[jetpilot]

Everybody now using the Sayre excuse to play a JV schedule doesn't fly. They are a private school with several D-1 players and an NFL coach. Nobody believes that schedule will get Prestonsburg anywhere. It's really the opposite, they will get drilled by the first good team they play in the playoffs. They will have a good record though, which is nice.

Right, Sayre was good whether they played a hard schedule or not. That’s my point. Would a brutal schedule help Pburg win a state title next year? If you think not, then why do it? What’s the point? This schedule will get them ready to play 3 home playoff games, which is a great step forward for a program that has won only 2 playoff games in the last 8 seasons and both of those wins were last year. The top 3 or 4 schools in 2A are very, very good, and I don’t think any type of schedule is going to put Pburg above them this year. If Hager keeps building this program up with winning seasons and winning playoff games then we’ll get there though!

Beechwood who won it all in 2A played a 5A school, three 6A schools, and Cov Cath.

Sure, it looks great if you win those games, but do you think it helped Pikeville to get crushed by Corbin, JC and LCA in the first 3 games last season? I think it hurt them more than it helped them. Also, Beechwood most likely could've played Prestonsburg's schedule last year and still won 2A. They were way better than all the other 2A schools before the season even started, and everybody in the state knew it. They likely would've won 3A (which was weaker than 2A) and could've been very competitive in 4A. They played against 10 2A schools last season and they running clocked 8 of them, and probably could've running clocked the other 2 in the semi's and finals if they'd wanted to. They were just that much better than everybody else. Hats off to them, they're an exceptional program. Sometimes you get an anomaly in the playoffs like the Boyle county loss, but it's very rare. Usually the best football team in each class wins it all.

Now, having said that, did playing those bigger schools help them beat the other 2A schools to death in the playoffs? Certainly it helped some, but they also knew going into the season that they were going to be good enough to play with those bigger schools and Volker was smart enough to schedule only bigger schools that were either equal to or lesser than Beechwood's talent level and they beat all of them except Cov Cath. I think you should always try to schedule a few teams that you can play hard with to show you where your weaknesses are, but you still want to feel good about winning those games going in to them, especially if you're looking to win a state title in the RPI system. If you schedule 5 very hard non-district games and get blown out in 3 of them then you've shot yourself in the foot if you want to make a deep November run because that's how the RPI system is designed to work, for better or worse. You get practically nothing for losing. If there was no RPI system then I'd be singing a different tune on here, but RPI is what we've got. Does playing a weaker schedule and winning 8 or 9 of those games get you called "paper tigers" on anonymous message boards? Yes, it does. But, it also gets you home playoff games, and it also can get a history rich program and town that loves football fired up about getting out on Friday nights to watch football games again for the first time in a decade. It gives you some momentum that can carry you back to the top, but that journey doesn't happen overnight. It takes years to rebuild a broken program. Go back and look at how long it took Pikeville to beat Belfry when they were rebuilding with Mac, and now they almost never lose to Belfry. It takes time.

Let's be honest here- What good would it do Pburg to schedule games they know they are most likely going to lose? Going back to the Pikeville example, did it really help them to lose those hard games against bigger schools? It seems to me like it took the wind out of their sails and they never were able to recover from that rather than prepare them for a deep playoff run. I'd rather see the kids have an excellent season and go out with 10-11-12 wins with a district title and compete for a regional title in the burg than go 7-5  or 6-6 because we overreached on the schedule and got killed and demoralized early in the season and then have to play on the road at Belfry in the 2nd round and if we're fortunate enough to get out of there with a win then we'd go to Beechwood in the 3rd round where victory is nearly impossible.

This schedule is on par with the level of the program right now, I think. It's a tougher schedule than last years schedule with the addition of Hazard, Estill and Valley and this Pburg team will be better than last years team. Nobody is adamantly predicting Pburg to play 15 games this year. I hope they do, because it would be a heck of a ride, but nobody in or out of Pburg is predicting that, no mater what the schedule looks like. Only 2 years in to Hager's leadership, this is a 13 game program right now, maybe 14 if they get some November luck, but to play 15 games in 2A would be a gigantic feat considering the depth of talented programs that 2A has right now. This schedule sets them up for that type of season perfectly. Take the RPI system away and I'd be pushing harder to play maybe Pikeville, JC, Ashland, Bell, etc, but it just doesn't make sense to take the RPI hit to play and possibly (probably) lose all of those games this season.

Apples and oranges. Prestonsburg doesn't play anybody who could play within 35 of those 3 teams, much less 3 in a row. You don't have to play any of those 3 teams to have a schedule 50x better than the JV schedule Prestonsburg put together. I will leave it alone. I'm rooting for the Blackcats again in 2025 but that schedule cripples them and sucks most of the fun out of the season. I'm out. Go Blackcats!