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Wow, where to start. Roughly twenty years ago I was asked by Rivals to get with some other posters on their forum to compile a Top 100 for that site after Dallas Jackson was removed from their staff. That started my interest in compiling the poll for discussion and debate among others with similar interests in the national aspect of the game. Dallas Jackson soon established his own site and requested that I post exclusively on his site, which I did. In the following years, I have added other sites, including this one, to my "customer" base. My methodology is simple. I read, watch, and analyze this game on a daily basis from May to January. I am not smart enough to develop nor do I believe in algorithms. I am constantly viewing MaxPreps, rivals and other forums to gather all the information I can on teams throughout the country. I attend as many games as possible throughout the season and watch games both on TV and streaming services. For instance, next weekend I am going to Massillon, Ohio to watch four of the Cleveland area's best teams play four state champions, including Center Grove from Indiana. This does not only give me a chance to gauge those teams, but also a gauge on each state's strength. The following weekend, I will not only attend a game (most likely Warren Central at Carroll) but also watch the national games being broadcast on ESPN as part of their kickoff weekend. With all that of background, plus empirical data from prior seasons, I compile team rankings for every state, yes that includes states like Wyoming, Rhode Island, and other non-power states. From there I compile a Top 100 by looking at game results, player evaluations and the state's strength to compile the list. Hope this helps.

As much as I'd like to have lunch at Carriage Inn, I'd assume I'll be feeling pretty ill if we lose.

(vacuuming 3 bedroom ranch now)

He won't want to lose to Mater Dei....LOL...I KID I KID!

The main reason they don't do it is there are enough coaches who want the chance to get an easy draw in the first round if they have a team that struggled. If they seed the top 4 in a sectional, they are assured of going on the road in the first round to a much better team. The current system the 2-7 team has a chance to draw the 1-8 team in the first round and get a tournament win. As long as enough coaches are of that mindsight, this will never be changed. A few internet posters and a small sampling of anonymous coaches is not a majority. The fans seem to care a lot more about this than coaches or players.

Chances are, the coaches and players who go 8-1 are probably putting in more time, especially in the off-season, than the team that went 2-7. You normally get out of life what you put into it. I think it's offending to to pair the two best teams on one side and the two worst teams on the other. In my opinion, it's a form of enabling...........no one gets better from that.

Do away with the 75 player limit in playoffs.

Are fans allowed to watch? 😀

Getting weird looks on zoom calls with my new necklace. I don’t get it. 🤷‍♂️

I'll buy you lunch at Carriage Inn if Mt. Vernon wins LOL.

Yes, also heard he won't be around or able to play until week 3 and that's if he honors certain requirements which are unknown but probably easily guessed. Sounds like not a guarantee.

Thanks!

I'm glad that Emil Ekiyor is getting a chance with the Colts. I don't quite understand how a player that started 40 games for Alabama isn't good enough to at least be a late round draft choice? Of course, I'm prejudiced and hope for the best for the Big Guy!

Just throwing this out there for any family of this young man who might be reading here. There is a very nice three bedroom ranch waiting for you in Fort Branch.

This was discussed ad nauseum in the past. He's being punished for the "white running back stereotype". Or should I say "WAS punished" as he has now proven he belongs.

LOL, they are the smart kid who does everyone else in the class' homework but can't dribble a basketball.

Any HS program where the head coach doesn't have the power to dismiss a player from his team is bound to be poorly run. And any coach worth his salt would never accept such a job. I don't believe for a minute that Brunson can't dismiss him. But I'm not the least bit surprised that he didn't.

Paraphrasing Daniel Tosh: Are you talking about Gosh…the father of Jesus Cripes?

Back to ND. 9-3 has to be the the bottom for this team right? If they go 8-4 against the schedule with the players they have something is fundamentally wrong or the injury bug hit hard. I want Coach Freeman to succed, he is probably the most likeable coach in my eyes since Lou Holtz. I honestly think we will beat 1 or the 3 big teams on the schedule, if things go amazing there is a shot at winning all 3. I really believe Louisville is a trap game as well as NC State. The State game is before Ohio State and Louisville was a nightmare for Hartman last year, and you know Coach Brohm will have that hometeam jacked up to play the Irish.

