Cougar14.2

Man, I didn’t want to mention it because I think this is a time to try to be positive but I’m extremely worried about our talent retention? I would hope the UIL didn’t do the most sensible thing and just add Crosby to the current 23-6A and add BH to the current 24-6A but if they did I could see Crosby struggling to retain some of our higher level kids. Prime example will be La’Damien DeFreeze lining up for North Shore in the state title game Saturday. Imagine him on the other side of Jordan this year? That being said, 6A is all about the trenches and all I would rate us is “above average” in 5A-D1. I would think we go back to a true spread to try to limit our disadvantage at the LOS. I think after Robison leaves next year you’ll see more read-option incorporated similar to schemes the previous two coaches ran. We have a couple kids coming who would fit the scheme perfectly. Who runs it, I think he’s going to try to make big hire knowing that’s his most important one? Coach Williams promoted Coach Harrison to DC and I kind of hope defense will be our calling card until we can compete physically on a consistent basis. You’re correct about the kids on offense though, even the big DT that started all 11 games was a freshman. I hope Coach Williams will get us back to looking like we have the talent college recruiters think we do.

And yet you just missed the whole point of me saying Crosby would be more competitive too once we had 2,800+ kids like Kingwood? I’ve stated the same thing every time and I’ve told you why those schools with smaller enrollments can be highly competitive. You have million dollar addresses like some of the Vandy kids or a large number of heavily recruited black kids like Longview does. If your school is 72% Hispanic like North Shore you better have a big enrollment to mitigate that or have a total football playing enrollment of about 1,500. The last decade of course we’ve had 20 6A state champions; Duncanville, North Shore, Westlake, Katy, Longview, Allen, Cy-Fair and Lake Travis. None of them go against what I’ve stated and none of the 4 state finalist playing in 6A do this year either. This fact that you had to throw Willis in there who 1) has 2,900 kids and growing fast and 2) was 12-20 their first three years in 6A until their enrollment grew and they could close the gap on schools like The Woodlands shows you can’t “give me a list” of elite 6A programs that go against what I said. You may not like what I’m saying but as far as the THSF 6A landscape goes the numbers are the numbers.

Pretty sure I clearly laid it out why the enrollment gap was specifically THE issue. With Crosby’s demographics we need 2,800+ kids to put a product on the field remotely close athletically to the 6A schools in the area outside of Channelview, regardless of coaching. Last year Kingwood beat CE King by 1 point to finish in 4th place and of course playing out of that district made the regional final. Good program, good coach, lots of money and great ball-playing demographics but even at 2,800+ enrollment like Kingwood turned in on snapshot day, unless you have a super senior class like they did last year you’re going to struggle to finish higher than 5th in this area like they did this year even with all those advantages. They just can’t matchup athletically on a consistent basis with those larger enrollment schools. Crosby will be in the same situation until we have more football players on campus.

Congrats to Coach! I think he’s going to revitalize the program. He’s done the exact opposite of what Willis did on his side of the ball. The last couple of years he’s taken the talent Crosby has produced and put together some very salty units. Numbers may not always reflect it due to how inept our offenses have been which kept them on short fields and constantly losing the time of possession battle. Don’t be surprised if you see him rob one of the coordinators from North Shore, CE King or Summer Creek or one of those guys in those “co” positions. That’s where Crosby being basically 15-20 minutes away from those schools gives us the same advantage it does with the transfers. Being from East Texas I’m sure Coach Williams has some connections out there too. My only hope would be that the administration supports him financially and gives him at minimum the same three years they gave Willis to show improvement. He’s only 36 years old and this will be his first head coaching job so I expect some growing pains having to cut his teeth at the highest level of high school football in the country while playing with the short stack. We hit big time on the last two coordinators we hired so here’s to hoping we go 3/3.

King is 65% Hispanic. Crosby is about 50%. They’re filling up Barrett Station, not the $300k starter homes in Newport. The reason you don’t think King looks like that is because they have 3,600 kids and you don’t see any of them on the field. The closer our overall enrollment climbs to 3,000 the closer we get to the football playing demographic number of about 1,500 that we need to be competitive in 6A-D2. The completion of Sweetgrass Village and Barrett Crossing alone will push Crosby’s enrollment to about 2,800 once you include the new Newport homes. Going to suck for a while but Crosby is in an excellent position to be pretty competitive in 4-5 years.

