Author Archives: Mark Tennis
State Schools of the Century (So Far)
We came up with a points system for all of the schools that have been mentioned and honored in our annual State School of the Year selections since the 1999-2000 school year and have put together a top 10 for overall sports excellence so far for the 21st century. It is close at the top […]
Top Takeaways From Latest CIF Moves
This post is more of an opinion about what could come next regarding the latest delay in California high school sports, and what to look for as it impacts state rankings, all-state teams and this web site in the coming weeks. We also reveal the results of a recent football coaches survey we did which […]
Football Blasts From The Past
Here’s another look back in time to approximately the same week of the California high school football season from five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 years ago. At the end of what would have normally been the end of each of those seasons, we may go back even further such as Long […]
Salute to Rafer Johnson (1935-2020)
In the 40-plus years of following and covering California high school sports, we’ve met a lot of great people. The greatest athlete we’ve ever met so far (including late Uncle Nelson in that statement) would be Olympic legend Rafer Johnson, who died this week at age 86. There’s a good reason why the only two […]
Fall CIF finals cancelled/season delayed
With the Coronavirus pandemic surging at its worst levels yet in the state, the California Interscholastic Federation announced on Tuesday that there will be no start of fall sports practices in the state in December as scheduled and that all fall sports state regional and state championships (including football) will be cancelled. An announcement like […]
All-Time All-Section/All-County Teams (Part 1)
Based on how these players did after high school, here is a look at three of these teams in another short series we’re doing as we wait for the next football season to hopefully begin in the state. For this group of teams, we have the CIF Central Section, CIF Sac-Joaquin Section and Orange County....
1994, ’08, ’81 Season Replays Week 13
This is how the season looked after the 13th week during our week-by-week replay for three of the most exciting, unpredictable football seasons we’ve covered in our 40-plus years: 1981, 1994 and 2008. And at this point in those seasons section playoff finalists were getting done and tough decisions in some cases were looming. The...
Combined State Coaching Records
Here’s a salute to the greatest high school coaches in California history. We’re doing it by compiling updated state records in numerous combined coaching categories, such as most CIF state team titles, most CIF section team titles, most all-time varsity coaching wins and most varsity head coaching seasons. All-time leaders in those categories are Don […]
Select All-State FB Writeups (2003-2011)
Continuing with our efforts to add more content to this website from our massive 40 years of publishing newsletters, magazines and state record books on previous platforms, here are select all-state first team football writeups for a nine-year period beginning in 2003 and ending in 2011. Go inside to see what we wrote about first […]
Football Blasts From The Past
Here’s another look back in time to approximately the same week of the California high school football season from five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 years ago. At the end of what would have normally been the end of each of those seasons, we may go back even further. For this look […]
