The Best Seat in the House

We’re over 24 hours from a new football season, and each of the six local teams has its own reasons to look ahead with enthusiasm. Two of those teams — Garrard County and Lincoln County — will kick off their seasons Friday night in the Death Valley Bowl, while Boyle County, Casey County, Danville and Mercer County open Saturday in various bowls.

Looking own the road, we still have to live with the cumbersome six-class system introduced last year, but at least some sanity has returned to the postseason with the elimination of the much-loathed intradistrict games in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

But for now, most teams are simply hoping to start the season in a better fashion than last year, when Garrard County Mercer County was the only one of the six squads to win its first game. And we’re all hoping the heat index is much more manageable than it was on last year’s kickoff weekend.

Before you go to the games, here are some other places you can go to get ready for the season:

• In case you missed the Advocate’s high school preview that appeared in print nearly three weeks ago, here’s your chance to catch up with stories plus capsule previews and schedules for each local team.
• Previews, features and game stories from all six local schools can be found on our high school football page, which will updated throughout the season. And stories from Friday night games can again be found there on Saturday mornings.
• Predictions made by Advocate sports staffers are good fodder for discussion — or good filler for your bird cage. I’ll again make weekly game predictions for local schools here, beginning tomorrow.
• Here are links from the KHSAA to .pdf files for the statewide alignment, a list of bowl games and schedules for every team in Kentucky. Plus you can dig into other useful info on the KHSAA’s football page.
• Here are team-by team previews from Bluegrasspreps.com, listed alphabetically within each class.

Now for some out-of-town links specific to the Week 1 matchups:

• Bell County-Garrard County: No game or team preview is available yet, but here’s a feature on highly recruited Bell kicker Monte Merrick from the Middlesboro Daily News.
• Washington County-Lincoln County: Something of a preview from The Springfield Sun, though it focuses mostly on Washington’s scrimmage last week.
• Boyle County-Warren Central: A story from the Daily News of Bowling Green on Warren Central running back Tabarus Mitchell.
• Russell County-Danville: A Russell team preview from The Times Journal of Russell Springs.