Moon's Minute: This Should Be a Great Game

One of the NFL's all-time greats, Warren Moon will be contributing a weekly column to NFLHS.com this season. An outstanding quarterback at every level, Moon played 17 years in the NFL and six years before that in the CFL. He owns the NFL record for most passes completed in a season (404, 1991), is second in NFL history in passing yards-per-game (527, vs. Kansas City, Dec. 16, 1990), and stands third in the NFL record books in passing attempts and completions. The 1977 Pac 8 Player of the Year for the University of Washington and an All-American at Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, Moon is not only a leader on the field. He was named the NFL Man of the Year in 1989 for the tremendous work he does with numerous charitable organizations.

I think Saturday's Poly-De La Salle game will be one of the better high school games played in the last five to ten years, for sure. Just listening to news reports and reading about the two schools sounds like they are both really good.

It sounds like Poly could beat some small college teams! I mean, their offensive line averages around 300 pounds, and they have a history of great athletes coming out of the school. Then you look at De La Salle, and they haven't lost in over 100 games! A couple of weeks ago they played Mater Dei, another tough team, and beat them pretty bad. They're not a program that has a lot of big, huge athletes, but Coach Ladouceur does such a great job in getting his kids to believe in his program and philosophy, and they very rarely beat themselves. So we're going to see a game between a team with great athletes and great size against a team that has a built-in philosophy and a great confidence that every time they take the field they are going to win. I think it's going to be a great, great high school game.

I don't think there were high school games this big back when I was in high school in the early 70's, because it was very rare that two schools this far apart would play each other, especially during the regular season. Something like this might happen in the playoffs, but now these games are starting to be played earlier in the year as well. They create big crowds, like the crowds I got used to seeing at high school games when I was playing for the Houston Oilers. High school football is huge in Texas, and games regularly draw 20,000-30,000 fans. This game is going to have a same type of flavor to it.

When I was in high school in Los Angeles, we only played within the city because L.A. is so big and there were so many teams. A few years after I graduated from high school, the CIF teams started to play some city teams, but when I was there that wasn't happening. Now they have a full-fledged playoff system for the CIF, but that didn't exist when I was playing. We never actually won the city championship, we only made it to the semifinals.

I think it's a good thing that these good teams are playing one another, especially since ranking high school teams nationally is really tough because it's hard to tell how tough some of these leagues are that many of the teams are playing in. It's good to match top teams together, especially these two since they're pretty close together, even in the same state. It's not too much of a travel for either team, they're not missing school time, and I think it's a great experience to be in a big-game atmosphere like this.

Come back next week for more from Warren Moon!

Check out the rest of our coverage of the De La Salle-Poly matchup:
The Game of the Century (So Far)
De La Salle Puts Streak on the Line

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Warren Moon: A Lot to Think About