PEA RIDGE — The upcoming homecoming game with the Ozark Hillbillies is the marquee game of the week this week according to Hooten’s Arkansas Football, a polling and sports information website.
Though teams from the 4A-1 District tend to poll lower in the Hootens’ weekly poll, the Ozark/Pea Ridge is the game with the highest importance this week. The Hillbillies have already lost to Prairie Grove and a second loss would pretty much eliminate them from having a chance to defend their 2011 conference championship. On the other hand, the ’Hawks have three tough teams in a row on their schedule so starting out with a win would greatly improve their chances to earn a high seed, perhaps even the top one.
Whoever wins the top seed from the 4A-1 will earn the right to play the first three games of the playoffs at home, if they can keep winning that is. That is a perk that is definitely worth fighting for.
Hooten’s has installed Ozark as an 8-point favorite over the ’Hawks.
In other games last week, Prairie Grove thoroughly whipped Lincoln, winning by a 49-2 margin. Lincoln lost their first game of the year last week to Pea Ridge.
Farmington beat Berryville 40-0 last week with Ozark cruising past Gravette 35-7 in a couple of non-competitive battles.
This week, Prairie Grove will retain their piece of first place as they host Berryville this Friday.
Farmington hosts Gravette in what might be a very interesting contest. Another loss by Gravette and their playoff hopes look shaky. They are better than advertised and could pull it off. In the league’s other tilt, Lincoln goes to Gentry in a must win for both teams. The loser will have no real chance to make the playoffs.
MaxPreps have four 4A-1 teams in top 11
Prairie Grove retained their hold on the Freeman/ CBS-MaxPreps 4A Football poll for this week after their dismantling of Lincoln last week. For the second week in a row, the Tigers have been determined to be the best team in the Arkansas 4A classification.
Ozark was eighth last week in the poll with Pea Ridge right behind in No.
- Ozarks’ crushing of Gravette brought them up a couple of spots to No. 7 while Pea Ridge dropped a spot to No. 10. Farmington kept the same spot at No. 11.
Freeman/CBS-MaxPreps Arkansas 4A poll
Prairie Grove 5-0
Malvern 6-0
Stuttgart 6-0
Pottsville 6-0
Arkadelphia 5-1
Ozark 5-1
Dollarway 6-0
Nashville 4-2
Highland
Pea Ridge Other 4A-1 teams
Farmington 5-1
Lincoln 4-2
Gravette 2-4
Gentry 1-5
Berryville 2-4 4A-1 league standings
Pea Ridge 3-0
Prairie Grove 3-0
- Ozark 2-1
Farmington 2-1
- Gravette 1-2
Lincoln 1-2
- Gentry 0-3
Berryville 0-3 Media bias?
I was reading the statewide newspaper this past Sunday and saw a bit about collegiate cross country.
The abbreviated story played up the fact that Arkansas Tech took second place in their own invitational cross country event.
Going further the paper went on to report that Tech even had the sixth best runner overall to help lead the Suns to their glorious (my word) runner-up finish.
It wasn’t untill the end of the piece that readers found out that Harding University, another Arkansas college, had won the meet. In fact, all five of Harding’s scorers beat every other runner from every other team that was there, finishing first, second, third, fourth and fifth individually. Somehow, at least in the eyes of the writer, Arkansas Tech’s results were more newsworthy, even though they were beaten by another team as badly as a team can be beaten.
I have to admit that I am a graduate of Harding and this isn’t the first time that Ihave seen this kind of news coverage from state newspapers when dealing with Harding. Of course, I have to ask why.
Baseball bias?
Is it just me, or did major league baseball put a new rule into effect this year because of what my favorite baseball team did last year.
I am a St. Louis Cardinal fan, and have been so since the early 1960s. I can remember the Cards winning the ’64 series and all those since.
Last year, the Cards were just kind of rocking along kind of out of it, on the verge of elimination late in the season. All of a sudden, they got hot and although they trailed the Atlanta Braves by 8 1/2 games with not many more than that left, the caught, then passed the Braves on the last day of the season.
In the playoffs, they drew heavily, heavily favored Philadelphia and wouldn’t you know it, they blew right by the Phillies. They blew the rest of the teams left and claimed the World Series Championship although they didn’t even qualify for the playoffs until the last few hours of a month’s long season.
A lot of baseball officials were not happy who ended up with all the hardware as they had been plugging other teams as their teams of destiny.
Fast forward to this year and in 2012 there will two wild card teams taken with the two teams having a one game playoff for the final wild card spot. Had this been in place last year, perhaps Atlanta would have won thatone game and gone on to serve as a big market playoff team.
As luck or fate would have it, under the old rules, Atlanta would have started playing Washington in the playoffs this year. With the tweak, the Braves had to beat, you guessed it, St.
Louis to get that last wild card spot. St. Louis won, the hometown Atlanta fans went nuts, throwing trash and debris on the field for quite a long time to cause a game delay over the last couple of innings.
So in both cases, St. Louiscame away with the berth although it did make them use up their No. 1 starter before the regular playoffs began.
Washington then won the first game of the series in a best of five arrangement.
More about that later.
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Editor’s note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Sports, Pages 8 on 10/10/2012