A couple of football points (with apologies to Greg, who probably hasn't read this thing since August):

* Turning things around quite well from the last couple of seasons, my old high school made the playoffs this year (in the first year of actualy playoffs, more on that in a bit). The Manchester-Essex Hornets get to take on Ipswich, a team they've not played in over 40 years due in large part to the size difference in the two schools (Ipswich has roughly 200 more students in a school that serves two fewer grades).

Which leads to the playoffs. For many years, there was only a Super Bowl for each of five divisions, making the season very much like top-level college football in that losing one game pretty much knocked you out of the running. For my first three years of playing, this is exactly what happened to us.

Over the last few years, the body that oversees state high school sports reapportioned schools over seven divisons, but still with only one game. Finally, it's now set up so that each division has a playoff involving one of four conference winners (the exception being the bottom division, which is too small).

The upshot of all this reorganization is that there's more fairness with making the playoffs - MERHS made it this year with an 8-3 record - but less so in terms of playing teams from schools of a similar size. At least that's my perception where Manchester-Essex is concerned, but it's a small enough school that I think playing in anything but the lowest division would lead to this problem.

Anyway, more ranting than planned, good luck Hornets!

* For the first time since at least 2003 (and quite possibly earlier), I'm going to make the playoffs in the fantasy league I run. I think I've even clinched a bye. I won't bore you with details (again), but I'm pretty happy given that my team was centered on Shaun Alexander and Donovan McNabb... who played in the same week I think three times.