60minuteMan

OK, Dookster, let me ask you and your Giles County kin folk a question. The last 5 or 6 years, the Giles record has been terrible, to say the least. Was there state championship caliber talent there? Absolutely not. But, at the same time, the other County team was experiencing one of the best 5 or 6 year runs they've had since the late 70's and early 80's. Same county, all the same scenarios' you listed for Giles fall, somehow didn't effect the Green boys 7 miles down the road. Help me understand, my friend. And the only thing I'm hurt about is I didn't see any effort whatsoever from Coach Williams to stop this trend. In my opinion, he was buying his time till he could get full benefits from teaching retirement. Hopefully, we'll find out soon if I'm right or wrong. And whatever happened to that great running back ya'll had about 10 years ago? He play any college ball?

That's your problem. you want other people's opinions, so you can sit back and poo-poo on them, without throwing out any serious ones of your own. Why? I'll tell you why. You've been a friend of Jeff Williams your whole life. As well as friends with the so called "good ol boy network." Because every Giles poster on this board knows who you are, you won't criticize the network. Don't want them confronting you standing by the fence in front of concessions during pre-game warm-ups or writing you speeding tickets going through Pembroke doing 48 in a 45. At least give the "J" Man credit, everyone knows who he is, and he knows the good ol boys monitor this board, but he's still man enough to call it like he sees it.

I'll try to keep this simple, so even you can understand. I don't have a preference in who we hire. I don't know every coach in the US that is looking to move on, move up. My preference is to be able to have a fairly long, extensive, drawn out period of taking applications and conducting interviews. Williams took that luxury away from us. 99% of the localized coaches looking to move up or move on have already accepted positions elsewhere. I was told, by somebody that should know, at our playoff game in Wytheville, that Jeff told him that week that he wasn't coming back next year. If that's so, Williams did a major disservice to the program by waiting till May. Now answer my question.

Can you give me an example, in this area, where a coach has left a struggling program, going through a down cycle, and had an assistant promoted to take over, that the new first time HC was able to turn the program around? Dozens of examples of struggling programs being turned around by bringing in a new head coach. And it's Jeff William's last dagger in the back of Spartan football, that he waited to crunch time to announce his retirement. Could of done it back in November.

let's just flip that back to you. Who do think we should be considering. Give a couple names on your wish list, then a few names on your realistic wish list.

I would assume with 3 high schools in the county, all 3 pay virtually the same for a head coach. GW and RR haven't had big head coach turnover through the years.

My guess is the players, and/or their parents, didn't realize till they got there, what the problem was. But they figured it out. I think it was year before last, the Giles Spartan football Facebook page, let all the seniors post a little section talking about their football years at Giles. Don't remember the total number of seniors that year, maybe about 10. But not a single one of those guys mentioned Coach Williams. That told me plenty. And the fact that, to my knowledge, only one player that ever played for Williams while he was head coach, ever came back to coach with him at Giles, tells me there's not a lot of respect there for the guy. And he only stayed one year.

So you're saying that even if Steve Ragsdale was still coaching, the results over the 5 or 6 years would of been the same?

Stayed too long. And a factor in the drop off in talent, was probably 5 to 10, guys would simply not come out for varsity football to play for Williams. He was widely disliked, and widely disrespected. 2 or 3 guys not coming out a year can majorly effect a single A sized program. Hopefully a new coach can get these guys to stay past JV

Rusty is Ricky Cook's uncle. You may remember Rusty's brother, Rick Cook playing for Narrows also

Probably only 2, maybe 3 other regular posters on here been around long enough to have seen them all, but here's my top 5 1. Leon King 2. Raphael Milton 3. Brian Mann 4. Shawn Eaves 5. Ricky Cook Honorable mention-----Tyrone Meadows and Keith Johnson

don't know of any that left Giles for that reason. A couple others that fit that description, came to Giles that could of played elsewhere. Ever heard of Ricky Cook or Brian Mann?

Our Boy transformed from the next coming of Steve Ragsdale to the resurrection of Roy Bayless. A few still don't want to admit that, but numbers don't lie.

Saw a FB post that the Galax/Auburn JV game scheduled for tonight has been canceled due to Galax, "That's Galax," not having enough healthy players to field a team.

Grayson has a turf field now. What's the difference between playing in rain on Thursday or playing in rain on Friday?

Maybe disagree with #2. A few years back, when Blacksburg won the state championship over a Staunton River team that ran the Single-wing, I'm pretty sure playing Giles that year, and every year, was a big help to their defensive preparation for that championship game.

Giles has been "Playing Up" in their non-district schedule pretty much since VHSL went to 6 classifications. Until the last 4 or 5 years, it's never been a problem. I think a major selling point to opponents AD's in the past, was Giles will bring a huge travel gate to your place. Not sure that's the case now. Too many fair weather fans now, not the old loyal, follow them anywhere crowd of years gone by. Still the fact remains, a lot of 1A and 2A won't schedule Giles. They will continue having to schedule up a bit. Only real advantage, a 2-8 regular season will generate enough power points to over take most 3-7 or maybe even 4-6 teams to grab a low seed play-off spot. So I think there are only 11 teams in region C-1A. so 8 teams going to make the play-offs. So Giles with a 2-8 season is pretty much a lock for play-offs, sad but true. On the same note, Pulaski Co. is in same boat. Not competing too well lately in their classification, but still having not only to compete in a really good district, they're still having to play the best of the best to fill out their non-district schedule.

Giles by 5 TD's. 35-0. Be like the Holston game, except Giles won't let them score a couple cheap TD's late.

I'm not going to look up everybody's forecast, but new river valley area showing little to no rain friday night

one encouraging thing I saw against Radford, we kicked deep to their return guys all 4 kick offs, with no really great returns by Radford. good pursuit and open field tackling. No squibb or pooch kicks to up guys. hopefully that wasn't just a one game thing. nothing can flip momentum as quick as a returned KO.

You seen any stats on last nights game? Radford couldn't of had many yards on the ground

probably the best night of tackling I've seen from a Giles defense in years. They were hitting hard and bringing guys down. Doubt Radford had 50 yds. on the ground. Difference in Radford from last year, the QB is no threat to run. I think he only ran once tonight

Got no solid confirmation, but heard Craig beat Bland 53-0

Auburn 46 Narrows 0. If you're from the pretty side of Angel's Rest, try not to giggle.

I see your point. But on the other hand, that would make it an even greater task for Auburn to ever get the program back to any kind of normalcy. I guess the district teams have to schedule them, unless they go the Bland route, and refuse to play a district schedule for a period of time.