Yeah I’m hoping. Wish I had some insight for you. All my connections with East dried up a few years ago. Living in Jennings County, I know a little more about the team here than at East. Then I have a brother-in-law who is an assistant at Fishers. So I actually hear more about them than I do East or Jennings County.

At Triton, we used an older program that can only be used on a Windows XP computer. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but it is still pretty widely used by a lot of the old time staticians. I wanted to use Statman last year, but since I had someone with things set up, it made sense to use that program. I am officially going to use Statman this year. Seems pretty user friendly, but it takes a lot to get things setup.

Agree with most of what you say, not this. Football was meant to be played outside in the elements on grass fields. Now, over time, we have pretty much done away with grass fields due to having crappy fields later in the season and having those fields being used for multiple sports. State title games, fine, go play indoors at Lucas Oil, not before that

Improved? Crazy to think just yesterday I had a paid asst football coach at Reitz tell me there’s no way the suspended player should be on or near the team ever again. I guess the HC and asst coach may not be on the same page. Maybe this is just an isolated incident under Brunson .

You’ve been a member for 4-1/2 years. So, that is highly unlikely. 🤣

Lucas Oil would be a good site. Too many important games being decided by inclimate weather.

IHSAA: Directly from the coaches....................seed the tournament, make the regular season relevant. The team that went 8-1 deserves to play another week more so than the team that went 2-7. The kids might even learn something worthwhile from this lesson. Imagine this................"it's ok honey, D's and F's are just fine. Purdue and Indiana put all names in a hat and everyone get's an equal chance." We look kind of stupid on a national scale by drawing teams out of a hat. New start time of 7:30 pm. Daylight Savings Time has ruined Friday Night Lights. No thanks to wearing sunglasses at a high school game. I sit on whatever side is facing east. Four game sit-out period for players who transfer.

It's my understanding that the previous BD HC, Jason Simmons, has a relationship with someone on the IMG staff. I believe that's what got the ball rolling. Listen, I don't know what's going to happen that night or if Ben Davis has any shot, but I think it speaks well for the program and for Indiana High School Football that IMG wanted to come and play here. I also know there has been tremendous interest in the game from not only BD folks. If the Giants get shellacked, it will be what many expect. If they are competitive, it will really show the team where they are against one of the country's best.

Coach Meyer passed away unexpectedly Friday morning. Mike had 2 stints (13 years total) at Greencastle as head coach and spent several years at as a college coach and was Hiram College's head coach for three years. Mike's dad (Ed) was a long time head baseball and assistant football coach at DePauw. His mom was my favorite high school teacher. Mike and I knocked heads against each other in high school. Great all around guy and great family. Please keep Mike's family and friends in your prayers during this difiicult time.

