SAN ANGELO, TX — The Dallas Morning News published the predictions for Friday's semifinal playoff game between the Allen Eagles and San Angelo Central Bobcats Thursday. Of the eight sports writers on the panel, just two picked Central to win. Adam Boedeker of the Denton Record-Chronicle and Corbett Smith of SportsDayHS radio are with West Texas, the rest Metroplex.
The Allen American’s Matt Welch heaps hefty helpings of praise on Central’s defense. As proof, he notes Central’s “throttling of Keller Timber Creek where the Bobcats held one of the Metroplex’s top offenses scoreless in the second half and allowed just 252 yards.”
After reading Allen’s newspaper of record, if I were an Allen fan, I’d stay home.
There’s more. Welch notes that Bobcat’s top receiver Adam West is 6-foot-8 and the tallest of Allen’s most talented defensive backs are one-foot shorter.
Welch notes that Allen will persevere and finally put away Central in the second half when the D-FW team is strongest. But only by 3 points, he wrote.
PrepForce.com held a Twitter poll where over 300 voted so far. They asked, who would win? Only 17 percent said Central would. You can vote in the poll here.
On Tuesday, The Dallas Morning News noted that Allen has only traveled 89 miles to play the six away games this season. But Friday, Allen’s football players will be forced to travel 300 miles all at once.
Matt Wixon of the Dallas Morning News predicted an Allen win, 38-34. He said Allen has to travel to San Angelo because Allen lost the zip-code guessing game. (Duncanville will defeat Arlington Bowie 37-35, he wrote).
Michael Florek at DallasNews.com wrote that the teams are about even. He even included a table of stats.
A West Texas versus Metroplex story on DallasNews.com that summarized a podcast discussion about the game being small town David versus big city Goliath created a string of comments from Allen fans wanting to back away from their big city advantage. “Allen is hardly a big city. In fact, San Angelo is more populated than Allen!” lamented Dorian Moffat. Another commenter retorted that San Angelo doesn’t sit in a metro area of 6 million people. “Yep! Go Allen. Please make my property taxes matter,” concluded Allen resident Mark Bednar. For the record, Allen High School has over 6,300 students; Central has 2,850.
The Allen Eagle Fan Club on Twitter doesn’t think the expected sellout crowd at a stadium that holds 17,500 people is that big of a deal for Allen. “Allen gas [SIC] played at AT&T with 50,000 plus,” it tweeted.
Then there is the Allen Eagles "Nike Commercial" hype video, filmed during the 2013 season. It's still making the rounds on Twitter. The Wall Street Journal reports the Nike sponsorship deal is real.
"Allen has a sponsorship deal with Nike and plays in a 18,000-seat stadium dotted with Coca-Cola ads. This year, the district expects to take in $238,000 in stadium sponsorships.
"Nike has sent a helicopter and a Lamborghini to campus bearing surprise trunks of gear as a reward for making the state championship games in previous years," WSJ reported in Aug. 2016.
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Allen coach Terry Gambill said his team leaves the D-FW Metroplex at 7:30 a.m. by bus Friday morning. With a stop in Abilene to eat lunch, they will arrive in San Angelo before 2:30 p.m. Friday for the 4 p.m. kickoff.
There are no plans to televise the game, though you can follow along on San Angelo LIVE! where we’ll post as much video, pictures and running commentary as we can.
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