By Craig Dunn
Logan Daily News Sports Editor

LOGAN — A quick glance at the records of their opponents speaks volumes as to why the Logan Chieftains have already clinched both a post-season Division II playoff berth and a Region 7 home game.

Going 9-0 certainly hasn’t hurt matters, obviously, and beating Lancaster for the first time since 1945 plays a big role in putting the Chiefs over the top. However, more than just that piece of history comes into play.

All four teams Logan faced (and defeated) in non-conference play — Lancaster, Pickerington North, Hamilton Township and Gallipolis (games with longtime Southeastern Ohio Athletic League rival Gallipolis don’t count in the league standings this year or next year) — sport winning records of 5-4.
In fact, six of the nine teams Logan has defeated to date boast winning records — including 6-3 Ironton and 5-4 Jackson — while Zanesville and Warren are both 4-5, and that doesn’t even count Friday’s matchup with the best of them all, 7-2 Chillicothe. Marietta (3-6) has the worst overall record among Logan foes.

The Chiefs also benefited because 1-8 Portsmouth, which finished last (0-6) in the league, was not on their schedule rotation this season, nor will the Chiefs face the Trojans in 2009, either.

And, despite the fact Logan was jilted by Athens when that school backed out of a two-year mutual agreement to play non-conference games, Hamilton Township was a solid upgrade over the 3-6 Bulldogs, who broke even (3-3) in their first season in the Tri-Valley Conference Ohio Division.

And there’s this telling number, which might be the most important of all: Logan’s previous nine foes have an impressive .667 winning percentage (32 wins, 16 losses) in games in which they didn’t face each another — mostly SEOAL games in which Logan’s computer points all but evened out regardless of who won or who lost — and not counting the nine losses to the Chieftains.

That 32-16 total also includes games against Portsmouth because, as mentioned, the Trojans weren’t on Logan’s schedule… and the playoff computer points system doesn’t care who a team defeats, because to the computer a win is a win.

    Happy Halloween?: Halloween may still be a week away, but Chillicothe High School’s Herrnstein Field has been a house of horrors of sorts for the Chieftains.

In the short but competitive history of the Logan-Chillicothe football series, the Chiefs haven’t had the best of success at the Cavaliers’ home facility.

The series began in 1990. Chillicothe leads 5-4, including a 3-1 advantage in Ross County, while the Chieftains were 3-2 against the Cavaliers at Bill Sauer Field.

The Cavaliers have beaten the Chieftains each of the last three times they’ve played at Herrnstein Field: 31-21 in 2006, 29-28 in 2004 and 40-21 in 1994. Logan’s only victory at Chillicothe was in 1991 by a 13-0 count.

Fortunately for the Chieftains, the loss in 2006 — the first year the Cavaliers were a member of SEOAL — didn’t count in the conference standings. At the time, since the two teams were not scheduled to meet in 2006 or 2007 due to the league’s new two-year rotation, they decided to play as non-conference foes in week two. Logan won last year’s game at Bill Sauer Field, 47-18.

The 2006 game also marked the night when then-junior Justin Frye emerged from the shadows as a star-in-waiting for the Purple & White. He had a big second half in a mop-up role, worked his way into the starting lineup two games later, and finished his career fourth on the all-time rushing list with 2,997 ground yards.

In 2004, the Cavaliers came out victorious in a wild affair as the result of a botched center snap on an extra-point kick. After scoring a late touchdown to pull within 28-27 and going for a tie, the Cavaliers got a two-point conversion off the miscue for a one-point win.

However, one of the many things Logan coach Dale Amyx likes about his 2008 Chieftains is their ability to respect their opponents without letting history — recent or otherwise — have any kind of effect on them.

    Going for perfection: Friday night, the Chieftains take a perfect record into their regular-season finale for the seventh time in school history. Logan won five of those previous six finales to finish a regular season 10-0: 1934 (defeated Nelsonville, 49-6), 1964 (Hillsboro, 46-0), 1977 (Gallipolis, 35-6), 2000 (River Valley, 49-0) and 2001 (Jackson, 16-13).

Not counting OHSAA playoff games, the only time in school history the Chieftains entered their last game undefeated and lost was in 1941, when they took an 8-0 slate into a game at Lancaster and dropped a 31-7 decision to the Golden Gales.

    The records are correct: Yes, the SEOAL records (Chillicothe 6-0, Logan 5-0) are correct going into the final game of the season. That’s because Chillicothe and Jackson both played one more conference game than the other seven SEOAL teams because they are the two teams who would have rotated off the schedule of the Athens Bulldogs had Athens not bolted for the TVC prior to this season.

SEOAL administrators decided to maintain the two-year schedule rotation both this year and next without Athens (and it will also be utilized without Zanesville next season) and voted to break ties this season and next on the basis of league losses, not winning percentage.

That won’t come into play this season since Friday amounts to a winner-take-all championship game between two undefeated teams. And could it happen again next fall? The Chiefs and Cavaliers are also scheduled to finish the 2009 season with a week-10 clash in Logan Chieftain Stadium.

    Going for two dozen: The Chieftains are going for their 24th SEOAL football championship. They had a perfect record in winning 14 of their previous 23 titles and finished undefeated with a tie in another.

    Rarified air: The Cavaliers find themselves playing for a football championship in their third season of SEOAL membership. Chillicothe, which left the Ohio Capital Conference to join the SEOAL, only won two football titles (in 1986 and 1990) while a member of the OCC.

    First impressions: As a result of the SEOAL’s quirky rotating schedule, matchups the last two weeks of the regular season are between teams who did not play each other in conference play in 2006 or 2007, the first two post-expansion seasons.

Jackson (whom the Chiefs defeated last week) and Chillicothe were not on the Chiefs’ schedule rotation those seasons, although those were teams the Purple & White had played several times in the past.

Thus, there were (and are) some first-time-ever SEOAL clashes pitting “expansion” teams against “traditional” teams in the closing stages of the season: Warren at Chillicothe, Zanesville at Gallipolis and Marietta at Portsmouth last week, and Warren at Ironton and Zanesville at Jackson tomorrow night.

Marietta and Gallipolis, longtime foes from the old six-team SEOAL, meet in Gallipolis to round out Friday’s league schedule. Portsmouth, which has the bye created by the departure of Athens, hosts 9-0 Mount Orab Western Brown, which is in the hunt for a Division II Region 8 playoff berth, in a non-conference tilt.

No fake grass: Friday will be just the second time this season the Chieftains play on a natural-grass field, the other being week two at Pickerington North. The other eight were played on synthetic turf: five games in Logan Chieftain Stadium and road contests at Hamilton Township, Marietta and Jackson.

Abbreviated season: More than half of the teams on Logan’s original junior varsity schedule canceled out due to a lack of enough players to field a reserve team, meaning Logan played only four JV games.

The JV Chiefs finished with a 3-1 record, defeating Lancaster, Zanesville and Marietta and losing to Pickerington North. Among the canceled games were home tilts Monday against Jackson and another that was slated for this Saturday against Hamilton Township.
 
 

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