Earlier this season, two of Northern Kentucky's top high school football teams faced off in Newport, with pride and tradition on the line. Through a complete four quarters, host Newport Central Catholic (Ky.) School and Beechwood (Ky.) High were too evenly matched to be separated. The same was true of the first overtime period, when both teams scored touchdowns. Then, after NewCath scored a touchdown to kick off the second overtime, Beechwood ushered in complete bedlam across the two plays that you see on the grainy Zapruder film below.

The first play above is one of the more impressive halfback passes in memory, predominantly because of the frantic scrambling from Beechwood running back Cameron Vocke that preceded the toss. Vocke not only reversed field multiple times, he did so with tacklers all over him. When he did reach receiver Max Nussbaum, there were still 5 more yards to cover to hit pay dirt, with Nussbaum eventually extending at full stretch to just scrape across the pylon

You know how they say major setbacks build character? Hurricane (Utah) High is getting extremely tired of building character in state championship games against Juan Diego Catholic (Utah) High. For the third straight season, the two schools matched up to decide the Utah Class 3A state title. For the third straight year, Hurricane was seconds from forcing overtime or celebrating a monumental state title when Juan Diego came through with a game-winning play.

What all of this means is that for a third straight year, Hurricane is forced to head into an offseason desperately searching for answers on why its dominant football program -- the Tigers are 35-7 from 2008 through Friday's 10-7 loss to Juan Diego -- can't find a way to close out a win against one team with everything on the line.

As a matter of painful review, here's exactly how Juan Diego has turned one of the most intimidatingly named schools in the country into the closest thing Utah football has to the Buffalo Bills, with more

In the state of Massachusetts, every team circles one date on its calendar: Thanksgiving Thursday. For practically each team in the Bay State, the biggest game of the year is played on turkey day. Most programs stage their biggest rivalry games then, and entire towns from suburban Boston and beyond practically shut down to stage miniature celebrations dedicated to high school football.

That's the case for Agawam (Mass.) High and West Springfield (Mass.) High, scheduled to face off on Thanksgiving Day this week. Instead, the two teams may be home with their families this year. According to the Boston Globe and MassLive.com, the Agawam public schools superintendent said she is considering canceling the game because of a football hazing incident that occurred at the school last Wednesday.

"When a crime is committed, I need to enforce the law,'' Agawam superintendent Mary Czajkowski told the Globe. "It's an unfortunate situation, not just for our students but for our high school.''

RivalsHigh's national analyst Dallas Jackson said it best last week: At this point in the season, all the teams still playing football are good, and all the games are worth watching. Still, some are even better than others, particularly with the dramatic reshaping of the RivalsHigh 100 each week, based on playoff results. Here's how this past weekend's best games turned out:

• No. 38 Hilliard Davidson (Ohio) 13, No. 34 Pickerington Central (Ohio) 6: This game was just one of a handful that standas a testament to just how brutal Ohio's Division I state tournament is. The Region 2 final lived up to its billing as the national game of the week, with Davidson using a dominant defense and just enough big plays down the stretch to get past one top-50 team in the RivalsHigh 100 and advance to play another, Wayne, and then could get a possible state final matchup against No. 17 St. Edwards, which notched a win over a fellow RivalsHigh 100 top-50 team itself.

• No. 93 Wayne (Ohio) 28, St.

Fels (Pa.) High and Franklin (Pa.) High finally did get to finish the final three-plus minutes of a marathon game which had been stopped because of darkness a week before. By the time it was all over, the teams combined to tie an all-time Philadelphia Public League record for combined points, with Fels walking away with a 56-46 win.

Yet, as reported in both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, that combined-points record came even closer to falling than it appears, with a Franklin player intercepting a pass at his own 2-yard line and returning it 93 yards as time expired, only to fall just short of the end zone when he was tripped up at the 5-yard line.

Because of that dramatic stop, Fels was the only team to score in the resumption of action between the teams, with Terry Brown earning the lone points of the final minutes, first on a 60-yard touchdown run and then converting the subsequent two-point conversion for good measure.

By game's end, Tyree Rucker of Fels had

Last week, the website Complex.com compiled a list of the 50 greatest football trick plays of all time. While we felt obligated to applaud a noble idea, we were also a bit miffed both by their definition of a trick play -- desperation laterals with no time on the clock don't really strike us as "trick" plays -- and the fact that the list only used six prep sports trick plays. Not to spoil the entire list for you, but our first reaction was, "Where is the Driscoll Middle School play?" If that isn't a glaring omission, we don't know what a great trick play really is.

Prep sport imbalance not withstanding, we respected the six they chose, and figured we'd be remiss if we didn't highlight them here with a bit more back story behind each one.

• No. 49: This play from a "Termite league" football game always makes some watchers' stomachs turn, mostly because of the involvement of the coach on the sideline, calling for the ball to be exchanged. Hey, if you're going to run a perfect "wrong

Five years ago, an irate and completely irrational parent of a Canton (Texas) High football player waltzed into the office of then-Canton coach Gary Kinne, pulled out a gun and shot the coach in the stomach. Amazingly, Kinne survived the point-blank assault thanks to multiple surgeries and, first and foremost, his ability to scramble back to his office phone, where he'd been on a phone call with longtime friend and then-West Mesquite offensive coordinator Mike Overton. The coordinator was then able to scramble and make a quick call to the Canton School office, helping police and paramedics locate the coach and get him the immediate medical attention that saved his life.

Now Kinne and Overton are both head coaches, with Kinne at Sherman and Overton the head coach at West Mesquite. The man who shot Kinne, Jeffrey Doyal Robertson, is spending 20 years in prison on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. And, as reported by the Dallas Morning News, a strange twist of fate has

There's good news and bad news about this week's InterTubing list. The good news: Some of this week's viral video gems are absolutely amazing, to the point of being almost unbelievable. The bad news: More than one of them are also completely impossible to track down additional information for, which forces us to go on faith that they really happened, and really happened this year, as is alleged. Lets just say that we're full of faith in the integrity of YouTubers lately ... or just so impressed by some of the clips that are emerging that we think they should be seen regardless of origins.

• Matt Stevenson, Hammond (Md.) High vs. Southern (Md.): This catch was the pick of a strong litter of impressive plays from Hammond's playoff win over Southern of Anne Arundel County. Still, the context in which it happened made the catch even more impressive. Trailing by a point with just less than six minutes left, Hammond marched 79 yards down the field, using every second of the clock to score