The Craig Way Show
Greg Tepper
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Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L E E S A dot com and we're back to the Craig way show have a message for Craig sharing by using the talk back feature on the iHARDS radio app. One of the great things about being back in the iHeart family and coming up at the end of this month will mark one year being back, you know, it was in it for 19 years and then across town so it'll be actually completing 20 years with this company coming up at the end of the month. But one of the great things about it is there's always something, whether it's cooking or just laid out, there's always something going on in the kitchen and I go back there is going to go back there gets water and there's the crew in there promotions career in there with this big stack of and if you're watching here on the YouTube channel on Facebook. These these bright green and I mean like nor texas mean green like popsicles and I was like what is it have what I said what kind is I was afraid I hope it's not jalapeno this should try out. And it tasted it is like it's green, but it's good it's like you just have that you know cool and your kids there's green cool aid I mean it didn't really taste like lime it tasted like green you know this this is a little more. But it's good on that one guy who is very, very much in tune with popsicles because he has two young boys who probably just adore popsicles is the managing editor of Dave Campbell's Texas football magazine Greg Tepper joins us on the hotline line. Would you say that you and Jen regularly are in the popsicle mode with your guys with your two young men. Yeah we'll do that we'll do the thing I'm sure they have names but I don't know what it is but at the beginning of the summer you buy the big netted bag of those of what is essentially like small bags of liquid you throw in your freezer and it's like you get 70 of them for six cents And it lasts you the entire summer. That's what we do. It was also a very big snow cone summer big snow cone summer in the Tepper household rolling through and grabbing from the snow cones every once there you go. Okay, absolutely, absolutely. Okay. So let me get your thoughts first of all. As we draw ever closer now everybody's on the practice field. Well, the ones who didn't have the spring football got a chance to go and then and then the ones who had spring football got a chance to go a week later at the largest classification level. Everybody else is on the field and and and doing practicing type things. Do you get the same vibe that I get every year that that there are equal amounts of dread because of the heat and the conditions and the variable excitement and anticipation that builds up when once they actually get out on the field and in pads and pad start popping and they start running through drills and practices. Yeah, it's kind of a it's kind of that mix because you're you're exactly right. This is of course the the cruelest part of our favorite sport is the fact that we start it when it's the hottest. You know, we're all in the court of the sun. And so you're always all worried. You always want to make sure everybody's safe. But I do know that, you know, the UIL has put out some some some some guidance as far as he devised. He's our concern and and and has been that's been a big big issue for them and the technical coaches Association to make sure that people are safe and it does feel like coaches are just more aware of it now than it used to be that, you know, there's no longer days with no breaks and stuff. You know, the days of the junction boys are probably long past us, which is probably good. But yeah, then you just kind of get in get excited about football, you know, and you get excited about, you know, seeing if what we've been thinking about for for eight months around here really comes to fruition. And that's the fun part, you know, our magazine comes out in a lot of ways, our magazine is just a big book of predictions. You know, we predict every district, we predict every classification stuff like that. And then like it's kind of fun because it gives us something to talk about something to debate and stuff like that. And then football season starts and kind of matter at all, you know, they get to prove us right or wrong. And so you start kind of hearing the whispers from coaches saying, Hey, that team looks really good. And it's especially, I'll tell you when that's really going to start hitting a fever pitch. So the first games, if you're interested, are three weeks from like right now, three weeks from right now, there will be football games go meaningful goes in the record books football games going on across state of Texas, but starting next week when you have the first scrimmages come out. That is when those whispers are really going to start hitting a fever pitch just because people are going to say, Oh man, I heard that team looks great in their scrimmage against so and so there's always one or two of those that come down. They say, Oh man, this team is fantastic in their scrimmage is like, you've just learned to kind of take away the grain of salt, but at the same time, if it runs entirely counter to what you have been thinking for eight months, then it does kind of give you pause. Like, who am I totally off on that team? Like, it's Florence actually going to win the stage. You can check things like that. Yeah, right. You know, I've always kind of looked at those things and kind of put it into the category of folks anticipation excitement. So as they draw a little closer, it's like, what's the first sign here that, you know, are we seeing something visible? Hey, somebody looks really, really good in the scrimmage that move in, kid. He looked really, really good. Those kinds of things. And it's probably easy to take some