This week's bizarre high school football score

Now I started down a rabbit hole.

MaxPreps had a list of the 10 HS runners who came closest to 2,000 yards in five games before Knox. I was curious about how they wound up.

1. Tyler Ebell (Ventura, Calif.) – Solid career at UCLA, late transfer to UTEP. Played four years in the CFL, 2007-2010.

2. David Dotson (Moreno Valley, Calif.) – One season at Southern Cal. No idea of what happened after 204 rushing yards in 1993.

3. and 9. Derrick Henry (Yulee, Fla., and Frostproof, Fla.) – College star at Alabama, NFL star with Tennessee.

4. Paul McCoy (Matewan, W.Va.) – Can find absolutely nothing online about his college career. But he was the subject of national scrutiny after coach Yogi Kinder helped him run for 658 yards in a 64-0 win.

5. Kenneth Hall (Sugar Land, Texas) – A single-wing QB, he went to Texas A&M but quit to get married before his first training camp under Bear Bryant. He would play in the NFL and CFL between 1957 and 1961.

6. Arkeel Newsome (Ansonia, Conn.) – Bowling ball (5-7, 185) had a solid career at UConn before moving into coaching.

7. Thomas Tyner (Beaverton, Ore.) – High-profile recruit by home-state Oregon in 2013, played just two years there and turned up at Oregon State in 2017.

8. Kellen Overstreet (Hamilton, Mo.) – Solid, but unspectacular career at Wyoming as he battled injuries. Did run for 139 yards once at San Jose State.

10. Daniel Bangura (Canal Winchester, Ohio) – Currently a redshirt senior at Kent State, he has seen only spot action.

 

Derrick Henry is the only NFL star of any note on this list. But Kenneth Hall remains a Texas schoolboy legend.

 

Doesn't Kenneth Hall, or didn't he for a long time, hold some sort of major national record? Touchdowns in a game, or a season, or something like that?

 

His 11,232 career rushing yards stood as a national record until Derrick Henry broke it in 2012.

 

I thought I had a kid who flirted with it, just a beast of a runner when he wanted to be but not much else (I’m taking intelligence). Looked at his stats and he didn’t come close. Broke 400 in his first game of his senior season, but didn’t do it again after. Still had close to 3,000 rushing yards. He had a 45-yard game in a loss and a 150-yard game in a blow out (that team had no business being in that league) which kept him from 3,000. Still a helluva season but I’m realizing how special it is to avenge 300 yards per game let alone the 400 necessary to hit 2,000 in 5 games.

 

In 1950, a 5-7, 138-pound sophomore at Netcong, N.J., HS, John Giannantonio, ran for 4,756 yards and 41 touchdowns in eight games. (The school no longer exists.) His 594.5 rushing yards per game remains a national record.

Giannantonio went on to ride the bench at Villanova for three years.

 

Kansas 11-man tonight:
Andale 108, Nickerson 0.

Andale has dominated its division for years and years and years. Nickerson, well, hasn't.

The only reason this game was played is because it was a district game. I suppose Nickerson could have forfeited, but in Kansas if you forfeit one district game, you automatically forfeit all of them.

 

Had my first exposure to the rule that after two overtimes, teams got one play for a two-point conversion starting with the third overtime. UIL uses NCAA rules.

 

Those were all-purpose yards, though, according to the story link.

John Giannantonio of Netcong (N.J.) is listed with a 594 yard average, however that total is based on his all-purpose yardage total of 4,756 yards in eight games. His rushing total for the 1950 season was just over 3,000 yards (according to several New Jersey media sources), but the exact total is unknown. Giannantonio likely has an average close to 375 yards per game, but nothing official.

 

11-man, there is no mercy rule.