By Phil Major | Published Thursday, October 8, 2009
The streak is over, but just barely. The Alvord Bulldogs reversed what could have been a winning touchdown drive Friday night and turned it into a game-clinching interception return to end a three-week run of winless Wise County varsity football.
That gave Alvord the distinction of being the lone county team with a winning record, at 3-2. They're also the last to win a game (Sept. 4) and have more wins than all the other teams combined. Two others have a win apiece, while incredibly four are winless.
The good news: You can throw all that out. Now that district starts, it's a brand new season.
We're not sure when was the last time Wise County had such gridiron troubles.
So far the research has taken us back to 1972. On Oct. 20 of that season five Wise County teams lost, while Bridgeport and Decatur played to a 14-all tie. That's the last time no Wise County team won when there was a full slate of games.
There were two other instances when only three games were scheduled, and county teams lost all three, in 2000 and 2007.
On the other side of the ledger, Wise County teams have also never gone 7-0 in one week during the past 38 seasons. One week the teams were 4-0, but never even 5-0 or 6-0. A handful of 6-1 weeks are sprinkled in there.
And certainly there is no futility on record like the three weeks of no wins we've seen in 2009, nor the 1-23 record posted in September.
Incidentally, county teams won in the weeks before and after that 0-fer back in 1972.
County teams have already lost 29 games this year, and there's still half the season (35 games) to go. By comparison, the two best years on record out of the past 38 saw county teams lose a combined 24 and 22 times - for the entire season.
Coincidentally, during both those years, 1983 and 2004, Boyd went undefeated during the regular season and went on to capture state championships. And a nod to Paradise which also went 10-0 during 1983.
The worst season of the past 38 was just two short years ago when the ledger read 30-40. And during the entire span, county teams are a combined 44 games above .500, or just barely one game per year.
The research turned up this interesting tidbit. The Wise County team with the record for most points scored in a game? Chico, a 97-0 winner over Godley in 1975. Incidentally, that game still ranks as tied for seventh all-time, statewide, all classifications, for most points scored by one team. The record is 103.
It must have worn out the Dragons, because they were 8-0 at the time but dropped their last two games and missed out on the playoffs.
We know at least one county team will make the playoffs this year, since four of them compete in a six-team district. We also know there will be at least seven more wins - that's the number of times county teams must face each other.
The research hit a snag prior to 1973. Before Roy and Jeannine Eaton bought the newspaper, the only Messenger football coverage was of the Decatur Eagles. So criticism of a lack of countywide coverage may have been justifed back then.
We have found some Wise County results in Denton Record-Chronicle archives, so we'll try to dig a little deeper.
In the next couple of weeks, Richard Greene will join our staff as sports editor. Richard's top-quality work is well known to us during his years at Pilot Point, and we look forward to his arrival and resuming the type of sports coverage to which Messenger readers are accustomed. We have done our best to fill in the gap in the interim.
