[Diogenes]

Hey I'm not bashing JC, but doesn't every young football player dream of playing in state finals.

Yes. And Highlands will never, ever allow anyone else on this half of the state to do that in our lifetime. We get 40 kids in the weight room; they're going to have 100. Every year. Their backups can play. The backups' backups can play. They have former NFL players as position coaches. What are you supposed to do to compete with that? We can lift and do plyo and run sprints until our legs fall off with every kid we can force into a weight room, but the reality is - just like everyone else in 4A every year until Mueller decides he's gonna hang it up - we're all playing to make it as far as we can in the playoffs until we face Highlands. And it's not just us. It's everybody else in the state in 4A, too. This is the unfortunate reality; there's no competitive balance, and won't be, regardless of how hard we work. I suppose one of the lessons HS sports teaches is that life isn't always fair. This is certainly one of those situations. So I think people in Johnson County realize that winning eleven games, a district title, and making it to face Highlands will always be a successful season, and nobody's going to get tired of that, I assure you. If you're trying to stir up unrest and dissatisfaction with Coach Matney as somehow underachieving, don't bother, because we all know good and well nobody is going to come in and here and do any better (unless that person brings some five-star players with him when they hire him). Vince Lombardi couldn't take the meager amount of athletes we have available in Johnson County and compete with that army in Ft. Thomas. It's a numbers game, and by virtue of where we are and what we are, we're always going to come up short. We might put a competitive first eleven on the field, but they're going to be throwing full platoons at you all game long, and their backups would start everywhere else.

Too bad Canadians aren't better at football. I wish we could "direct" a few troubled star QB and WR prospects toward Johnson County like our area basketball colleagues do. Or maybe some star players could fall out of the sky like they seem to other places. Til then, we're going to keep doing the best we can with what we have, and we'll never get tired of trying and dreaming the impossible dream.