Admirers recall the softer side of ‘gentle giant’ Mike Meyer Monday, August 7, 2023 By JARED JERNAGAN, Editor Surrounded by muddy players in the kind of slog-it-out matchup that was right up his alley, former Greencastle football coach Mike Meyer gives guidance to his team during a 2018 game. Meyer died unexpectedly on Friday morning. Banner Graphic file photo A gentle giant. A big softie. Those weren’t descriptors of Mike Meyer that one often heard outside of those who knew him best. Yet that’s the side of the longtime Greencastle High School English teacher and football coach that’s showing through in the outpouring of love and grief since his death on Friday, Aug. 4. Mike Meyer Meyer died unexpectedly that morning while getting ready for what would have been his 19th year teaching at GHS. A 1981 GHS graduate, Meyer was the oldest of five children of longtime DePauw baseball coach Ed Meyer and his wife Mary Ann, the brother of Anne, Pete, Patrick and Tony. Following a lengthy stay in the college football coaching ranks, Meyer returned to his alma mater in 2005 as an English teacher and football coach. Besides his siblings and wife Brenda, he is survived by four grown children — Madison, Mallary, Jacob and Jordan. Daughter Mackenzie preceded him in death in 2018. All told, Meyer spent 18 years in the classroom at his alma mater and 13 at the helm of the football program, plus two more as an assistant. While the veteran coach appeared a gruff presence roaming the sideline of Robert Harbison Stadium, those who knew him well saw a different side of Mike Meyer. Listening intently to his coach, Elijah Williams gets instructions from Greencastle football coach Mike Meyer during the Tiger Cubs’ 2016 campaign. Now a second-year medical student at Indiana University, the former lineman said he still thinks of Meyer daily thanks to a “one more” paperweight the coach bestowed on all his seniors that year. Banner Graphic file photo “It was unbelievable playing for coach Meyer,” 2017 graduate Elijah Williams said. “I think I can speak for all of my fellow teammates who I played with my senior year in saying that coach Meyer meant the world to us. He was just an unbelievable man. We had a lot of coaching changes in my four years and coach Meyer was a constant.” When Meyer returned for his second tenure as head coach in 2015, Williams and his classmates were on their third head coach in three seasons. “Coach Meyer took over as coach my junior year,” Williams said. “He was our defensive coordinator my sophomore year and we really started to fall in love with him then.” Williams spoke of the continuing influence Meyer had on him as he continued his studies at Hanover College and now at Indiana University Medical School. “He’s the main reason I’m in medical school today,” Williams said. “He wrote a recommendation for me and helped me get in. I took a gap year, and he helped me both times that I applied. Every time I saw him, he would ask how it was coming along. It was always great to see him. “A lot of people saw him as this big tough guy, but he was a big softie. He meant so much to us.” That enduring influence has been on more than just former players. Rob Gibson was a star for rival South Putnam in his high school days, but got his first chance at high school coaching from Meyer, serving two seasons as the GHS offensive coordinator before taking the head coaching job at Owen Valley and then moving on to Avon for the upcoming season. “Mike is a big reason why I became a head coach,” Gibson said. “My connection with Troy Burgess is what got me to Owen Valley, but coach Meyer gave me my first full-time high school football job when I got back from Montana. “He was the very first people I called when I got the job at Avon,” Gibson added later. “I say all the time that you learn a lot from people about how to do things and you learn a lot about how not to do things. I learned about what to do from Mike Meyer,” Gibson said. “He coached hard but it was extremely evident that he loved the players. Even when he was not with the players, he talked about the players.” The learning didn’t stop with football and players. “You learn a lot from Mike about football,” Gibson said. “Those are the obvious things, but the thing I take away the most is how he was able to make time for his family throughout the week. One thing I took from him is for probably two years, my family and his family went to Don Julio’s probably every Wednesday night, along with Mark Hernandez and Nathan Aker.” It didn’t stop there, with Meyer also making time for a date with Brenda each Thursday. “Every Thursday night was also date night with his wife,” Gibson recalled. “They went to Marvin’s every Thursday – even during football season. “The fact that he was able to make friends and family outside of football, as dedicated as he was to football, shows what kind of man he was.” Matt Helmer, who coached with Meyer for the last eight seasons and took over as interim coach in his absence last year, also saw this important side of the coach. “I think the thing people don’t understand is how important relationships and family were to him,” Helmer said. “I saw somebody use the word loyal, and that would be a word I would use with Mike. If you were loyal to Mike, he was loyal to you. But that went the other way too. “He was loyal in relationships with players and past coaches,” Helmer continued, “and when he lost his daughter too, we saw this too in the outpouring of support he had around him. It was quite a fraternity.” Mike’s death came nearly five years after his daughter Mackenzie passed on Aug. 8, 2018, also on the first day of school. “At the end of the day, it made me realize how much the players that he coached loved him,” Helmer said. “I didn’t know that when I first started but I came to realize how important his players were to him.” Mike Meyer speaks with former player Jackie Scanland as the latter gears up for the 2017 Wabash Valley Football