[Not So] Bold Sunflower League Predictions for 2012

Kyle McFarland.  Lawrence Journal World.

1. Lawrence and Free State quarterbacks Brad Strauss and Kyle McFarland, respectively, become the fifth and sixth quarterbacks of the last 10 years to accumulate over 1,000 yards passing and rushing in the same season.  They will join Free State quarterbacks Ryan Murphy, Camren Torneden, Dylan Perry and Olathe North great Dustin Moomau on the list of quarterbacks from the Sunflower League to do so over that time period.

2. There will be movement out of the Sunflower League cellar.  As in, this won't be your older brother's SM South and Leavenworth.

3. Gene Wier's Olathe North ballclub won't win a league title for the first time in his last nine seasons as head coach of the program (Olathe North won SL titles from '95 through '02, the last eight seasons Wier spent at the school before heading to Texas).

4. This will be the proverbial "Year of the Quarterback" in the Sunflower League, with headliners such as Jordan Darling, Frank Seurer, John Blazevic, Strauss and McFarland leading the charges of their respective offenses.  At least one of those players will find themselves among the Simone finalists in December.

5. Lawrence will win 10 or more games for the first time since 2005 and Olathe East will add their 13th consecutive winning season and 11th consecutive playoff berth.

6. The winner of the colossal week five Olathe South vs. Lawrence matchup will finish the regular season undefeated and claim the Sunflower League crown outright.

7. Olathe South's Braden Smith will garner scholarship offers from the rest of the "Who's Who" of college football powers within the next six months, including Alabama who is close to offering but hasn't yet pulled the trigger. SM West's Austin Chambers will also see his offer list grow and at least one other player in the league who does not currently have an FBS will receive one.

8. There will be at least four players on my post-season Elite Eleven team that I did not do a Player Spotlight on and that may or may not have been mentioned, in an capacity, to this point in time on the Sunflower League Football Blog.

9. Some time around week six I will get slightly tired of blogging five or six times a week and struggle to get all of my posts up on time and people will get to work and see I haven't posted and email me with innocuous comments like "Are we getting stats this week?" or "I haven't seen the new Power Rankings, when should I expect those?"  And I will receive at least ONE not so innocuous email from at least ONE not so innocuous parent/patron/"kid who goes to his high school football team's games to 'be seen' and hit on girls and make resoundingly shallow masculine statements common of male high school students of that age who go to games to 'be seen'"/grandparent/creepy uncle about how I am not writing enough about their team, our about how deeply, personally unfair it is that I spelled so-and-so's name wrong or about how I "really have no idea what I'm doing or writing about, do I?"

10. I will enjoy writing about the Sunflower League in 2012.  Thoroughly.

Wier Approved as Olathe North Head Coach

Gene Wier returns as head coach
to the school where he won six
Class 6A state championships.

After spending nine seasons away from Olathe North Gene Wier is returning to the program that he molded into one of the state's elite in the mid-1990s.

The Olathe School District Education Board approved Olathe North's plans to hire Wier as the new head football coach in place of former head coach Pete Flood, who resigned in November to spend more time with his family.

When Wier left Olathe North following the 2002 season, the Eagles were on a 38-game winning streak and had won three-straight 6A state championships, not to mention six of the past seven dating back to 1996.

The Olathe North team Wier inherits in 2012 is high in talent--and question marks.  This past season the Eagles began 5-0 before losing four straight games to close out the season, missing the playoffs.

The program also graduated the majority of their star power including players like Tanner Gentry, Orange Mooney, Treshawn Root and Jordan Bruce. 

Save the hiccup in 2011, Olathe North has had more success than any Sunflower League team in recent years.  They went 13-0 winning the 6A title in 2009, and finished as the 6A Runner-Up in 2010 going 11-2.

Q and A Session

Q: Which stadium is the best in the Sunflower League?

