All right, hello, and welcome back to SRM varsity extra right here on the Chase Thomas podcast,

where we talk all things high school football all across our great state of Tennessee.

Joining me, first timer here.

Stephen Hargis of the Chattanooga Times, free press is here.

Stephen, it's getting chillier and football playoff time in East Tennessee is here. Does it feel like playoff time to you? How did this season go for you now that it's just crazy that we're in the playoffs at this point? Hey, Chase. Yeah, it really is. I mean, the whole season kind of went by in a blur. I was just thinking about that earlier today, just looking back on it, like, wow, we're already, you know, a week, we're approaching our second week of playoffs.

Last week is the first time it really felt like the temperature is kind of cool, so it actually felt like it should be the playoffs.

You know, every week before that, it didn't even feel like we were leading up to the playoffs.

It was just, you know, I was covering games in shorts and a t-shirt uh but now we're actually into football weather

i'm going to have to layer up you know for the next few weeks i'm sure but it does feel like it

uh we're kind of getting down to uh the teams that we thought would would make a playoff run or the ones

that are still still around and some of the others i have put their equipment up and practicing basketball. So yeah, it definitely

feels like playoff weather now. We call playoff weather, but I was talking to Miggs County

head football coach Nathan Sinbeck yesterday. And I asked him, I was like, is it actually

football weather when we say that? Or is what is actual football weather? And he said it when it's high. And I think I agree with him that that's actually football. We just love to say that cliche that the colder it is, the more football weather it is. Do you agree?

We do. And it may be like a mental thing. We all, you know, us Southerners who born and raised in the south we all hate

the winter for the most part we hate the cold a couple of days this week that i absolutely hated

to have to get out and go to work in so maybe that's you know we all love football so much that we

say oh this is a good way to say it where i i can enjoy it being cold out there because it's football

season but yeah i would i would agree with n on that one. I much prefer to cover games in maybe not in August when it's 98 degrees and, you know, smothering humidity, but certainly in late September and end of October when it's, you know, maybe, maybe shorts and hoodie weather. That's what I say is always perfect for me when it's cool enough at

night where you're having to wear like a light hoodie, but you can also wear shorts. And that to me

is perfect, you know, where the tracks are dry, you know, the football field is dry. So the athletes can

do, can show out and do what they do. But you know what? I've been around long enough that if it means making it sound better when it's so miserably cold that, hey, it's football weather, then that certainly helps me mentally prepare for it then.

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