Prep Picks Panel Returns With Six Unanimous Week 1 Calls

The only thing as certain as the start of the high school football season is the weekly return of the Prep Picks Panel. The same crew is back for another year — Tommy Hicks and Randy Kennedy, along with Pigskin Pete (Tim Taylor to those in the know) and Darron Patterson — resuming a Gulf Coast tradition that turns the region’s Friday night matchups into a weeklong conversation.

As tradition holds, a guest picker joins the group each week. This week’s guest is Gerhard Mathangani, fresh off his announcement that he is leaving sports broadcasting for the world of finance. The panel decided to ask for his input before he gets too far out the door — a send-off that gives one of the area’s familiar broadcast voices a last turn behind the mic, at least in picker’s-seat form.

With only last season’s results and a sense of returning contributors to go on, the panelists acknowledge the season-opening slate leaves plenty of room for guesswork. Week 1 is famously the hardest week to pick: no film from the current year, no sense of how offseason graduations, transfers and coaching changes have reshaped each roster, and summer practice reports that tend toward optimism for everyone.

The first round of 12 games offers several intriguing matchups, and the panel’s disagreements — scattered across half the card — show exactly how hard the opener is to read. Six games, however, produced total agreement.

Six Unanimous Calls

In six of the 12 games, every panelist agreed on the winner: McGill-Toolen over Foley, Saraland over Mary G. Montgomery, Vigor over Blount, Williamson over Baker, Theodore over Davidson and St. Paul’s over Alma Bryant. Three of those favored teams — Saraland, Theodore and Williamson — are on the road, giving the unanimous picks an extra edge of confidence in programs considered strong enough to win away from home in Week 1.

The unanimous list reads like a tour of Mobile-area football powers. McGill-Toolen’s pick over Foley pairs two Catholic school programs with long histories. Saraland has been one of the region’s fastest-rising programs. Vigor and Williamson represent the Prichard and Mobile public school ranks, while Theodore and St. Paul’s bring their own established pedigrees to opening night.

Unanimity in Week 1 is rare enough to note — panelists who disagree on most of the card all season long found six games they could not split. Whether the consensus holds up under Friday night’s lights is precisely what the season’s first scoreboard will reveal.

The Split Games

The remaining six games revealed more disagreement. Gerhard was the only panelist to pick Spanish Fort over Daphne and Orange Beach over T.R. Miller — two calls that mark the guest picker as either the boldest member of the panel or the one with nothing to lose in his final week on the sports beat.

Darron stood alone in taking LeFlore over Robertsdale and Chickasaw over Satsuma, staking his Week 1 credibility on a pair of underdog calls. The two panelists then teamed up as the only ones picking St. Michael to beat Battle Ground Academy of Tennessee in Saturday’s nationally televised game from Fairhope — the lone game on the card extending past Friday night and the highest-profile matchup of the week.

Randy and Pigskin were the lone voices selecting Jackson Prep over UMS-Wright, a pick that pits an out-of-state prep powerhouse against one of Mobile’s most decorated programs. No panelist is ever shy about a contrarian call, but Week 1’s limited information means every off-the-board pick carries an extra measure of conviction.

That mix — six unanimous calls and six games where at least one panelist broke from the pack — gives the season’s opening card an unusually competitive texture. With two panelists willing to buck consensus twice each, the guest picker backing two longshots of his own, and a Saturday showcase splitting the group four ways, the tiebreakers in the standings race could be settled before most teams have even played a down.

Keeping Score All Season

With the first 12 games selected, the panel will track how everyone fares each week, sharing scores from the previous week and season-long standings, including a running tally for the guest pickers. The standings race has become one of the feature’s quiet pleasures — weekly bragging rights, season-long momentum and, for the rotating guests, a one-week audition under the same scrutiny as the regulars.

For readers and listeners, the format is simple: the picks come out before the games, the results come back after, and the record speaks for itself. Panelists answer for their calls all season, and no one escapes a bad week unmentioned.

