Part 1: 50 thoughts about the 2024 area season

Looking at the 10 biggest storylines including Graham's dominance, new schools, etc.

Jayton Hearne was one of 26 Graham seniors who made the 2024 season a dominant one for the Steers. photo by Kael Duncan

When I was covering area football at the TRN full-time, there were always a couple season-ending musts that needed to be written before my attention drifted to area basketball, soccer and the spring sports.

The biggest was Red River 22 all-area teams. That TRN tradition dated back decades and was always a great way to honor the superb seasons of our area athletes. Figuring out final stat leaders was a must, too.

But in my last couple years, I still had too many thoughts floating around in my head. I felt like the best way to encapsulate what had happened over the past four months was for me to make a post coming up with 50 different thoughts on the area football season. It’s basically a summarization of the year that includes biggest storylines, surprises, best games, best individual performances and a few other categories.

Now that I’ve started Red River Roundup, I thought it was the perfect time to bring back the “50 thoughts” column. However, because of its massiveness – Part 1 itself is more than 1,600 words – I’m breaking it into five different sections.

We’ll post Part 2 on Friday, then the next three parts will come out the final three days of 2024. Then as I mentioned in this post, Red River Roundup will become a monthly $3 charge for the first six months of 2025 instead of the $7 it is now. I’ve got some interesting things planned – catching up with area coaches, highlighting each area program’s last quarter century of football, historical stuff and any notable news that develops. But I won’t be writing 4-5 stories a week anymore like I have been.

The first part of “50 thoughts” looks at the 10 biggest storylines from a memorable 2024 season in no particular order.

1) Graham’s veteran dominance – Twenty-six. That’s how many seniors Graham had on its football team this year. I can’t remember another 4A-sized area school ever having so many. And several of those seniors were entering their third year as starters (or in Ty Thompson’s case, his fourth year as the starting quarterback). The Steers shook off a Week 2 loss to Springtown and reeled off 11 straight victories before falling to Brock in the state quarterfinals. It wasn’t the 11 consecutive wins that we’ll remember a decade from now, it’s how they won those games. Graham went seven straight games without allowing a TD, including a 38-0 whipping of Brock at home in Week 10. They won playoff games by scores of 60-0 and 63-6. While the Steers didn’t advance as deep as they wanted to, what they accomplished in Clay McChristian’s first season as head coach was impressive.