Questions circulate as we preare for the 2010 high school football season. We begin with Greensburg Salem and Hempfield Friday night, one of the biggest enduring rivalries in Westmoreland County.

Last night, the first shots were fired on the season at the High School Football Preseason Special from Pitzer's Townhouse in Jeannette. Among our discussions included talk about "preseason rankings" and the use of the rankings as motivation. For example, Hempfield is predicted to finish near the bottom of the Class AAAA Football Conference, according to the MSA SportsNetwork. Coach Greg Meisner said that he plans to put the MSA preseason rankings on the whiteboard for his team for motivational purposes.

This got me to thinking how parity is a funny thing in football. It seems that at every level of football, predictions are often hardest to deliver. The element of luck, combined with the ease of key injuries throughout ...