Jason’s Blog: Who’s No. 1?

Posted by: Jason Iacovino

High school sports polls can be a lot of fun. They provide fodder for the media, fans, and yes, even coaches, to debate during the course of the regular season before the playoffs come along to rightly determine who really is the best.

In football, polls and rankings have always had a special place.  Do not believe a coach if they tell you that they don't pay attention to rankings or it doesn't matter to them where they are ranked.  Deep down, this simply isn't true.  When your team is highly ranked, you feel a sense of pride.  When your team is not ranked as high as you think it should be, it provides bulletin board material.

This week the Associated Press released its first Minnesota high school football poll of the season and, as usual, it has people talking.  The thing to remember about the AP poll for high school is very few reporters vote and the vast majority of teams they vote for are outside their coverage area.  They don't see them--they don't know them.

There's only so much you can learn from paper.

For instance, on paper, Owatonna would appear to be a dominant force in Class 5A as they steamrolled to a State championship in 2013.  The Huskies (1-0) find themselves at No. 1 in the Class 5A poll this week, even as they narrowly escaped Winona with a 14-6 win in week one.

We all know Owatonna is a much different team this year with different personnel and they will likely have to grind out victories against teams they overwhelmed in recent years.  The guess here is the Huskies will take care of business against Rochester Century tomorrow and beat Faribault in its home opener on Sep. 12, but these will be tough games to be sure.

Assuming they do, they will likely remain No. 1 in the poll....then comes the fun part.  Owatonna will face No. 4 Mankato West at home on Sep. 19, they will face No. 15 Rochester John Marshall in week six, and No. 17 Northfield in week eight.  In other words, time will tell whether or not the Huskies are worthy of being number one.  I'm sure a lot of coaches and fans are snickering at the thought of Owatonna being ranked No. 1, but I also think coach Jeff Williams embraces such a designation.  If I know coach Williams, he will tell his squad they need to play with the confidence of being the best team in their Class and the results will prove the poll correct.

On the other side of the spectrum is Blooming Prairie.  The Awesome Blossoms (1-0) are ranked No. 13 in the Class A poll, even though the early indication is coach Chad Gimbel's team is as good as it has ever been.  The Blossoms stormed the Mankato Loyola Crusaders early, taking a 41-0 lead into halftime before winning a lightning-shortened 48-13 game.  This performance was noteworthy because the Crusaders were coming off a dominating win of their own over a very good Bethlehem Academy squad in zero week.

This performance was not enough for the Awesome Blossoms to even crack the top ten in the poll (I personally think they should be No. 1 or No. 2).  You can't really argue with perennial powers Dawson-Boyd and Mahnomen being Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, but the pollsters have Lester Prairie--a conference opponent who lost to BP in 2013 and has fairly narrow wins over St. Clair and Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop--ranked No. 4, a full 9 teams ahead of BP.

Again, I'm only going off of paper when I refer to Lester Prairie, but I have a hard time believing they are nine spots better than the Blossoms, just as I have a hard time believing there are 12 Class A teams that are better than BP.

Does this matter? Not really.  The beauty is the Blossoms will get to prove where they belong in a ranking on the field....but we have time to kill during the week and as I said, people pay attention to these polls and BP will have extra motivation in the coming weeks.

Also noteworthy in Class A is Rushford-Peterson being ranked No. 6.  The Trojans are in BP's section and have been down for several years now, but they are 2-0 this season including an impressive 29-12 win over defending Class AA champion Chatfield.  I'm sure that score got coach Gimbel's attention and it is an example of what will be good about district scheduling, as R-P will be in BP's pod beginning next season.

Finally, the likes of New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva, Medford, and Triton all find themselves out of the Class AA rankings, which includes 19 teams.  The Panthers are 1-0 after an impressive 32-12 win over Class 3A Sibley East, while Medford and Triton both lost in week one to Class 4A teams.  My suspicion is a couple of these teams are going to find themselves in the rankings before long.  Triton lost its opening week game to a bigger school in 2013 by a wide margin, and then reeled off 8-straight wins.  They return a fair amount of players from that team.

NRHEG has experience at quarterback with Trevor Tracy looking a whole lot better here in 2014.  I suspect the Panthers will at least match their 5-3 regular season record of a year ago, and I could easily see them going 6-2 or even 7-1.  They will get to face Medford and Blooming Prairie at home, as well as No. 9 Maple River, who they lost to in overtime on the road last year.  The Eagles beat a weak LeSueur-Henderson team 35-20 last Saturday.

So why is Maple River ranked but not NRHEG?  Who knows.  The good news is the two teams can iron that out on Sep. 19 in New Richland.

Triton can stake their claim to the top ten in Class AA with a win over No. 7 Pine Island on Friday.  The Cobras beat the Panthers last season, but Pine Island is off to a great start in 2014 with a lobsided win over LaCrescent.

The lesson in all of this is polls are fun to talk about and debate and it's interesting to see if the rankings early in the year hold up for these teams.  In the case of Owatonna, the Huskies are sure hoping they do.  In the case of the rest of our area teams, well, that's why you play the games.

Jason Iacovino can be heard Tuesdays and Fridays on KRFO-AM 1390 at 3:50 p.m.  Leave a comment below and follow him on Twitter @JasonIacovino.