashland or JC in the semi-finals and still had enough left to win in the finals. Guys I hope in the meeting that takes place this week that the KHSAA and the board of control consider the round 4 seeding problems and come up with a fair plan. Thanks for reading and good luck with your off-season work.

My biggest concern with any plan with seeding is not with seeding but with seeding that will have travel from West side of the state to East or just the opposite prior to the championship game. I posted this last year and I'll stick by my issue this year. Scenario: A team out West (and FS is not real far West by the way) is seed 3 or 4 in the semi-finals and has to travel to say Corbin or Johnson Central. So to make that 5 hour trip (or longer) a school has to decide to travel on Thanksgiving Day and find hotel rooms (and the money to pay for those rooms, meals) and kids are now on the road instead of with Family on Thanksgiving day. Then after arriving the school (coach) has to find something for the team to do to occupy their time on Friday (you gotta check out of those hotel rooms fairly early) until a couple of hours before the game (so your team is completely out of sorts compared to their normal routine) so the kids won't be resting mentally etc. So you go to play the game against a team that is well rested that was at home for Thanksgiving with family, friends and spent Friday watching film, resting, walking through, getting motivated by staff and whatever. Or we could choose to put our team on the bus to travel 5 hours or longer on game day. Again many of the same issues will still exist. Do you travel 5 hours or longer and arrive 2 hours before the game? The kids are spent from that bus ride. Emotionally they will struggle. There is no doubt about it. And don't forget they have been sitting crumpled up on that bus for all those hours. And I assume the two teams are fairly even or close enough to make a decent game. Please don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of thinking "I would just be glad to have my team in the semi-finals". Once you are there you want to win!! But with all this to overcome the traveling team is put at a huge disadvantage and therefore most likely ends their season that night. Now let's say this team somehow overcomes this scenario and wins the game on the road. So now I have to have my kids on a 5 hour (or longer) bus ride home that night (safety concerns etc for the long day for bus drivers etc.) or we come up with money for hotel rooms and meals for a second night. So let's say we get back home on Saturday afternoon or we drive half the night. This team now has to prepare (coaches and players) for the State Championship game. We (they) are mentally and physically drained at this point going into Sunday preparation and Monday practice. So we now get ready to go to Lexington for the championship. Now our school has to find more money for more team meals, rooms, busses, etc to make a 3 or 4 hour trip or longer (for a team way out West like Mayfield). All of this and let's say we are going to Lexington to play a team 2 hours or less from Lexington (or maybe they are in Lexington) that was very likely playing at home themselves on Thanksgiving weekend with all those advantages the home team I just described will have due to the cross bracket seeding of the semi-finals of East Vs West. So I am sure their are several other scenarios that could be worse than what I describe here or better. But for sure we have always played on our side of the state to represent that side of the state in the finals and to somewhat help with not having these scenarios like the one I have described. One of the questions I have discussed with football advisory committee members is are we doing what is good for football in Kentucky? I do believe these coaches are giving good advice to the KHSAA. I do think seeding of some sort is Ok. But I don't think seeding the East vs. West in the semi-finals creates a fair scenario for the traveling schools most of the time. One thing that comes to my thoughts on this is: Ok your are the lower seed so you travel and deal with the problems of traveling several hours on Thanksgiving day or the day after because you earned a lower seed. But in my opinion being a 3 or 4 seed should not put the kind of roadblocks in front of your team that are this extreme. If nothing else a Neutral site should be set up like we do for the finals. Or we seed the West side of the state all the way to the semi-finals to play each other and the winner goes on to the championship. It is unfortunate that sometimes some of the top teams are in the same district or region or side of the state. But my opinion is that the KHSAA is going to far to try to aid the "top 2" teams to make it to the finals to avoid those 2 teams playing early in the playoffs (round 3 or round 4). And finally I will add that I am very discouraged that we are going to decide who the best 2 teams are based on a computer program rankings. It just feels like we are taking the 'high school' out of high school football to some extent in order to CREATE certain match ups in the finals. If we (Franklin-Simpson) would have believed rankings etc the last 2 seasons we would have just stayed home and not bothered playing the state championship game because we were already beaten by Johnson Central before we got there. And I will add this - If we had went through the scenario I described above I don't know if we could have overcome all the travel time going to say Ashland or JC in the semi-finals and still had enough left to win in the finals. Guys I hope in the meeting that takes place this week that the KHSAA and the board of control consider the round 4 seeding problems and come up with a better plan.

This I can live with. I still don't like it but that is my opinion. But this would at least help with some travel etc.

Here we go again. Once more Kentucky high school football as an experiment to satisfy a few people that want a change to benefit themselves. There is a lot more to this story than most people know. Has anyone been surveyed about this? Just curious. In district play in the first round or two rounds is nuts. Football is not basketball. We don't need a district tournament. We play our district during the regular season.

Good luck Coach David Jones. I hope to see my old high school with continued success of the past and even more in the future. Go Colonels!

Warren East will be a strong football team and should be way up in the rankings imo.

Hopkinsville should be highly ranked!

I still have my playbook from good ol' Bourbon County High School. Our head coach was Wilson Sears back from the year 1983 I believe. 50 Defense and offense was the Split Back Veer. I used to study that thing and try to understand what the terminology meant etc as a freshman. Sears was a very good teacher of his system. I will try to post the cover with a photo. Brings back memories. Thanks for sharing this Chief!

Thanks!! Collins is always in the picture. I would like to add that your son was tremendous at QB and one of the best I have faced. Hope you guys have a good spring and summer.

I am really excited about the addition of some new players coming out that haven't played the last couple of seasons since coming up from middle school and our team as a whole. As I stated last year about this time our non-district schedule is pretty tough. Of our non district opponents three were in the semifinals and one in the regional championship last season. We just hope to improve as we go. It will be fun to see the development of some good young guys getting their first start and things like that. Don't forget about Warren East this season. They have a lot back off a pretty good team. There is a ton of talent in District 1. ACS has some tremendous athletes at WR returning. Coach Hood, Coach Griffith and Coach Taylor all do a tremendous job with their teams. I was extremely impressed with the improvement of Hopkinsville throughout last season. Coach Clayton is a class act. Collins was spectacular in the semi finals and Coach Jerry Lucas is a tremendous coach and person. All the coaches in our region are fantastic and do a real good job with their kids imo. I'm just really proud to be a part of football in Southern Kentucky. It is a 'hotbed' of talented players and coaches imo.