MICHAEL KIRAL / L’Observateur / July 19, 2000

Today’s weather has been projected to have high temperatures in the upper 90s.

Not exactly what one pictures when they think of football weather, huh? But ready or not, the gridiron season is here. Nearly every NFL team willhave reported for training camp by the end of this week. The Saints arealready sweltering in balmy Thibodaux and players are probably already reminiscing about the striving metropolis of LaCrosse, Wisc.

College and high school teams will soon join their pro counterparts. TheLouisiana High School Coaches Association’s All-Star football game kicks it off this week at the refurbished Tiger Stadium at LSU while also serving as the final high school game for last season’s seniors.

Magazine racks are already filled with preseason publications and teams’ yearbooks. Fantasy football team owners are preparing for their annualdrafts, poring over information that will probably be obsolete come the first week of the season.

What those fantasy owners and preseason publications will try to predict is how a number of questions surrounding every team in the land will be borne out. Every squad from the defending Super Bowl champion St. LouisRams to the hometown high school team will be trying to solve as many of those questions as possible before the first whistle in late August.

In the NFL, can the league possibly have another season like 1999 when two teams (St. Louis and Tennessee) that few would have predicted tomake the playoffs, let alone meet in Atlanta, played for Super Bowl glory? Will there be a successor to those two teams as this year’s Cinderella (I like Chicago but don’t expect to see the Bears in the Super Bowl)? Who will be in Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay for Super Bowl XXXV come next January? Will it be Washington, which went out and tried to buy a championship with the likes of Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, LaVar Arrington and Chris Samuels? The Redskins’ main competition may come from the Rams but Kurt Warner must prove that last year’s 40-plus touchdowns were no fluke.

Can stars such as Arizona’s Jake Plummer and Green Bay’s Brett Favre rebound from subpar performances in 1999? Can Tampa Bay and Minnesota return to the postseason with inexperienced quarterbacks Shaun King and Daunte Culpepper? Will Atlanta’s Jamal Anderson and Detroit’s Charlie Batch be able to recover from injuries to lead their teams back to the success they have had in the past? The AFC is even more of a crapshoot. Were the Titans a one-year wonder orcan Eddie George and Steve McNair get them one yard further than 1999? Can Jacksonville get over the Tennessee jinx and make it to its first Super Bowl? Will Denver, with the return of Terrell Davis, return to its past glory? Or will this be the season for Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James to break through to that next step? How will Buffalo fare without the stars that paved the team’s success in the early 1990s? Ditto for Miami without Dan Marino. Can Kansas City andSeattle build on their improvements of 1999? What will the Jets be like with Vinny Testaverde back but with Keyshawn Johnson in (See SIDELINES, Page 10A) …from Page 9ATampa Bay? And will San Diego’s Ryan Leaf and Pittsburgh’s Kordell Stewart ever live up to their potential? In the college ranks, can anybody dethrone Florida State? Or will Nebraska prove that it, not the Seminoles, should have been the team of 1990s.

Could it be that Mike DuBose, who was on the hot seat in Tuscaloosa last season, can lead Alabama to the national title this year? Or will it be a team like Wisconsin or Kansas State that makes the step to the next level? Which team will be the next Virginia Tech, one that comes seemingly out of nowhere to challenge for No. 1? For that matter, who will be the nextMichael Vick, a player that comes seemingly out of nowhere to challenge for the Heisman Trophy? Or will the trophy go to an established player like Purdue’s Drew Brees? Will Notre Dame coach Bob Davie survive the season? Like the Irish, Florida, UCLA and Ohio State must bounce back from subpar seasons.

On the local front, what improvements will LSU coach Nick Saban make in his first season? Can Tulane recover from a 3-8 season in 1999? Will Southern contend for another SWAC title or is this the season Doug Williams wins his first title with Grambling? The local high schools also have questions to answer. Will this be anotherseason like 1997 when all eight teams made the postseason? Or 1998 when four advanced to the semifinals? And which players will step up to fill the shoes of the likes of Corey Webster, Carl Gauthier and Roydell Williams? Yes, the thermometer reads in the high 90s and the heat index is over 100, but the prepartions that will go toward answering all those questions is also beginning to heat up.

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