Schools like SLC, Westlake, Vandergrift, etc. get around the overall enrollment with 1) money and 2) they have Hispanic populations down in the teens. For instance Highland Park’s Hispanic population is only 6.1% so their football playing demographics are very close to 6A competitive levels for Texas. The higher the Hispanic population the more kids you need to be competitive in 6A unless you can mitigate it with money. North Crowley has 3,049 kids but more importantly they have 1,706 black kids to go with solid coaching. That is an unreal amount for a metro school in Texas and similar to Summer Creek’s 1,722 but under Duncaville’s 1,888. With North Shore’s demographics they would suck at football if they didn’t have 4,000+ kids. If you dropped NS’ enrollment to Crosby’s and kept their same demographic makeup they would lose about 620 of their 1,038 black kids and not be near as competitive considering the talent pool where they get 95%+ of their starters would’ve cut in more than half. Desoto has a 5A enrollment but their school is 74% black so their talent pool is actually 1.5X that of North Shore. Very few schools the last 10-15 years have broken these rules. Cedar Hill is a prime example of what I’m talking about though. Stagnant to declining enrollment since their title game appearance in 2020 and are sub-.500 in the five years since. Not that having money or demographics mean everything but they’re hard facts to stray from when 6/8 teams playing for the 5A and 6A titles look exactly the same while the 5A-D1 state finals teams are extremely similar financially. Long story short, with Crosby’s demographics we’re going to need 2,800+ before we can consistently be competitive in 6A outside of the Houston and Pasadena districts.

Idk how “open” this one really is? I would think the OC would’ve been in line for the job but he took the Hutto head coaching job last year. Feels like a “go rob one of Samples’ assistants” openings.

Christmas came early 🙏🏾 Make no mistake, this wasn’t a “voluntary” step down. Great dude but like I said three years ago when we hired him, he’s just not a fit for Crosby scheme or personality wise. Too many losses to teams with less talent or mediocre coaching. Too many excuses for why he couldn’t win even given more talent than Prieto had. As far as Coach Williams, I’m not sure he’s ready to be a head coach yet but he’s definitely going to bring energy and participation back to the program. I also think he’s going to be able to hire a better staff than those who were willing to work for Willis. I think he’s going to be able to peel off staff from the beltway schools and make significant improvements on the sideline. With the new developments, if Crosby can somehow get put in the Houston ISD district I see us competing for a playoff spot immediately.

Facilities may be responsible for one or two kids in an entire program choosing to come there as it relates to the schools in the northeast Harris County area. All of the communities are different so it’s more about where parents can afford to and want to live. Both times Crosby played Atascocita they beat them handily and the last time Crosby played CE King in 5A was for the 2015 district championship and we beat them handily. The difference is that CEK and Atascocita both have about 3,600 kids now. Summer Creek was also in our district and just turned in over 4,000. No level of facilities is going to mitigate an enrollment gap against schools with excellent football playing demographics and coaching like those. Crosby just needs a new coach and a few realignments to get out enrollment closer to 3,000 and we’ll be fine in 6A.

Crazy amount of individual talent about to come through the program in the next 5 years and we have two years before we go to 6A. I’m hoping the administration gets serious about winning before we can’t.

If we don’t get a Stepp Bomb before Christmas tonight I might go ahead and check into AA🤷🏾‍♂️

That’s 100% the sensible thing to do. Probably would’ve bet against them getting down the field against our defense on the next drive too. I like he tried to put his foot on their throats in that situation though. Either way, he’s 12-20 now and probably not far from reassignment?

One hell of a football game played by my Cougars👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 Joe Willis leaves a lot to be desired as far as being the head coach at Crosby but far as the ultimate no no of taking points off the board, I would’ve gone for the win at that moment too. Solid play call on the conversion attempt too, just came up a foot short from playing one of our old district mates.

Crosby would be a state ranked program again if we had a coach that could coach offense. Different game, another big opportunity, same story . . .

I was talking to my cousin last night who coaches at Angleton and he told with the injuries they have on offense that they’re planning to try to run a bunch of Wildcat. If that’s the case and Jammer has to play QB along with the big X receiver on the outside hurt I like Crosby’s chances for defensive success. With the 12-5A-D1 positions pretty much locked in, with a win Crosby would get to host a College Station that tailor-made for the way we’re playing this year. Willis keeps falling into opportunities, let’s see if he can finally capitalize?