Metro Sports Report

A truly strange week ...

Last week was one of the strangest that I have been through in my now 45 years of gracing God's green earth.

And I knew it would be. I knew for a long time it would be.

For the first time in my career as a play-by-play broadcaster, I was not sitting behind a microphone at a high school football game on a Friday night. For the first time since September 1, 1989, I was not calling a game.

Instead, I was sitting in the stands at Chalmers Field in Dubuque watching my son play football.

A little background. My son Ryan is a senior wide receiver for the Kennedy football team. Going into the Fall we were hoping he would be getting some varsity playing time and that has turned out to be the case. I knew it would be a thrill to call my son's name on a game broadcast, but hey, that's another subject and another column for sometime down the road, perhaps.

Randy Krejci wants to help 'Save The Valley'

Randy Krejci has impeccable credentials in the Mississippi Valley Conference.

He's been a player, coach, athletic director and referee in the MVC and has served as Valley commissioner since 2000, so it would be hard to find anyone who cares more deeply about the league than he does.

"It's meant a lot to me," he said. "It's where I grew up."

Krejci doesn't claim to have a panacea to cure all the problems facing Class 4A schools around the state, but he'd sure like to help find one and forestall a statewide move to Class 4A district football.

Krejci likes the idea of establishing quotas for Class 4A schools, giving each conference a certain number of playoff berths to keep all four Class 4A conferences intact (see the Metro Sports Report story that was posted Tuesday on quotas).

No spies needed: Heitland is a double-threat

Kennedy has a big football game with No.2 Iowa City High Thursday night, and for a while Tuesday it looked like somebody was spying on the Cougars during practice.

Coach Tim Lewis has seen him there before, perched on the deck of a condominium that borders the western side of the Kennedy practice field, peering at the Cougars through binoculars.

Lewis was startled the first time he spotted him. Now he laughs about it, because it's just a Kennedy fan with a keen interest in the team. He's not spying, he's just watching.

So no, the Iowa City Little Hawks are not spying on the Cougars. They don't have to, because Lewis is perfectly willing to share part of his game plan with anyone who asks.

There's nothing top-secret about it.

"I like our game plan," he said. "We're going to do what we do, what our kids are comfortable with.

"I thought we ran the ball well on them (the Little Hawks) last year. The key is to keep their offense off the field, so we'll take our time and make sure we don't snap the ball with 20 seconds left on the play clock."

We can 'Save The Valley' with football quotas

(Editor's Note: This article is part of the Metro Sports Report's attempt to save the Mississippi Valley Conference as a football league and stop the move toward Class 4A district football).

The Metro Sports Report thinks it has found a way to "Save the Valley" as a football league.

We think our solution would solve scheduling problems, let smaller schools play Class 3A football and protect the Mississippi Valley Conference as a football league.

It would keep 32 teams in the Class 4A playoffs and forestall the move toward Class 4A district football.

Our solution is fairly simple. It's called quotas, and we think it can be popular, successful and painless.

First, some background information.