of that stuff a little farther than it will. Now, having said all that and looking not only at your predictions and that of the magazine, there are some givens. There are some nodes. And since we said we were going to look at 3A today, the givens are that teams that we have seen of the past several years, either win or get close to winning a state championship are right back in business. Again, Malacoff and 3A D one gunner and 3A D two, but there's a lot of other players who can kind of make things real interesting here, aren't there? Absolutely. And, you know, we'll start with 3A D two because, I mean, I mean, I mean this in a nice way. It's kind of the less interesting one because for 3A D two, it really does feel like gunner, like, like, and against the field. I mean, they look so head and shoulders better than everyone else. Now, they do lose their quarterback Walker Overman, who was such an operator of that office. We were talking about this on my podcast on Texas football.com. That stuff and I were about how Walker Overman, the guy who I don't know how many high school football teams in Texas he'd actually start for, but he was such the perfect fit for gunner that like you can't like they may never have a never a better quarterback than him. But, but at, but at the same time, you know, we, we come to expect them to be so dominant year in and year out. I believe they won their region eight consecutive years. Think about that. They played in the state, then we find eight consecutive years. What Jake Zales built theirs is remarkable. And they have not been challenged within region two and a long, long, long, long time. Canadian does Canadian, which has been kind of their big nemesis. The team they always see in the state semi final looks like I think they may be taking a step back there replacing the quarterback and, and we don't really know what they're going to be. So for gunner, they look like the clear favorite in three division to where they might see a championship game, a team like Dangerfield or team like Newton, which, you know, we'll talk about that when we get there across ever to come to it, but highly athletic teams have been the kind of teams that have given gunner trouble. But that would be an estate championship, and you would file that under good problems. I would say if you are Jake, on three division one, though, that is where things get really interesting. And in a lot of ways, it gets interesting because of who's not there, because if you didn't know, for those who are unaware, Brock has gone. Brock has moved up to for a. And so as a result, there's kind of this big open void where, okay, like they're gone. Who's going to fill that space? Malacol, of course, the defending state champs are back with quarterback Mike Jones back in the mix and they're going to be, I think, a threat. So if you're number one, Columbus is going to be absolutely fascinating. With quarterback Adam Shobel, they're lying back to John Shobel, and now the addition of one of the greatest six man players of all time in Grayson Rigton. That's their fascinating. Oh, yeah, there's Franklin, the team that has played in four consecutive state championship games and lost two of them by combined eight points. So they're there in the mix, Hitchcock, this is the year for them. You know, with Lloyd Jones to third and Kellogg Johnson, this is the year that they've been waiting for, Edna Bushland, Paradise, Grandview, Coliad, Sweetwater. It is a loaded and really hard to split group of contenders in three eight division one that make that absolutely electrifying. I'm so excited about three eight division one. It's such an interesting dichotomy in that three eight division one is so fascinating. I can't wait to see how it all shakes out. And three division two is kind of like, well, let me know who gunners play in the state championship game and then I'll think about it. Three eight division two kind of reminds me, at least all the way up to how last you're ended for a division two with Carthage and the rest, right? And we may be going back to that, like we said last week, about four AD to this time around with Carthage. I think that's a great comp. I think that's a great comp comparison, as far as far as that is concerned, because gunner does feel like not just the pedigree and not just the players, but just the state of three eight division two and where it stands right now. It does look like some of those powers are have taken a step back. And so why not gunner? You have to really squint to think of a reason why gunner wouldn't play for a staging championship. But then again, go ask Carthage how that worked out for them last year. You know, being being that team that starts number one and the clear number one is hard, a hard thing to carry. Are there, I will ask you this about three AD two. Are there two more or better interesting non district games involving contenders than gunners game in week two against Anna, who's moved up to five A after winning a four AD one title or danger field in week three playing a pleasant growth. Yeah, absolutely fascinating there. I mean, that is those those are those are those are really, really good games that I'm really looking forward to, you know, especially the gunner and a game because, you know, you're talking about punching way up a class case way up. So essentially, you know, going up for, you know, for full divisions, how well can can gunner hang in the trenches. I also want to see what the field does in pleasant growth going up. You know, Devin Nelson, the coach of danger field has really kind of stress. We need to be more physical. We need to go back to old school danger field football. We're always going to have speed. But where you go back to those state championship teams, they were always so good up front. They were always so physical. They've gotten away