Ant's Thoughts on Farmington Football.

Written Wednesday October 1st, at 11:15 PM

Farmington Football

Winning season, yeah, yeah,

Eh,

Not quite

As I look around the rest of the OAA, I notice some strange things going on in the other divisions especially in the Blue. While Royal Oak and Rochester are both winless in the vicious White, I see teams like Groves and Berkley both having successful seasons, Avondale is consistently good. I wonder how Groves and Berkley would do if they were up in the vicious White???

I’m not even talking about Farmington yet.

Farmington Football, the same program I saw in 2012 when Lake Orion went down there to play them. The same team who was up 18-0 at one point during their homecoming game. Then they whined and moaned after Lake Orion scored 43 unanswered points to win 43-18. The same team whose obnoxious parents were yelling at Orion kids to “Take a knee” and saying that LO as a whole is a “dirty program,”

Yep that team,

They have no business in the OAA Blue Division.

Why are they in it in the first place?

The OAA went through a realignment year and the divisions were based more out of enrollment rather than success. Farmington has one of the lower enrollment numbers and went 2-7 in the brutal White but it also went 6-3 in that same division in 2012 and one of the division criteria is records. Farmington certainly should not have went down a division based on last years record, if anything they should have stayed put

Farmington should be playing teams like Oak Park, Rochester Adams, and Southfield on a consistent basis not teams like Pontiac and Hazel Park. They have talent led by its strong senior class and will be pretty good, at least for the next two years. Farmington has rivalries with many of the OAA White teams especially Southfield, Oak Park, and North Farmington (whom I think like the team I mention below, they should play every year). In fact, Farmington should play those teams every year.

Notice that I didn’t mention Farmington Hills Harrison. The reason why I didn’t mention them is that Farmington does play them and every time they play, Harrison is 28-5 against Farmington and 9-2 since 2004. Farmington should be playing teams like Harrison, Oak Park, Southfield, and Rochester Adams. It is those teams that will make them better. It is the games the fans want to see, they want to see Farmington play the best possible competition it can. Yes, teams like Beverly Hills Groves, Berkley, Avondale, and Ferndale are good teams also but no offense to those teams, Farmington should not be playing with them.

The problem here is that every year Farmington wants to make the playoffs by any means necessary. The parents there control the asylum. Yes those same parents (not all of them but quite a bit of them) who feel like they are the show there. It’s sad, Farmington has a pretty decent team but when outside figures call the shots, the program is less successful. I almost feel bad for their coach but then again he allows this to happen and he has no plans or the intention to stop it. If it means playing in a weaker division, so be it.

Personally I lost a lot of respect for Farmington in 2012 especially in terms of what their parents did, the take a knee chants (instead of showing concern for their player who was injured), the woman yelling at the kids after the game only to be restrained and the subsequent posting by a Farmington parent and coach in which on the OAA blog  He bashed the entire Lake Orion Football Program and how it was ran. It’s a shame, that post was thankfully deleted but still it reflects the type of parents people deal with at Farmington.

The realization is Farmington will make the playoffs but most likely will play a very dangerous team (like Birmingham Brother Rice, Orchard Lake St. Marys, or even Farmington Hills Harrison again) in the first round of the playoffs. But I do hope that at the end of the season, the OAA has a meeting in which they should move Farmington back to the White and move Royal Oak down to the Blue. They should base it on competition level and watching both the White and Blue this year. They messed it up a little bit. I hope they get it right next year.