Football Odds and Ends

Mon. & Tues., August 25-26, 2025

A quiet pair of days overall, so I surfed the net in search of football updates.

Huskies Game Day Indeed!

Michael hard at work

With the Camarillo Stingers' Senior Blue eleven's season opener scheduled for this coming Saturday vs. the potent North Valley Bears to be played at Camarillo H.S. with a 6:00 p.m. Kickoff, it was time for the application of the helmet decals.

This is a skill which Michael both excels and takes great pride in doing.

He would have to repeat this process 25 times before Saturday night. His goal was to finish doing the task in two practices. During Tuesday's practice, the first of the week, he finished over half of them. He should easily accomplish his goal Wednesday night.

Let's take a closeup look at his work on Jacob's helmet . . .

A really hard to apply scorpion

Stinger on the left side

Jersey number on the back

Camarillo Cougars homage

on the right side of the helmet

The Camarillo Stingers Pop Warner organization was founded in 2005 with their colors being brown and gold.

Camarillo already had a successful Pop Warner organization, the Camarillo Roadrunners, founded in the 1960s.

The demand for a second organization began when, in the early 2000s, the Roadrunners opted to join a new conference with significantly higher weight limits. This was a cause for concern for many parents, thus the Cougars program which operated in a different conference with lower weight limits.

In took a long time but eventually the Roadrunners organization folded in 2020 leaving the city of Camarillo solely to the Cougars.

In 2022, the Cougars leadership opted on a major change. In order to more closely align as a feeder program for the Camarillo H.S. Scorpions, the Cougars were changing their brand to the Stingers with the same colors as the high school, blue and silver.

One of the NFL's all-time greatest

pass catching duos

They are the two fabulous Los Angeles Rams Ends, please do not call them Wide Receivers, #40 Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch and #99 Tom Fears.

This is the first time that I've seen Fears wearing #99. I always saw him in photos and trading cards wearing first #55 and later #55 when the NFL started their position jersey number policies.

Hirsch played football in college for both Michigan and Wisconsin. He was my favorite Ram during my youth after interacting with him at a kids Summer Camp held at San Marino H.S., played for the Rams for nine seasons from 1949 to 1957. His best season came in 1951 when he caught 66 passes for 1,495 yards and 17 TDs. All three of those numbers led the league as the Rams won the 1951 NFL Championship.

Fears played his collegiate ball at Santa Clara and UCLA. He would also play for the Rams for nine campaigns from 1948 to 1956. His best season in Los Angeles came in 1950 when he led the NFL with 84 receptions and 1,116 yards.

The reason that both of these great athletes attended two universities had nothing to do with NIL or the Transfer Portal. Between their respective transfers, their respective college careers were interrupted by their patriotic World War II military commitments.

Hirsch and Fears are both members of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

While searching the net to decide which game to attend on Thursday, I decided on the Grant H.S. Lancers at Los Angeles H.S. Romans game starting at 4:00 p.m., I stumbled upon a disturbing tidbit.

I am a big believer in sports history and things like the rumors that the Notre Dame-USC rivalry that started in 1926 and has been played 95 times. There have only been three breaks in this continuous intense rivalry, it took World War II from 1943-1945 to stop it for three seasons. Notre Dame leads the series 50-37-5 with three games not counted in this total due to victories by USC in 2005 and Notre Dame in 2012 and 2013 having to be later vacated due to NCAA rules infractions.

My net surfing led me to consider a simple word.

TRADITION: The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication.

I'm a big believer in tradition, and my game search led me to perusing the schedule of Simi Valley H.S. with a disturbing discovery.

There are two public high schools

in Simi Valley, California

Simi Valley H.S. Pioneers

Founded in 1920

Royal H.S. Highlanders

Founded in 1968

The Simi Valley-Royal Varsity football teams met for the first time in the Fall of 1969 and muddled their way to a 0-0 tie.

Then, as always, the stands, regardless of won-loss records, were packed for this battle for Simi Valley Pride and Bragging Rights.

I attended this game once while announcing the game for the Ventura County Star's streaming service, I was warned that because of the crowd size, I needed to arrive at the game at least two hours before the Kickoff if I wanted to find a parking spot anywhere near Royal's stadium. I did, and they were right, it was an early arriving overflow crowd. Royal won that one by the way.

Since then 1969, the Pioneers and Highlanders have played every season a total of 56 consecutive years.

Royal leads the overall series 31-23-2.

Royal's longest winning streak in the series is seven games from 2004 to 2010.

Simi Valley's best streak against Royal stands at six games and counting from 2019 to 2024.

Great, but why do I bringing all of this history up, you ask?

Because, in 2025, Royal and Simi Valley have opted to cease their rivalry and will not play each other on the gridiron for the first time since that long ago 0-0 tie.

For the Seniors on both squads and all of the fans and alumni of both schools, what a bitter pill.

So much for TRADITION.