Brian Out Loud Archive

In some ways the high school football world mirrors the current state of the job market in this country.

While there isn’t pay involved, a need to go to an open interview, or even a sign-on bonus available, there is an opportunity for teams to fill a void if they happen to have one.

I feel at times as if I’m dodging bullets doing my job amid the COVID-19 pandemic, wondering if I’ve been exposed and torn at times on when to wear my mask in a sports setting and when I’m good without one.

For the record, I’ve been vaccinated, and there was a time not too long ago where worries of the pandemic had faded away shortly after that vaccination. Our country seemed to be moving in the right direction.

We are back to normal as we get ready for another high school sports season.

Well, we are sort of back to normal.

I’ve noticed lately that people tend to take what the non-experts have to say and view it as the truth.

It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the opinion might be.

There are always different paths available to the same destination, and often the same result, and that is exactly what college football is shooting for as it looks into blazing a new trail to a championship.

The current playoff format is four teams. Save for an exception here or there, it’s typically the same teams competing for a title year after year, with Alabama, of course, being the safest bet in the game.

We’ve got Tim Tebow in the NFL, Tony La Russa unhappy with his own player violating a rule that isn’t even written down and fans at games behaving like the teacher just left the room for five minutes.

Man, sports, get your mind right. Because at the moment, you’ve lost it.

Resilient seems to be the most fitting word to describe the senior athletes who will walk across the stage at graduation Saturday inside the Bay Center in Pensacola.

It’s fitting because it took a lot of resilience mixed in with mental toughness and a willingness to adapt to get through a senior season that was anything but normal.

If there was anyone who took last year’s shutdown of the sports world in stride because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was Michael Sandle.

He just went with the flow, staying level-headed, always believing that things would get back to a degree of normalcy and that he would get to play baseball again.

We made it everyone. The curtain has been lowered on the 2020-21 high school sports season.

Normally, the end of the season isn’t a cause for celebration, but this one is different.

Navarre athletic director Scott Murphy has told me the story before about the time the Raiders were at the state softball tournament and someone mispronounced Navarre while also wondering where the heck the town was in Florida.

That was more than a decade ago.