Football Friday Nights- A Look at the 2014 Season

Another high school football season is upon us, and with that another great year with our Football Friday Night crew on Team 600 ESPN El Paso.  Mark Miller returns for his second season as the host of our show.  Paul McKinnon will join Mark in the studio this season.  Former Franklin Head Coach Tony Grijalva will be hitting the road this year at the site of our best games every week and providing commentary on those with our new Coach's Corner segment.

Our team of reporters will hit the El Paso area stadiums and cover all the schools From Montwood High School to Clint High, all the best games and playoff races will get covered by our team.  Our 2014 team is made up of Steve Escajeda, "The Iceman" Brandon Cohn, Jaime Chavez, Ray Adauto, Joe Rodriguez, Chris Babcock, Joe Penissi, and Bill Coon.

With that, the 2014 season brings about some changes.  As it happens every two years, the University Interscholastic League (Texas's governing body for all public school athletics) re-aligns the classifications based on enrollment figures and re-shapes how the districts look.  This year, we no longer have the top classification as 5A; the biggest schools are now a part of 6A.  What does this mean for El Paso?  It means that our disticts now have a much different look.  Let's take a look at the new district alignments.

District 1-6A:  This district is made up of Americas, Coronado, Eastwood, El Dorado, Franklin, Montwood, and Socorro.

District 1-5A:  The district is now made up of Andress, Austin, Bowie, Burges, Canutillo, Chapin, El Paso High, Irvin, and Jefferson.

District 2-5A:  This district had the most turnover as it is now made up of Bel Air, Del Valle, Eastlake, Hanks, Horizon, Parkland, Riverside, and Ysleta.

From 4A to 1A the districts are split into Division 1(Big School) and Division 2(Small School).

District 2-4A, Division 1:  This district is now made up of Andrews, Clint, Fabens, Mountain View, and San Elizario.

District 2-3A, Division 1: Only one local area team is in the district made up of Brownfield, Denver City, Kermit, Shallowater, Slaton, and Tornillo.

District 3-2A, Division 1: Again only one local area team in this district that consists of Anthony, Cristoval, Forsan, McCamey, and Ozona.

It is certainly going to be an exciting year of high school football.  Surprise teams from a year ago, like Eastwood, could make runs for the district championship.  With more El Paso teams taking on out-of-town competition, there is no doubt that an El Paso area team will be able to eventually make a run in the state playoffs.  This may be the year, but we will have to wait and see.