[MikeHonchoLives]

I’ve always admired the support you show for your team, but this is weak sauce. Your expectations are way over the top. They aren’t cheating, just following the rules of the association (NHFA) they belong to. Landmark isn’t a member of the OHSAA either. Play the team in front of you regardless of who they are and where they’re from. Sounds like you’ve spent much more time on Ancestry.com last weekend than you really have watching film.

Let’s take a look at some other possibilities for this loss:

You’ve got a 26 man roster. 10 are freshmen and only 9 of the remaining 16 saw significant playing time last year.

Offense - Graduation gutted your skill positions. You’re starting a freshman, Reynolds, at QB right? The only returning RB, Gilvin, is a soph. Woods and Gilvin are nice receivers but again there’s that QB question.

Defense - Line is gone from last year too, except for Simpson. LBs and DBs are your strong points, but most of your impact players making tackles and interceptions are gone too.

Special Teams - Among other things, the Polar Bears have had zero kicking game since Teegarden and Cooper graduated a couple of years ago.

Coaching - Best part of your program at this point. I’ve respected Tim Carver’s game for a long time. He does good work with what he’s given and started a couple of programs from scratch.

Do you think Coach Carver or your AD, Fisher didn’t know what they were doing when they made the schedule? Bracken was 3-1 over the last four years in Week 0 against some bad Switzerland Co. (IN) teams. I think it was brilliant to schedule a better team as a home opener. See how good teams play, make adjustments, set the bar and move on.

Realistic expectations and patience my man, you've got a chance to get some young kids a lot of playing time and build for the next few years. I hope the players buy in, don’t make excuses and your enthusiasm wears off onto them. Best of luck this year. And if the Polar Bears do make it to the championship finals, I hope Sheila the bus driver takes the team to Lexington. They’ll miss the game if they go to Bowling Green.

The last person who told me to temper my enthusiasm was an administrator who went in to force an entire school district to close. So no! I will not.

I expect wins. And I expect one tonight.