from that a little bit. Here's an opportunity to prove that you're as physical as anybody playing pleasant growth. That is a game that I'm actually fascinated with. And then I'll, I'll tell you one more that I'm interested in Columbus. Three division one, rather a Columbus opening up with Quero is right out of the shoots. A really interesting star studded matchup and a real litmus test for how far this Columbus team can go. We've got high hopes. How long do they do on the road in DeWitt County? And for one of what's going to be a madhouse there at with Quero. All right. Let me ask about two, three, three AD one programs. First of all, is there a better? I'm not saying there isn't one as good. But is there a better three division one coach in the state than Mark Fanon at Franklin? No, no, he did. And by the way, it's also the whole staff. The whole staff is fantastic. And they've done a great job holding that staff together. Of guys who have built that thing kind of from the ground up. You know, you remember, we talk a lot about, we talk a lot about Liberty Hill, right? And the style of offense they play with that slot to the attack and how it's hard to get guys to buy in on it. So that program, the coaching steps throughout the course of the years has done a great job of building it from the ground up. Well, we're doing that in Franklin too. I mean, remember they're running basically the Wayne T out there, you know, kind of a modified Wayne T. And it's hard to get guys to go out there and do that and be consistent in that. But Mark Fanon has done an unbelievable job there at Franklin, which was kind of a, I mean, Franklin's not some power to give people a little bit of a history lesson. They're not some perennial power. They're always been good. They're always been okay, like not some sellers weller. But like, they're not some team that's got like six or seven state championships from back in the 40s. Like, they're just a kind of a team that has suddenly just in the past kind of six years or so really risen to that level of elite. And they had that title, that title game run back in 2015 where they made it to the title and I believe lost to Waskham in that very, very late night game, the fourth of a quad. But that was, but I think that what Mark Fanon has done taking over that program has really elevated them to new heights. Well, what's evidence by the fact, if they get to the state championship, that's five straight years to be in the state final. That's, that is rare fight air. No doubt about that. All right, the other one I wanted to ask you about, you have to, you must understand, I live in a town and work in a town and call games for a team that. When people say that college football is always just better when Texas is really, really good. So I ask you, is high school football in Texas always just better when the grand view zebras are in the mix. I think so. I think that I think that not only are the zebras, which helps, but also they just play an entertaining brand of football and what that program, again, kind of has, has built over the course of the last few years. You know, with coach Ryan Ebner has been really remarkable. I mean, you know, this has been a program that, you know, they won that title back a few years ago. Back back to the championships a few years ago. And now they've kind of established themselves as a, as a perennial power. And by the way, they're not going to go away quietly this year as well. You know, they've had that kind of longstanding, weird, like, like rivalry with Malakov that now you better believe that that's going to get turned up to another level. And they've got a playmaker in Jolie Allen, who is an absolute dynamo junior that they're going to move all over the field. I think grand views in the mix. And I think you're right. I think that that, especially in an area of the state, they're kind of like in that kind of south of DFW, some of our grand view is kind of south of DFW, just a little bit before you get to wake up. That area to have a three a power, which, you know, usually a lot of the conversation in that part of the state is either, you know, going on to the sick day level where you're kind of talking about six man had that kind of mid sized program that's really kind of a household name across the state. I do think it's good for high school football writ large. He's Greg Tapper, managing editor of Dave Campbell's Texas football magazine. You follow him on Twitter, X at at Tapper. And of course, we'll look forward to bringing high school scoreboard live. We have a previous show coming up in a couple of weeks. Tap. Let's go have a popsicle before afterwards. I will, I will bring one of those, one of the many like 44 of those popsicles I still have in my, in my freezer. I'll bring a couple. Thanks, Tim. All right. That's Greg Tapper from Dave Campbell's Texas football magazine. We'll hear more from Kurt Sart coming up next here on Sports Radio AM 13 under the zone in the I Heart Radio AM. It's time for today's Lucky Land Horoscope with Victoria Cash. Life's gotten mundane, so shake up the daily routine and be adventurous with a trip to Lucky Land. You know what they say, your chance to win starts with a spin. So go to luckylandslots.com to play over a hundred social casino style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Get lucky today at luckylandslots.com. No purchase necessary, VGW group void were prohibited by law, 18 plus terms of condition supply. Good sleep should come naturally, and with a new natural hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm, the natural hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greeter tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber. Every purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need. Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com. [BLANK_AUDIO]