West Tennessee prep football preview guide coming in August

The summer is going quickly, and that’s good because as I’ve gotten older and fatter, I don’t enjoy 95-degree temperatures as much as I did in 1990 when I was 9 years old riding my bike everywhere all summer and eating lunch at my grandmother’s house with whatever vegetables from the field she was canning that day that she said aside for the midday meal.

But one thing is a breath of fresh air for me, and that’s for the first time in a decade, I get to do the thing I’ve enjoyed doing most in my professional career.

It’s not covering county commission or city council budget meetings or handling coverage of local government elections (although those are more intriguing than I expected them to be way back when).

It’s putting together a bona fide football preview magazine.

I did it for six summers from 2011-16 at my previous job when I was sports editor when I’d spend the month of June riding through 13 counties of rural West Tennessee talking to all the high school football coaches in that area.

Then I’d spend the month of July writing up what they told me.

My boss, Post Publisher Daniel Richardson who leads Richardson Media Group (RMG), and I started talking about doing the same thing again.

After covering University School of Jackson in the state championship in Chattanooga last fall, I drove back feeling like I could do way more than what had been happening when it came to football coverage.

And that started in the preseason with the magazine.

But I wanted to do it bigger like I always wanted with by including all 20 counties in the region, and he OK’d it.

So the week of Aug. 21, the plan is to have a magazine that’s going to be close to 100 pages (maybe more - possibly) with preview content of all 46 high school football teams in rural West Tennessee.

We’ll take a look at all the regions and give football fans the information they need to know about the players and the teams that will take the field on Friday nights this fall.

Anyone who subscribes to The Post here in Jackson and other RMG papers in West Tennessee including the Dresden Enterprise, Savannah Courier, Martin Post, Camden Chronicle, Carroll County News Leader, Crockett County Times, Lake County Banner and Covington Leader will get a copy delivered with their paper that week.

We’ll have more copies placed at different places throughout the region that will be displayed on all our social media pages so fans can pick one up.

So if you’ve been missing a local high school football preview or if you’re a business that would like to advertise in it, let me know at the e-mail in the next paragraph at the bottom of this column.

Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Reach him through e-mail at jksnpost@gmail.com. Follow him on X.com @JSEditorBrandon. Follow him on Instagram @EditorBrandon.