[dontfeedthebears]

That 5A District (Letcher Central not very good, Whitley County rebuilding very young, Perry Central Good biggest competition for HC) is not the SEC by any means. But look who Calipari has scheduled: Louisville, North Carolina, Kansas, St. Johns...and he has openly stated that he wants to play the best teams. That is how you improve. Ask the Cumberland teams when John Reynolds and Frank Vicini were the coach. They would cruise through the regular season and were not prepared for the postseason. So that comparison is not a good one. I understand that Bell and Knox are both good. That is what I said in my previous post; however, Gate City will be no competition.

In case you didn't know football games are scheduled under a two year agreement: one at home and one away...unless it is a bowl game. So, with the teams that I mentioned they would return the favor of a home game whether it is the first year or the second year.

And to your last statement about the GRC running back...ask the Detroit Lions how that worked out for them with Barry Sanders. One player does not make a good team.

Again, I am not bashing their schedule as they have to play whoever is willing to play them. I said in that post that they may have contacted some or all of those teams and they told them no...I don't know. All I am saying is that I wish that they would play some big time teams so that I could watch some good football games instead of blowouts.

If you want to be the best then you have to beat the best. I think Harlan Co. has a chance to be one of the top teams in 5A.

I really wonder why I even post on these things sometimes, lol. Debating on a web site over things that really don't matter, and that nobody really cares what we all think anyways, can become rather useless. I will agree to disagree with you hitemup on this matter. I will, however, like to ask you to not take cheap shots at two great people- Coach Vicini and Coach Reynolds. There's no debate, the non-district schedule at 1A Cumberland was very weak at times to say the least, and probably did hurt them playoff time (even though Coach Reynolds won the first playoff game by a Harlan County team since Evarts in the 90's when the Skins won a 1st rounder in '07). 1A is a different breed, and I'm not making excuses whatsoever. But when you have 20-30 kids on the entire roster and almost all going both ways, health becomes an issue. You want to be healthy going into the distict schedule. CHS's non-district schedule had easier games such Thomas Walker, Jenkins, etc. (no offense to those teams), but also had Somerset, Cawood, Pike Central at various times during those coaches' tenures.