The first regular season rankings are out and JCGridiron.com had some difficult decisions to make when creating the Dirty 30 this week. Without a ton of big games and some with interesting story lines, the leader stays the same.
I know it will come with controversy and some will not be happy, but given the turmoil and some of the scheduling I deemed the East Mississippi loss to be more impressive than any wins within the top-10. The Lions went to another program within the Mississippi ranks and nearly pulled off an upset with 31 guys, which I don’t believe any other program in the nation could do. EMCC lost 27-25 to a Jones County team that has some players, and nearly pulled out the win. The Lions were so shorthanded that they started with five offensive linemen, one of which will be playing defensive line this week. When one guy went down with an injury up front in the second half, another guy filled in from the other side of the ball. In the end, the two-point loss with a bunch of guys that had never played a down of college football was pretty impressive. If any coaches think it isn’t, try it this weekend. We have all seen the video on the documentary Last Chance U, and the Mississippi ruling to suspend all of the players on last year’s roster for two games was dicey, at-best. EMCC travels with a full squad this week to No. 36 Gulf Coast on Thursday to meet a Bulldog team that was beaten by Itawamba in their opener.
Lackawanna comes in at No. 2 in the rankings and still hasn’t played a game against a legitimate foe. They slapped around the Gattaca Club Team 68-0 and won’t play a real game until September 17. Like I said in the preseason during the summer, the Falcon schedule will hurt them. This week it is another non-affiliated warm-up at Valley Forge Academy.
Northwest Mississippi had a solid win, beating Hinds 40-17 on the road in their opener. The Rangers had 410 yards of offense and scored a pair of defensive touchdowns. Northwest comes in at No. 3 in the rankings and has a home-opener with Pearl River this Thursday. The big game will be on October 15 when they travel to East Mississippi. I will be making my travel plans to head to Scooba this week.
The first California team on the board is Long Beach City, who fired out of the gate with a 35-7 lead at the half on way to a 41-14 win at Pasadena City. The Vikings come in at No. 4 in the rankings and now have a critical game on deck. LBCC will travel to No. 7 Saddleback, a place they were decimated in the playoffs a year ago when the Gauchos hammered them, 43-17, in the Southern California championship. Another game I will be at.
Rounding out the top five is Snow, who blasted its second straight club team this past weekend. Things kick up for real this weekend when the Badgers travel to No. 40 Glendale. Snow held Tucson Tech to 118 yards of offense and had a 35-0 at the half. The Badgers will be under a microscope the rest of the way, as they only have seven regular season games against NJCAA affiliated programs.
Here is the rest of the JCGridiron.com Dirty 30 Rankings. Just a reminder, the JCGridiron.com Dirty 30 Rankings do not include games against non-affiliated programs in their season record. Outings against club teams or prep schools are treated as scrimmages, and therefore not counted as real games in the rankings.
