Patrick Donahue

Editor & General Manager

We’re not even close to being out of August and we’re about to enter week 2 of the high school football season.

For this week, around here, that means the Commissioners Cup is at stake again between Liberty County and Bradwell Institute. Oh, there have been great Bradwell rivalries of the past – Wayne County, Statesboro, both of which still continue, Benedictine through the 1980s and 90s (and to think that one started with a 1-0 game), Glynn Academy and way back in the day Claxton – but the cross-county game has taken its spot as the most anticipated rivalry game.

There was a short time when this game was played twice a year, once at the beginning of the season and again at the end. In spite of the rivalry and the crowd that likely will be on hand this Friday night, it just won’t feel like a fall Friday night. Because it won’t be. It’ll still be hot. Like so hot it’s too hot for the band to be in full uniform.

Playing this game as the second game of the season isn’t a bad idea. Playing it in August?

We can thank wanting to play state championship games in Atlanta, rather than at home sites, for that.

The last state championship game I covered was in 2021. It was at what was once Turner Field and is now Georgia State University’s football stadium. It was a cool and misty Friday noon kickoff.

For a sports writer, if the team you are covering gets that far, you want them to win. Makes for a better story. Also makes the long drives and late nights a little more worth it, too.

In that game, it was over at halftime. It was 21-0 and the team I was covering had three possessions. All three-andout against a team they had beaten – on the road – earlier in the season.

I still had reason to be glad, though. The winning quarterback was a kid named Sultan Cooper Jr. He’s the spitting image of his dad, who was one of my favorite kids to cover lo these many years ago. That also means kids I covered in state playoff games now have their own kids playing in state playoff games. How’d that happen?

I stuck around a little bit for the next game, which was the Class AAAA game with Benedictine against Carver- Columbus. Fog was rolling in and it was so thick it was hard to see the field from the press box.

So that won’t be a problem when the state championships return indoors to the Mercedes Benz Stadium. The semifinals had been at the Georgia Dome and then the finals moved there but the word is the new stadium carried a steeper price tag to host the state championships.

But I also remember the atmosphere vividly at Kelly Memorial Field in Sylvania for the 2002 Class AA state championship. Perhaps it was some sort of serendipity that it was only a little more than an hour’s drive separating the two teams in the finals, host Screven County and visiting Dublin.

To top that off, I was friends with one of the coaches on the Screven County staff and I ran into Dublin’s principal, who had been my high school principal. That’s right, Bradwell classes of the 1980s, it was Gene Nisbet.

They were five deep around the fence that night in Sylvania. Playing indoors in Atlanta is supposed to negate one team having a decided home field advantage. But did Thomasville and Fitzgerald need to travel four hours to play each other when they could have saved a couple of hours and a lot of hotel room expenses.

In the larger classifications, which have been predominantly north Georgia and metro Atlanta schools, playing in Atlanta makes sense. Even the Class AAA title game the last couple of years has been metro Atlanta teams. Last year’s Class AAAAA final, though, was Warner Robins vs. Ware County.

In order to get the Atlanta venue, though, the season has to end on a certain date and that means it has to start at a certain time, too. It means starting earlier and if anybody went to Jesup on Thursday night or Liberty County High on Friday night, and likely Ludowici too, they can tell you, it was pretty brutal out there. As bad as it is for the fans, I can’t imagine how bad it is for the players right now.

But if you want to book the big room in Atlanta for the big show, playing in mid August heat in Georgia has to happen. Maybe it’s time to think about moving the state football championships around like they do with baseball and basketball and kicking off a couple of weeks later.

I hope the weather doesn’t deter the crowd from turning out Friday night at Donell Woods Stadium/Kirk Warner Field, nor are there any TikTok challenges to pursue in the stands, the kinds that reportedly brought the BC-Jenkins game to a screeching halt. This is a good rivalry, and I’m glad it has resumed.

I just hope the fans aren’t too sweat-drenched to cheer.