I spent a lot of time standing outside this weekend. It was really hot too. In return I got to see a lot of great high school football. I’d like to say it was a fair trade but I kind of still feel like I’m trying to rehydrate.

I am happy to report that I liked what I saw from the Pflugerville High team at the state 7-on-7 tournament. The Panthers looked good. They showed me and everyone else who watched their games they can throw the ball and they also stirred up some excitement (at least in yours truly) for the quickly upcoming season.

It’s really hard to gauge how the Panthers stack up against their brand new (old) district. I did, however, get to watch a couple of their new district rivals, McNeil and Stony Point play and of the three schools I was most impressed by the way Pflugerville played. Alex Dean looks like a solid quarterback and he has two great targets in tight end Jordan Moon and speedster Sammy Flowers. It seems to me these three guys will give the Panthers plenty of chances to extend the field and open up plenty of running lanes for Storm Woods, Julian Ward and company.

All things considered I’m not even sure what this means. By the time district rolls around all kinds of things might have changed and don’t forget, these were games where no one was wearing pads, no lines were involved and there was no running at all, just passing. But, like I said, it gets me excited to see what this team can do once the season starts.

One final bit of business I must take care of and that’s my annual baseball predictions and my mid-season checkup. As you know, each year, prior to the start of the baseball season, I make some wild predictions here in my column about who’s going to win divisions, leagues and ultimately the World Series. And, every year, I check in at the all star break to see how I’m doing with said picks and, maybe make a second-guess pick if any of my earlier picks have turned out to be complete bunk.

Okay, here goes. It appears I picked the Yakees, White Sox and Mariners to win the AL divisions and for the Red Sox to take the wild card. At the break the Yankees and White Sox are indeed in first place while the Red Sox are three games back in the wild card. Sadly, the Mariners are in last place in the west and have just traded their top pitcher. Thus, I’m going to go ahead and jump on the Rangers bandwagon and have my choice follow Cliff Lee to Texas. I sure hope the Rangers can do something. They have a decent fan base and I really like the way Nolan Ryan is trying to run the organization. As for the wild card, I just don’t see how the Red Sox can win it if all their players keep getting hurt. Thus, I’ll go ahead and switch to Tampa Bay on that one.

In the National League I had the Phillies, Cardinals and Dodgers with the Cubs winning the wild card. The standings tell me the Braves, Reds and Padres are all in first place and the Dodgers and Giants are tied for the wild card. Looks like I really blew it on this one. I still think the Cardinals and Dodgers can win their divisions. The Braves, however, are probably going to take the NL East just because it’s Bobby Cox’s last year. As for the Cubs, well they are an absolute train wreck and don’t seem to be going anywhere. My mid-season picks will go like this, Braves, Cardinals, Dodgers with the Reds taking the wild card.

Of course this also screws up my World Series picks as I had the Yankees and the Phillies facing off again. So now I’ll go ahead and say the Yankees will play the Braves and Atlanta will win it all for Bobby Cox. Just like before, I have no reason for this and just like before, the odds of these picks coming true are very long indeed.