Over the weekend I received an e-mail I'd been waiting a while for, one from John B. Cargal.
For those who aren't familiar, John, or "Buck" as he loves to go by, is a Texas high school football guru, who is famous for setting lines on high school football games and really setting the world on fire with his dead-on predictions for high school football across the state. He revamped his Web site this year to HuddleUpTexas.com instead of the former BuckInFootball.com.
He released his Top 25 preseason polls for every classification, including Six-Man and private, but for the sake of brevity I'm leaving out Six-Man and 1A because the DFW area is a little big for such schools.
In the Class 3A polls, Cargal has a few local schools in mind, though there aren't too many 3A schools in the area, but a few stand out in the overall poll, Division I and Division II polls.
In fact, instead of crediting DFW 3A schools, you might as well just say District 9-3A schools.
Last year, the district had a state champion (Prosper, 3A Div. I), a state runner-up (Celina, 3A Div. II) and a defending district champion before the aforementioned schools arrived after realignment (Argyle).
Now, all three are represented in the statewide polls.
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Celina checks in at No. 4 in the overall poll after finishing 12-4 last season and falling to Carthage 49-37 in a shootout in the state championship. They're No. 3 in the Division II poll and return two dynamic players -- one on each side of the ball in quarterback Cody Worrell and linebacker Caleb Lavey. The Bobcats should be a favorite to win their ninth state championship in school history, which would break the state record held by, um, Celina.
Prosper is No. 3 in the Division I poll after winning the Division I title last year over Waco LaVega. The Eagles lost their entire offensive line and QB Hunter Nix to graduation, but return a lot on defense, led by linebacker Drew Miller.
Argyle checks in at No. 18 in the Division II poll after a bit of a rebuilding year last season on the offensive side of the ball, which previously had been one of the area's most explosive units. They broke in sophomore quarterback Chad Hedlund last year, and now he'll be a junior and poses a dual threat with good running skills to go with his arm. They also lost one of the best 3A WRs I'd ever seen in Brady Brown (Vanderbilt) but return a unit of WRs who have experience. Defense will be Argyle's strength early on, led by TCU-commit David Johnson anchoring the defensive line.
Adam Boedeker is a sports writer/award-winning blogger for the Denton Record-Chronicle. He's hurting.