A: The new stadiums being built in Lawrence appear to be state of the art, and the new SM North stadium is as nice of a facility as you can find in Kansas. However, I would still maintain that the charm of the Olathe District Activities Center (ODAC) is undeniable. The drive through the cornfields to the stadium adds to the mystique, and the stadium itself has housed countless All-State players and championship teams. Also, ODAC still fields a grass playing surface, something that is becoming more and more uncommon in Johnson County, and around the state of Kansas. Given all of the history, and the certain "field of dreams" aura the stadium holds, I would have to give ODAC the nod for the top stadium.

Q: Which football team is the best of the decade?

A: This isn't too tough of a question, because most all signs point to the 2000 Olathe North team as the most dominant. I could go on all day about how talented the team was, but I can sum it up much quicker with a few statistical measures:

• Olathe North's top two running backs in 2000--senior Darren Sproles (right) and junior Maurice Mack--combined to total 3,464 rushing yards and 60 rushing touchdowns that season.
  
• Olathe North scored 35 or more points in 11 of their 12 games.


• Olathe North's defense gave up, on average, 8.2 points per game.

Forget top team in the conference for the decade, that Olathe North team was the best team in the state of Kansas the past 10 years. They ended the 2000 season on a high note, beating Manhattan in the 6A title game by a score of 42-7. Sproles has five touchdown runs in that title game.

Q: What is the best rivalry?

A: I have stated this before, and I will state it again--the Lawrence vs. Lawrence Free State game is truly the biggest rivalry game in the Sunflower League. I didn't realize the magnitude of the contest until I spent my freshman year of college at KU in Lawrence, and was able to experience first hand the competitiveness between the two schools. Just in case you're interested, the two teams square off October 23.

Q: When will the 6A State crown return the Sunflower League?

A: Presumable this upcoming season. Olathe North won the title from 2000 through 2003, and since then, the league is 0-5 in the 6A title game. The good news is that there doesn't appear to be a dominate 6A team on the Central or Western part of the state in 2009. If the East side of the state (and more specifically the Sunflower League) is going to regain the title it needs to be this year. With Hutch likely returning to 6A in 2010, the title will only become more competitive next year.

Q: What game has had the biggest impact on the Sunflower League the past 10 years?

A: The game I would point to would be the 2003 match up between Olathe North and SM North. Gene Wier had departed Olathe North to become the head coach at Richland High School in Texas, and meanwhile John McCall was in his first game as the head coach of Olathe North. On the other side of the coin, SM North was coached by chiseled veteran Sam Brown. Brown was returning one of his best Indian teams in his tenure, and on that night they had Olathe North's number. The game was a rather boring contest, filled with sloppy play and uncontrolled nerves. In the end, SM North won the game 7-6, snapping Olathe North's win streak at 38 games.

What came of the game? Olathe North went 10-3 and won the 6A state championship that year, but things just didn't seem the same without Weir at the helm. The following year Olathe North looked like the best team in the state of Kansas for 12 weeks before falling the state championship game. John McCall left to join Wier's staff in Texas following the 2004 season. SM North finished 2003 with a record of 6-3, and then went 5-4 in Brown's last season at SM North in 2004. Brown returned to coach his Alma mater, Excelsior Springs High School, where he has remained the head man since 2005.

Q: What game has been the biggest upset of the decade?

A: This one is difficulty to figure for sure, but I would go with SM West's defeat of Olathe East in the 2004 Sectional Round of the playoffs. SM West had gone 2-7 in 2003, before changing things around in 2004 and completing the regular season 7-2. Olathe East on the other hand was as loaded as ever. They had gone 8-1 during the regular season, and looked primed to take the 6A title. In fact, nearly every media pundit in the area was choosing Olathe East to win the game.

What happened? Olathe East came out cold, and SM West came out on fire. SM West's Andrew Patch caught a deep touchdown pass early in the first quarter to give SM West a 7-0 lead, a lead which they would hold throughout. A couple DJ Barnett touchdowns gave the Vikings a 21-0 lead when the final whistle blew. Perhaps the craziest thing about that game was that Olathe East's do-it-all freak, Andre Jones, was held to a mere 18 yards rushing. SM West lost to Olathe South the next week in the State Semi-finals, but their shutout upset over the Hawks still ranks as my top upset of the decade.

