Before The First Flag Is Thrown…On Coaches And Coverage Of Area Football?

Now hours before the start of the 2026 high school football season, the questions is still at hand over whether high school football…the game, itself…is any better for the sake of seven divisions…which new coach stands to have the best debut…and what’s different  in coverage this fall on Press Pros?

A reader named Russ scratched us a line this week and asked why there was so little coverage of area football scrimmages, and…if the game of football, in particular, has benefited from the expansion to seven divisions in all sports?

Russ, regarding scrimmages…for the same reason we don’t write about people kissing their sister, unless it’s on her wedding day.  Is Ohio football better for having seven divisions?  Someone must think so.

Mark, from Troy, asked recently if we had an opinion over which new football coach in the area might have the best debut in 2026?  And might that coach be Troy’s own Ryan Jones?

And the word is already out over Press Pros doing a full schedule of 2026-’27 sports from the Central Buckeye Conference, and we’ll address that issue first.

After five years of covering central Ohio and the Ohio Capital Conference, it wasn’t a good geographic fit, and with too many schools outside the conference core.  It’s my observation that people in a town of 1.5 million are interested first, and foremost, in their local school, and less about others in a conference with nearly three dozen members and five divisions.  So if you’re covering a game between two OCC high schools outside the sphere of historical priority anything less than whoever Ohio State is playing that week kinda’ gets taken for granted.  Only the select few seem to move the needle.

Now, I might be wrong about that.  Columbus might be motivated by the suburbs, but I can’t prove it by the numbers.

On the other hand, there’s been excitement on social media (text, email, and FB) about an online presence for the CBC – from London, Plain City, Bellefontaine, Urbana, Indian Lake, Kenton Ridge, Shawnee, Graham and others, and now it remains to be seen if that excitement is acted upon.  From our experience in the MAC, the Shelby County League, the Miami Valley League, etc., the CBC seems to fit many of the same demographics.

Realistically, early indicators seem to point to more high school interest outside I-270 than within, and those schools play more crossovers with local market schools we already see…a big point of consideration.  We have a couple of good ones to gauge by on Friday, with London vs. New Albany and Urbana vs. Northeasstern.

To another’s question about seven divisions of football being a good thing for the game of football, itself…Russ, there is no answer except to gauge the impact according the scores.  And the scores, so far, leave one to wonder.

For instance, last year five of the seven OHSAA championship games finished with a running clock in the second half.

And if you polled Division VI and VII fans in the immediate Press Pros market area, 6 out of 10 that are knowledgeable will immediately point to the Division VII title game over the last three years where Marion Local (twice) and St. Henry (last year) beat Hillsdale Jerome and Dalton (from the Wayne  County Athletic Conference) by a cumulative score of  149-3.  One who reads that certainly can ask the question, isn’t there a better competitive match to be found within Division VII, outside the Midwest Athletic Conference?

Or even, how can three schools from the same league make it to the title game three years in a row and get beat by 146 points?

So the answer to your question must come from Columbus, and it certainly cannot be relative to the final score.

To the question about which first-year coach is apt to make the biggest impact in his first year at a new school, Ryan Jones is certainly the most interesting of the three that come to mind – Jones, Geron Stokes (Urbana), and Scott Broerman (Versailles).

You hear about people in Troy that wanted someone more personable to the wishes of the community and parents, if you believe what you hear.  It didn’t matter that Troy Everhart won football games, and in a manner not unlike the days of Steve Nolan.  There are, after all, things in this day more important than winning.

But winning will be important for Jones, too, and that will begin with getting more of Troy’s best athletic talent excited to play and compete in football to keep pace with the other Joneses, so to speak – the MAC – schools that have 120 boys and 80 play football!

Or closer, what former Troy coach Matt Burgbacher has been able to do at Tipp City, doubling the football roster in just five years with the Red Devils;  and Troy has not yet figured out how to beat Tipp during that span.

If Jones can play that card from his Versailles experience, I think his could be the kind of long-term impact people say they want at Troy, as well as someone willing to listen to all the other issues.

Broerman has already laid down the gauntlet by saying that his team will be the best conditioned and best disciplined at Versailles.  And that certainly helps you win, but again, you have to get the bodies in uniform, and he says he can.  And who’s to say he won’t?

Stokes represents the prodigal son coming home to coach again at Urbana, where he had great success (read this week’s Gilbert column) before leaving there to win two state titles at Minster, a MAC school.  There’s no question in my mind that Stokes is going to win at Urbana, and that within five years he’ll dress 70 or more.  And in year one he’s going to do it his way – the Urbana way.

There’s a story that floats around about someone from Dublin asking Stokes five years ago if being from Urbana adequately prepared him for coaching at a school like Dublin Coffman, and in a league as big as the Ohio Capital Conference.

Stokes was said to have answered:  “A little bit of Urbana would look good on people in Dublin.”  I don’t know if he said that, or not, and Stokes says he doesn’t remember.  But I know him pretty well.

Guaranteed…HE WAS THINKING IT!