Lee: GNL football produced one odd season

You can pull out all the euphemisms to describe Great Northern League football.

Parity? Yep. Competitive? All six teams had two losses before this week. So, sure, competitive is an operative word.

Perhaps the question that hasn’t been answered, that might be the truest barometer of the quality of play, is will the GNL send a team to Tacoma like it did with West Valley last fall?

Co-leaders Clarkston and Deer Park concluded league play two weeks ago. The other four teams finish up tonight when West Valley (1-3) goes to Cheney (2-2) in a game that will be played on the red turf at Eastern and Pullman (2-2) treks to East Valley (2-2).

Year in and year out things can get wacky in the GNL. This fall may be the most bizarre.

Regardless of what happens in the Pullman-EV game, if Cheney wins there will be a four-way tie, necessitating a Kansas tiebreaker on Saturday to decide which teams advance to the postseason. And with WV as the lone team not in the playoff picture, a tiebreaker would be played at the Millwood school at 6 p.m. Saturday.

WV coach Craig Whitney finds himself in an odd situation after taking the Eagles to the state final last year. I had to ask him how he would grade the league this year.

“It’s hard to say until we go up against the CWAC (Central Washington) teams,” Whitney said. “It’s yet to be determined how good our league is. I think our teams will have a good chance to be successful in the playoffs.”

Another coach, Pullman’s Craig McCormick, believes the quality, top to bottom, has slipped.

“The quality of play is down over last year,” McCormick said. “I don’t think I’m going to offend anybody by saying that. Our league lost a lot of good seniors last year. I guess I’d say overall the group of seniors that came in this year just isn’t as deep.”

No team has established itself as the clear-cut best, and it’s not likely to be decided after today.

Clarkston was the coaches’ preseason pick. The Bantams have quality wins over Deer Park (14-7), Cheney (21-7) and EV (21-6), but they also lost to WV (10-7).

DP’s best league wins were over WV (42-21) and EV (28-20).

Whitney expected his team to fare well this year. But the Eagles were decimated by injuries, playing one game with seven starters out.

“It’s been a triage center sometimes here,” Whitney said.

Cheney got off to a slow start, in part because running back Deondre Moore-Young missed the first four games (suspension).

It’s no secret to EV coach Adam Fisher why it took his team time to right itself. The Knights’ best wins have been over Cheney (27-6) and WV (27-14).

“We underachieved at the beginning of the year,” Fisher said. “In our five losses we’ve averaged four turnovers. As we told our team, whether you’re the Seattle Seahawks, the University of Alabama or East Valley, you will not win if you turn the ball over that many times in a game.”

There are four possible tiebreaker scenarios. Space doesn’t allow me to discuss each.

“When we had all the upsets early the league was headed for a train wreck and we’ve officially got there,” DP coach Keith Stamps said. “I think everybody saw this coming a little bit.”

Consider this if a tiebreaker must be played – the second and third seeds will have had to play tonight, Saturday in a tiebreaker, Tuesday in a play-in game and possibly the following Saturday. A difficult stretch, to be sure.

And that’s probably the way things will work out in what can only be called a peculiar season.