Ranking the 5A Big Dogs

With all the 5A powerhouses in DFW, which ones are the best?

Last 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 5A polls, the heavyweights of Texas high school football, Cargal reaffirms what many already knew -- the Metroplex sports some of the best teams in the state on an annual basis.

The top dog of them all is No. 1 Allen, the defending Class 5A Division I state champions. The Eagles and head coach Tom Westerberg return not one, but two top-notch quarterbacks in Matt Brown and Tucker Carter, who took over for Brown in the playoffs and led Allen to the title.

Second overall, and No. 1 in Division II is Cedar Hill, who appears to be a big-time favorite to take the D-II title this year led by running back Ben Malena, who's committed to Texas A&M. He rushed for more than 2,500 yards and had more than 30 touchdowns last season. They also have one of the area's top young quarterbacks in Driphus Jackson, who will be a junior when school starts in a couple of weeks. He's a dual-threat type guy, but make no mistake, the Longhorns want to run the ball down their opponents' throats and make them stop it.

The final team I'm highlighting here is an interesting one. Dallas Skyline has nearly double-digit numbers in Division I commits, and by February could very well have 10-plus guys signing with Division I colleges. They're led by one of the nation's top receivers Mike Davis and one of the top linebackers Corey Nelson, a bonafide beast of a playmaker on defense. The Raiders are No. 4 in the overall poll and No. 3 in the Division I poll.

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Adam Boedeker is a sports writer/award-winning blogger for the Denton Record-Chronicle. Practice officially starts for everyone on Monday. Football is here!

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