You all knew that I would have a post about the Smithville vs Kearney game this last Friday, but I waited a bit to decide what to post. Instead of running my mouth and saying that Smithville would be a shoe-in as state champs because they have track speed, I admitted that we had a lot of new starters. On paper, Kearney was certainly one of the favorites going into the season this year. Now that we are three weeks into the season, they are trying to recover from injuries and Joey "Super Fan" is making all sorts of excuses. There is no doubt that Kearney has a ton of talent. However, the days of Tommy Saunders and Brock Christopher are over. We are now in a new era where Smithville is the "big brother" and Kearney is the little "brother". The big reason for the change is the change in culture for the Smithville football program from the youth organization to the High School coaches. As long as Smithville continues to keep the current coaching staff they currently have in place, you will continue to see Smithville win these match-ups even when Kearney has superior talent. In years like 2020 through 2022 where Smithville had superior talent and coaching, you will see auto-clock victories like we have seen in the recent past. I know there are several Kearney fans on here that post, and I appreciate their perspective. However, we have to hear from Joey time and time again just to hear excuses about turnovers and 100M dash times. Someday Kearney may be back on top, but by that time they may be class 5, and their window to win a state championship at class 4 will be over. With all the other talented teams at class 5, I don't see Kearney beating teams like Webb City, St. Mary's or Cardinal Ritter. Better hope some other schools start offering Smithville coaches high paying positions, or Coach Ambroson moves on to college. Until that happens, we can get used to the type of results we saw last Friday.