Decade Statistical Analysis

The 2009 football season will mark the last season of football in the decade of the 2000s. Alot has taken place in the Sunflower League the past 9 years (and alot will probably happen in this final season of the decade). So, why not take a look at some statistical analysis of each program over the decade, with a little bit of my own analysis mixed in?

Let's first begin by analyzing each program's win-loss record and winning percentage during the decade. One interesting thing to note is that great desparity between the top teams in the league, and then the 5 or so teams that have hovered around .500 for the past nine seasons. Starting with the top three teams...

1. Olathe North, 87-19 (.820)

2. Olathe East, 75-22 (.773)

3. Olathe South, 57-35 (.619)

Not surprisingly, the top three teams so far (in terms of winning) come from Olathe during the decade. Gene Wier (above) coached Olathe North to a 37-0 record during the 2000s before he departed to be the head coach at Richland High School in North Richland Hills, Texas in 2003.

4. Lawrence, 54-39 (.580)

5. SM West, 53-38 (.582)

6. Lawrence Free State, 52-42 (.553)

SM West wedges themselves between LHS and Free State in the grouping of 4-6. SM West had only won 7 games from 2000-2002. Since the arrival of head coach Tim Callaghan, the Vikings have won 46 games in six years, by far the biggest turn around of any team during the decade.

7. SM Northwest, 44-43 (.505)

8. SM North, 37-48 (.435)

9. SM East, 35-53 (.398)

Three Shawnee Mission schools round out the 7, 8, and 9 spots. Player like Bryce Atagi (ballcarrier, right) have helped the Cougars keep a record just about .500 for the decade.

10. SM South, 25-61 (.291)

11. Olathe Northwest*, 13-33 (.283)

12. Leavenworth, 11-70 (.135)

The bottom three inlcude three teams that have been perennially poor in football over the past decade. * Olathe Northwest has only been around since 2004, so their win and loss total are skewed, however, their win percentage shows that they have still been second to the last in the league since their inception.

Now to playoff and league results:

State Championships:
Olathe North (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003)

State Championship Runner-Ups:
Olathe North (2004), Olathe South (2004, 2007), Olathe East (2005), SM West (2006), Lawrence Free State (2008)

State Semifinal Appearences:
Olathe North (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007), Olathe East (2002, 2005), Olathe South (2004, 2007), SM West (2004, 2006), Lawrence Free State (2006, 2008), Lawrence (2005), SM North (2000), SM East (2001)

Sunflower League Championships*:
Olathe North (2000, 2001, 2002, 2004), Olathe East (2003, 2005, 2008), SM West (2005, 2006, 2008), Olathe South (2001), Lawrence Free State (2006), SM North (2000), SM Northwest (2007)

*There were ties for the Sunflower League Championships in '00, '01, '05, '06, and '08.

After totalling the statistics, and accolades, it is clear that Olathe North (despite rough patches since the departure of Gene Weir) will be the team of the decade when the dust clears after the 2009 season. The Eagles four state championships from '00-'03 (Maurice Mack, left #24, sheds tears with his teammates following the Eagle's state championship victory in 2001) are four more than any other team the past decade (no Sunflower League team has won a title since 2003). The program's 87 wins are also 12 more than the second place team, Olathe East...

Olathe East will hold the #2 spot overall for the decade, as they have 18 more wins that third place Olathe South. The Hawks have won three Sunflower League Championships, made two state semifinal appearences, and one title game appearence in 2005.

Places #3 through #6 could make for some interesting outcomes. Olathe South has 57 wins, Lawrence has 54, SM West 53, and Lawrence Free State 52. With those four teams as close as they are in the race, the team that finished 2009 with the most wins will more than likely take the #3 overall wins spot for the decade.