Coaches Association All-Star Game. Banner Graphic file photo Meyer didn’t have to look far to understand what it meant to be an impactful coach and educator. Father Ed coached baseball and other sports at DePauw, while mother Mary Ann was a longtime English teacher at Cloverdale and other schools. He also had a role model in Russ Hesler, who became Greencastle’s defensive coordinator and industrial arts teacher Mike’s sophomore year. “Sophomores didn’t make the varsity lineup back then, but Mike did,” Hesler said. “I was defensive coordinator, and he was a heck of a linebacker. He’d knock you down and just laugh about it. “Eddie coached football at DePauw and Mary Ann even called defensive plays, so I knew he knew football,” Hesler said. “A big part of it is understanding the game, and he understood the game.” Much like with the younger coaches and players, Meyer’s relationship with Hesler went beyond the football field. When Meyer went on to play football at Hanover, his dad couldn’t make it to Senior Day due to coaching duties at DePauw. “On Senior Day at Hanover, his mom invited me down to stand in for his dad,” Hesler said. “That was quite an honor.” It continued beyond that. Hesler followed Meyer’s college football coaching journeys, which included stops at schools big and small, including Rice, DePauw, Temple, Case Western Reserve, Ohio Northern, Penn and a head-coaching gig at Hiram College. But in 2005, Hesler, by then the assistant principal at GHS, saw a need for Meyer back in his hometown. “His parents were getting a little older, and I said, ‘Let’s get you back home and get your English license,’” Hesler recalled. “You can coach football and teach English.” Hesler did not regret the decision. “To see him teach Shakespeare and all those soliloquies was amazing,” Hesler said. “Mike was a heck of an English teacher. He taught the higher end students and the special needs students, and he understood both.” That didn’t stop the old shop teacher from giving his younger colleague grief. “He was a special kid, but all the time I’d give him a hard time about not taking shop, because he’d always call me for help with something,” Hesler laughed. “I’d say, you could’ve taken shop instead of taking all these ‘la-di-da’ classes.” Still, in the classroom or on the field, Hesler recognized Meyer’s penchant for demanding more and getting more out of the kids in his charge. “Nobody will ever know how much he cared about his kids,” Hesler said. “I know he drove many kids to college to get them to the next level and get them scholarships. Same way in the classroom – he made sure he got the kids to where they needed to be.” What makes Meyer’s story even sadder is that he appeared set to write new chapters, having taken an assistant coaching job with Gibson at Avon. “Avon fell in love with him right away as well,” Helmer said. “He made a tremendous impact quickly,” Gibson said. “When you’re a head coach, you try to surround yourself with really good people. He knew about Avon before almost anyone. “There’s a funny story about how coach Meyer and I got on the topic of Avon,” Gibson continued. “He was thinking about giving it up. He and his wife were talking about it, and during that conversation, I called him and said, ‘We’re doing this, right?’ And he looked at Brenda and said, ‘I guess we’re going to Avon.’” Unfortunately, that was short-lived. “Sometimes life’s not fair, and this is a special example of how life’s not fair,” Hesler said. “God took him too soon.” Meyer leaves a legacy, though, one that lives on in his family, yes, but also in the many young men and women he impacted over the years at GHS. “I think about this speech from Jim Valvano where he said his dad’s greatest gift was believing in him,” Williams said. “That was always coach Meyer’s greatest gift to us.” The kids believed in him too, and were quick to show it through their loyalty and their practical jokes. In 2015, the football team started a tradition known as “Camp Meyer” that involved showing up on the coach’s lawn before one of the sessions of football practice. “We decided that late at night, we would go to a friends’ house at Edgelea and then camp out on his lawn,” Williams recalled with a laugh. “We checked with his wife so we weren’t completely trespassing.” That morning, they surprised the coach. “We were all standing on his porch, and we were staring in when he came down in his tighty whities and T-shirt,” Williams said. “We did it again the next year, but he never knew when we were going to show up. We had a number of tents we would set up back there, and it was just a great team bonding experience.” It’s a group that still feels bonded, with Williams noting many of them have connected since Friday to share memories of the coach. The simple mantra “one more,” has popped up a number of times on social media tributes to Meyer. Williams explained it in better detail. “Something that started with our class was, ‘One more,’” Williams said. “That was one more rep, one more sprint. When you feel like you want to stop, go a little further. “He gave us these little paperweights,” he continued, “and now in medical school I have it with me and every morning before I go to class and every night before I go to sleep, it’s there to encourage me on this path. One more. That’s Mike Meyer’s legacy to the young men he coached. Services for Mike Meyer will be Saturday, Aug. 12 at Kresge Auditorium, 605 S. College Ave., Greencastle, at DePauw University. Visitation will be 11 a.m.-12:45 p.m. with service to follow at 1 p.m., led by Pastor Donnie Watson. Mike Meyer roams the Tiger Cub sideline. Banner Graphic/JARED JERNAGAN

50 years ago as we ran laps in the dark in the bowels of the stadium, none of us even considered that such a thing might be possible. Yet, here it is. Only the second “Western” team to ever win the championship. Great job, guys.

One of the great victories in program history. One more step to take to finish the job.