Championship Saturday...

I won't personally be on-hand for the Class 5A state championships today.  That will be the first time I will have missed a 5A championship since 2004.  But I am already making plans to be back in 2010...to start a new streak!

For the record, I'm going to go with Austin Westlake in the Division 1 final over Euless Trinity.  And, in the Division 2 final, I will go with the Katy Tigers in a dogfight over the Abilene Eagles; however, I won't be surprised at all if it goes the opposite way.  Everyone in the Houston area knows about Katy.  Abilene is just as good.

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Did you know that Alabama was the first state to officially recognize Christmas as an official holiday?  It says so right here.  And here.  And here.  I'm trying to interpret that as a bad sign for the UT Fightin' McCoys in the BCS Championship Game, but haven't been able to so far.   However, it does solidify the universally-held opinion that the state of Alabama is always progressive.

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Have you noticed that there's no Houston-area over-the-air radio for the Katy-Abilene game?  What happened there?  Katy fans deserve better than that.  In fact, all Houston high school fans deserve better.

On the final Saturday night before Christmas, it isn't outlandish to assume that many interested people, who could not make it to San Antonio, will be away from both a TV or the Internet while trying to finish shopping or heading to holiday parties.  It seems like someone would have or could have made an effort to negotiate some local radio coverage to provide a service to those folks.

Sure, that broadcast would cost money to air, but it also would generate advertising revenues for the network that delivered the broadcast.  And, one thing I know about the Katy faithful:  they will support the Tigers.  Advertisers would not have been hard to find.

So, it's a mystery as to why there's no over-the-air station in Houston carrying the Katy-Abilene broadcast.  In fact, the exclusive carrier of Katy ISD football will not even be providing a webcast from San Antonio.  So, even if you're a Katy fan and have Internet access, you don't have an outlet to be your 'home' broadcast provider.  That also makes Katy the only school in any classification that does not have any kind of audio-only broadcast of their championship game.

There must be something going on that we don't know about...

There will be an Abilene radio broadcast that can be heard on the web here.

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There's an interesting high school hoops showcase coming up after Christmas in the Houston area.  The John Lucas Holiday Explosion and Athletic Conference will feature some local high school teams in showcase games against teams from around the country.  The top-ranked Bellaire Cardinals headline the Houston-area teams, which also include last year's 5A state semifinalist Strake Jesuit along with Atascocita and Christian Life Center Academy. 

I'll give more details about this showcase in an upcoming blog post, but if you were a fan of the old Academy Invitational Tournament and it's short-lived successor, The Houston vs. the Nation Tournament, you'll want to spend a couple of days at the Campbell Center in north Houston.

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We'll recap the football championships next week.