Bear River is rated No. 20 in The Sacramento Bee’s latest ranking of high school football teams in the region, with Colfax considered a bubble team.
Each team enters this week’s play with a 3-0 record, so what’s the difference? It’s hard to tell from reading The Bee. The paper doesn’t explain how it assembles the list, but it’s reasonable to presume that the ratings reflect the opinion prep sports writer Joe Davidson, who’s more of a cheerleader than reporter.
According to Davidson, Bear River is a “storied” program with a couple of classy co-coaches. That was apparently enough to rank the Bruins above Colfax. But the performance of each team to-date suggests that Gushin’ Joe has it backwards.
Colfax has dominated its opponents, winning each game by an average of 35 points. That performance was achieved against three teams with a combined record of 3-4, no great but considerably better than the line-up Bear River has faced.
The combined record of the Bruins’ three opponents is 2-6, and Bear River managed to beat them by an average of 27.6 points, not quite as good as Colfax. When you adjust for these factors, Colfax is clearly the better team at this point in the season and deserves to be ranked higher than Bear River.
Here’s how the Foothill 4 rate this week:
- Colfax 130.6
- Bear River 114.4
- Nevada Union 107.0
- Placer 103.5
