Week 3 Humble Pie: Blindside punches, sneak attacks and yours truly dressed up like a horse (?)

From doorstep to doorstep, it’s 358 miles from Spike Vannoy Field to Wiseman Field.

It’s a heck of a long way to go, one way, for a regular-season football game.

That’s why Cody hasn’t made that trip to Torrington that often in September. It’s a long trip that takes you through hot springs, malts, Oregon Trail forts and corn fields — and it’s much, much longer making that trip home if you’ve lost a football game.

Surely, the Broncs had other motivations for the thumping they gave Torrington, other reasons they unloaded 47 points while holding the Trailblazers scoreless, than just making the trip home a tad bit easier.

Like, oh, sending a message to the rest of the 3A classification — and, with conference play starting next week, especially their mates in the 3A West — that Cody is indeed a contender for a state championship this year.

Both Cody and Torrington came into Friday night’s showdown with decent credentials, but both teams also wanted to prove that they belonged in that discussion of 3A’s upper echelon that, before Friday, only really included Douglas and Buffalo.

Now, you have to include Cody in that talk. Especially when you look at three numbers: 358, 47 and 0.

The Broncs shouldn’t have sneaked up on anyone this fall. They returned several key members of a team that played for the 3A championship last year.

And, yet, through the first couple weeks, the Broncs faded into the background of the 3A discussion, with a 1-1 record in a pair of forgettable games against Montana foes followed up by an expected blowout of Rawlins.

After what the Broncs did on Friday, that won’t happen again.

Second mad props to Pinedale, who once again proved how much old ways of thinking about the 2A classification aren’t going to get you anywhere in 2010. Pinedale not only beat Kemmerer, the Wranglers shut out the Rangers 24-0. It’s the first time EVER (at least according to my records) that Pinedale has shut out Kemmerer. When you frame it in the context of the 2A West playoff race in 2010, it’s a huge win for the Wranglers, but when you frame it in terms of series history, it’s the type of win that can give a program overflowing amounts of confidence.

Third mad props to another 2A West team, Mountain View, which finally broke a couple years of frustrating finals by nudging Big Piney 21-18. I said on Thursday that Mountain View had what it took to give Big Piney a game if the Punchers overlooked them. I think that’s part of what happened on Friday — but I also think part of it is that Mountain View, after a couple years of frustration, are back. Right now, the Buffs are definitely contenders for one of the conference’s four playoff spots. The next three weeks (Lovell, Pinedale and Lyman) will be telling — but don’t be surprised to see the Mountain View program fully assert its potential the next few weeks and show everyone that, more than just one victory over Big Piney, they are back.

Fourth mad props to the Natrona sophomore team, which beat Lingle 39-37 on Thursday.

Saturday edit: Fifth mad props to Ten Sleep, which made the trip to Midwest and came away with a 39-26 victory. This game has helped, in a big way, to set the hierarchy in six-man football this year, a hierarchy that differs quite a bit from last year. With this win, Ten Sleep went a long way to setting up at least one home playoff game. In six-man, where distances can be huge, that’s a big deal.

More: Sixth mad props to Kaycee, which ended Hanna’s perfect season with a 47-33 victory over the Miners in southern Johnson County. Kaycee is looking more and more like the team that was ranked No. 1 in the preseason, and I think they’d love another shot at Snake River….

More: Seventh mad props to Meeteetse, which smacked defending champ Guernsey 48-19. It’s a good win for the Longhorns and it further gives depth to the forming 1A six-man rankings. Now the question across the classification is if anyone will shake it up, or if we’ll see 7-0, 6-1, 5-2, 4-3, 3-4, 2-5, 1-6 and 0-7 by the end of week 7.

Here’s some other stuff that drew my attention on Friday:

I went over the hill on Friday afternoon to take in the Pine Bluffs-Sundance showdown at Wyoming’s easternmost football field. And the Hornets looked good. I walked away from that game thinking that 42-0 score was somewhat misleading, as Sundance actually looked pretty good. Then I thought more about it and said, nope, it’s not misleading at all. Pine Bluffs is one of those rare 1A teams that has both a rushing and a passing game. They’re a fun team to watch, and although they’ll have their work cut out for them in a conference that includes Lusk and Lingle, they won’t be a pushover, either.

On my way home, I stopped in and watched a possession of Newcastle-Burns (trust me, I wanted to stay longer, but the trip was cut short by, oh, wanting to go to sleep). The one possession I watched, Burns scored. Of course, Burns lost to Newcastle 10-6…. Now I’m thinking Burns should pay me to hang around its games as the official good luck mascot.

Then, as I drove home, I tuned in to listen to the Cheyenne Central-Laramie game. You know what happened in that one. 56-7. Yeah, it was bad, but it’s more than that when you realize it’s the worst beat down, on either side, in the history of that series — 105 games over the past 87 years. It’s even more amazing when you consider it was 56-0 at halftime and the running clock was used in the second half. Wow.

Eight shutouts this week. Seems abnormally high. And all of them seemed like blowouts. There weren’t any, like, 7-0 slugfests. The closest shutout this week 21-0. Just a little weird, that’s all. … Additionally, there were only seven games decided by seven points or fewer. Maybe we’re starting to see some separation in some of these classifications. … OK, now we can officially start talking about Douglas-Buffalo. … Cokeville. That’s all. Just Cokeville.

Thoughts? Post ’em below. We’re almost at the halfway point of the regular season, and there is plenty to talk about.

This week: 23-7 (77 percent). This season: 84-26 (76 percent).