High school football 2020 (or spring 2021): The Bee’s Top 20 rankings
Football will return at the high school level in the chill of winter, with games dotted throughout the spring of 2021.
It’ll be odd, but it will be a season. That is the plan.
For now, only the NFL can call this fall a football season in California. It hardly seems fair, but the coronavirus pandemic is dictating the pace. It has shuttered schools and pushed all prep schedules in this state back to January; the same for the college ranks. This rings true for the entire West Coast.
I feel the void. In the Sacramento region and throughout Northern California, I witnessed for more than 30 years how prep seasons can shape a team, mold an athlete and set a tone for a campus and a community. Football matters because kids matter.
So why are we offering up a preseason Top 20 football rankings list with a bonus bubble list of 30 more teams for a fall season on the shelf?
Tradition, in the spirit of optimism, and just because.
Bee rankings history
The Bee has produced preseason football rankings since the early 1940s. I have dabbled in Bee rankings since 1988, when we polled coaches through Bee-stamped return mailers. Max Miller always ranked Cordova preseason No. 1 in the 1980s, Mike Alberghini did the same in the 1990s at Grant, while a good many others over that stretch downplayed their teams and said, “Please don’t rank us! We want to make our team angry!”
In other words, we want to blame The Bee for sleepin’ on us.
Some coaches for years tried to sway us with swag when it comes to preseason rankings, one saying, “rankings can help us with bringing in transfers.” We could not be bought, unless it’s a nifty extra large, allegedly.
In the 1930s, The Bee had a preseason Top 5, reflective of how few schools there were in the region. The Bee started to do rankings in house in the mid 1990s, pitting teams next to each other that played early season contests. The Bee did not expand from a Top 10 to Top 20 until the early 2000s, after a flood of schools opened in the 1990s in Placer County, Elk Grove and up the Highway 50 corridor.
We will call these our “Subject to Change” rankings, since things can change from now until December, be it transfers, injuries or the grim possibility that the seasons don’t play out at all.
Follow the leader
Defending Sac-Joaquin Section Division I champion Oak Ridge heads our list, marking the first time since the mid 2000s the Trojans started a season ranked at the top. Oak Ridge celebrated its first D-I title season in the wind and rain last fall at Hughes Stadium. It may play a number of games in the wind and rain.
This is the first time since the start of the 2010 season Folsom did not start a season as Bee No. 1 (Grant did that season, beat Folsom soundly in an opener before Folsom exacted revenge in the playoffs, en route to its first of four CIF State championships).
Folsom’s stranglehold on the No. 1 ranking from the entire 2012 season through the 2019 Sac-Joaquin Section Division I quarterfinals represents the most remarkable run since Cordova owned the region throughout the 1970s, leading the nation in victories.
Another broken streak is Grant’s place in the rankings. The Pacers led the region in victories in the 1990s and 2000s under Alberhini, but his program has taken a hit in recent years. Grant went 1-9 in 2019, the poorest showing in Del Paso Heights since the early 1960s.
Grant is not preseason ranked by The Bee in the Top 20 (it is a bubble team) for the first time since the start of the 1991 season. That’s when Alberghini was in his first season as Pacers head coach after a decade as defensive coordinator. He led a young team to a 13-6 opening upset of preseason No. 1 Elk Grove for a 10-0 regular-season.
What could have been and questions to ponder
Had the season gone as scheduled this week, a season opener of note would have been Folsom vs. Monterey Trail.
Monterey Trail last season derailed the Bulldogs’ run in the section D-1 playoffs, halting Folsom’s record run of nine consecutive trips to a section final. It ranks as one of the all-time regional stunner performances.
Another opener of note would have been and shall soon be Oak Ridge against upstart Cosumnes Oaks, the established power taking on a rising one, with athletes galore on both sides.
The other thing about rankings is each team has questions. Will No. 4 Rocklin produce perhaps its best team, one anchored in the trenches by technically sound mauler Bobby Piland?
What can first-year coach Casey Taylor do at Inderkum after working wonders at Del Oro and then Capital Christian? Can Elk Grove defend its section D-II championship after graduations hit the roster?
Does Placer return to a section final with new faces? Can coach Jeff Evans drive Granite Bay back into the playoffs for a section-leading 22nd consecutive time?
What sort of immediate impact does first-year coach and alum Mike Maben have at Del Oro?
Does Whitney and 2019 Bee Coach of the Year Zac McNally have another team strong enough to reach a section final?
We hope to find out.
THE BEE’S Preseason Top 20
(If season started now)
1. Oak Ridge (11-3 in 2019)
2. Monterey Trail (12-2)
3. Folsom (10-2)
4. Rocklin (7-4)
5. Inderkum (11-1)
6. Cosumnes Oaks (8-4)
7. Elk Grove (10-5)
8. Placer (10-3)
9. Granite Bay (5-7)
10. Del Oro (6-5)
11. Vacaville (8-3)
12. Jesuit (6-6)
13. Davis (10-2)
14. Capital Christian (9-3)
15. Whitney (7-7)
16. Vista del Lago (9-3)
17. Christian Brothers (7-4)
18. Casa Roble (7-4)
19. Pleasant Grove (6-5)
20. Rio Linda (9-3)
Bubble teams (alphabetical order): Amador (10-2), Antelope (6-6), Bear River (7-4), Bradshaw Christian (9-3), Center (11-1), Colfax (8-4), Del Campo (5-6), Dixon (6-4), East Nicolaus (12-2), El Camino (4-6), Foothill (8-4), Franklin (4-6), Golden Sierra (8-3), Grant (1-9), Highlands (8-3), Laguna Creek (7-3), Liberty Ranch (5-6), Lincoln (5-6), Oakmont (6-5), Nevada Union (5-6), Ponderosa (5-6), River Valley (4-7), Rosemont (8-3), Roseville (7-5), Sheldon (2-8), Union Mine (6-5), Vanden (6-6), Winters (5-7), Woodland (7-4), Yuba City (7-5).
- Joe Davidson/Cameron Salerno
This story was originally published August 22, 2020 at 4:00 AM.