It will soon be time for the Arkansas All-State Teams to be named for the 2017 season. I just wish it was based on just the players' performance on the field rather than the way it is always done in the Natural State.
Missouri, the state i which I grew up, has an excellent program in place to name their all-state teams in their respective classifications. There are 90 athletes represented in each classification's list of their state's best, broken down in the following ways:
First team-- A quarterback, three running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, five offensive lineman, three defensive linemen, two defensive ends, four linebackers, four defensive backs, two kickers, one punter, and one kick returner for a total of 30 players.
Second team and third team players have the same numbers which total up altogether to 90.
It doesn't matter what school you go to or what conference your school is assigned to. You may be an all-state player on a miserable team but that won't keep you for garnering deserved honors. If you are an outstanding player on a team of other outstanding players, you won't be penalized for that either.
My old high school (Monett Class of '71) won the the Class 3 State Championship last season. They had their quarterback, tailback, tight end, two linemen (one offense and one defense), lineback, and kicker on the first team all-state team. They also had another offensive lineman and a defensive back on the second team all-state. A total of nine Monett players received all-state honors in the year they won a state title.
What does Arkansas do? They allow eight players from each of the six districts to be named All-State. It is only fair, they surmise, to distribute the all-state status player honors evenly across the state. Political correctness at its worst.
What happens is that players from weak districts will take all-state slots away from players in talent rich districts. With MaxPreps keeping pretty good track of player stats from across the state, you can see that players with far worse statistics are being honored ahead of players with actually far better playing stats.
In the area of running backs, nearly all the talent resides in the 1-4A, 7-4A, and 8-4A districts. As a matter of fact, eight of the Top Ten running backs in total yards were from those districts. Eight of the Top Ten scorers are from those three districts as well.
Six of the Top Ten passers and six of the Top Ten receivers are from these same districts. Seven of the Top Ten kickers are from those districts along with six of the Top Ten tacklers.
Last season, when the Blackhawks were finalists in the state football playoffs, only a pair of players were named to the official All-State team as determined by the Arkansas Activities Association. Had Pea Ridge played in Missouri, I believe they would have gotten at least seven players named and maybe up to 10.
When conferences decide on their All-State selections, they will go with their best players, usually their offensive ones. It is as tough as nails to be named All-State if you just play on the defensive side, and getting on an all-state list if you are a kicker is virtually impossible.
I have hoped for years that somehow things could be reformed in our state relative to prep athletics. Perhaps a committee could be formed to study what adjoining states do relative to picking all state teams. They could also look into how other states conduct their football playoffs as Arkansas' method leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe some kind of expert sports management team could review the whole AAA handbook and make suggestions on how to improve how the AAA accomplishes what their mission goals are.
There was talk last year of the state legislature getting involved in the decision making process down at the AAA offices and I sure hope that never comes to be. The best way to fix things is through the way things change ordinarily at the AAA -- through voting members. The biggest handicap to meaningful change is inertia. Folks often like to do things they way they did before or have always done, regardless if it is really the best thing to do.
Back in the 1960s I think it was, a work crew put up the Pea Ridge School sign downtown on the corner. They set it in place backwards. It was the shape of the state of Arkansas, but the back side of the sign was the side facing out. It was welded in place and for whatever reason, the school folks at the time decided to let that stay that way.
When I came to Pea Ridge in the late 1990s, I was behind the sign and noticed that it was in the shape of Arkansas though it was facing backwards. I asked the principal of my school at the time about it and I was told "Oh -- that's the way it has always been."
Fifteen years later, Dr. Roland Smith came on to serve one year as an interim superintendent. He noticed early on that the sign was backwards, and he inquired as to why. After being told by someone the same thing I was, he immediately moved to have the sign taken down and put up the right way. Today it sits on the corner of downtown Pea Ridge the way it should have been all along.
My point of this anecdote is that there are usually better ways to do about anything. Doing the right thing should always be at the top of the list rather than perpetuating what some folks may regard as tradition.
The best team won -- Rats
Warren was dethroned as the Arkansas 4A football champions as they lost 28-27 to Arkadelphia Saturday in War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
After barely getting by Arkadelphia last year in the first round, and knowing that they would return all their playmakers, I figured they would be a very strong candidate to make a run at a championship this season. I would rate them an extremely strong candidate to repeat in 2018.
I was hoping, however, for a Warren victory.
Warren has a class football program and is a class school. They have been ranked No. 1 just about every year at some point the past four years, playing in three championship games. The Lumberjacks have produced a lot of college players and their coach, Bo Hembree, is highly regarded by a lot of people
Arkadelphia, if the behavior of the their staff and players of the game they played here is any indication, has very little of the commodity sports writers and coaches call "class."
Class is evident if the players of a team refrain from dirty play, avoid actions that reflect badly on their team or school, and display good sportsmanship at all times. The same holds true of the coaching staff should they keep their language in check and keep a lid on their anger.
I have never seen a team flagged five times for unsportsmanlike conduct until Arkadelphia earned that distinction here two weeks ago. They could have been flagged a lot more times than five if the referees had been a little more observant. Even worse than that, the Arkadelphia coaches in the press box were kicking the walls and shouting expletives when things didn't go their way on the playing field.
If state titles were decided by good sportsmanship and exemplary conduct by the staff and players, Pea Ridge would be a shoo in. Head coach Stephen Neal has immensely helped along what former coach Tony Travis started. Pea Ridge athletes are well trained, well conditioned, very sportsmanlike, and consummate team players. If I was a parent of a player, I would be so thankful to having my child experience the joy of playing football in a program like the one here as opposed to playing in one that may be winning championships but missing the bigger goal of lifes lessons.
The past four years has seen Pea Ridge win a lot of football games (46-8) and while that has been loads of fun, it has been even more fun to watch the athletes turning into young men well equipped to enter life after high school.
As my old coach used to tell us, it isn't so much what you win that counts, it is what you become.
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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. The opinions expressed are those of the author. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Sports on 12/13/2017