The weekly guest picker slot adds a layer of local color that has kept the feature fresh over the years. Coaches, broadcasters, media personalities and community figures have all taken a turn, and each week’s guest inherits the same pressure as the regulars — pick well, or wear the results until next week’s card comes out.

For Mathangani, the appearance doubles as a career farewell of sorts. Moving from the press box to the finance world means Friday nights will no longer belong to the broadcast schedule, and the panel gave him the send-off he earned: a card of 12 games, two solo contrarian calls and a shared longshot on Saturday’s nationally televised stage. Whether his parting picks hit the mark will be part of next week’s reckoning.

Kickoff is here, the picks are in, and the panel is back on the record. Another season of Gulf Coast high school football — and another season of proving who called it right — begins Friday night.

Week 1 picking is a unique challenge, and the panel’s members treat it as such. Without a single down of current-season football played, the picks lean on reputation, returning starters and the memory of last fall. Programs that graduated star quarterbacks are harder to trust; teams with proven coaches and stocked linebacks corps get the benefit of the doubt. Every panelist weighs those unknowns differently, which is exactly what makes the disagreements informative.

The unanimous calls, then, represent the panel’s strongest collective convictions — six programs the group considers clearly better than their opening opponents regardless of offseason turnover. The split games, by contrast, are where local knowledge and hunches collide: matchups between neighbors, rivalry games that ignore the records, and non-region clashes against out-of-state opponents nobody has scouted in person.

Matchups Worth Watching Across the Region

Several of the unanimous picks are compelling games in their own right, whatever the panel’s consensus. Saraland traveling to face Mary G. Montgomery brings a rising Mobile-area power on the road against a program looking to make its own statement. Vigor versus Blount is a Prichard-area clash with generations of history, the kind of game where records matter less than pride. Theodore at Davidson and Williamson at Baker round out a Week 1 schedule loaded with cross-town pairings that would feel at home in mid-district play.

The split games carry their own storylines. Spanish Fort versus Daphne is an Eastern Shore rivalry that divides households along U.S. 98. Orange Beach’s program, newer to the spotlight than T.R. Miller’s, gets its national-stage rehearsal against a Brewton tradition. LeFlore, Robertsdale, Chickasaw and Satsuma each open the season with something to prove — and at least one panelist believes in each of them.

Then there is the showcase: St. Michael against Battle Ground Academy of Tennessee, played Saturday in Fairhope with a national television audience watching. For a relatively young Baldwin County program, hosting a televised game against an out-of-state private school powerhouse is a statement opportunity — and the panel’s own split on the outcome suggests the game could go either way.

Jackson Prep’s visit to face UMS-Wright adds another chapter to the out-of-state matchup trend, bringing a Mississippi prep tradition to Mobile to challenge one of the state’s most successful programs. Randy and Pigskin, the only two panelists to side with the visitors, will either look prescient or spend the week answering for it.

Behind the picks, the panel itself remains part of the feature’s appeal. Tommy Hicks and Randy Kennedy bring decades of coverage of Gulf Coast sports. Pigskin Pete — Tim Taylor when the masked persona comes off — and Darron Patterson round out a group whose chemistry has kept readers and listeners checking the card every Wednesday and Thursday of the season.

The weekly guest picker tradition dates back through the feature’s history and serves as a who’s-who of Gulf Coast sports culture. Broadcasters, former coaches, athletes and local personalities have all sat in the guest seat, and the running guest tally has produced its own stories over the years — surprises, slumps and the occasional guest who out-picked the regulars outright.

For Mathangani, the appearance closes a circle. His move from sports broadcasting to finance takes him out of the weekly rhythm of Friday night coverage, and the panel’s invitation ensured his exit came with one last set of predictions on the record. His two solo calls — Spanish Fort and Orange Beach — plus his shared longshot on St. Michael give him a distinctly contrarian farewell card.

The Season Ahead

The Week 1 card sets the tone for months of coverage to come. As region play approaches, picks will sharpen, consensus will get harder to find and the standings race will take on real stakes. Panelists who stumble early historically climb back; those who start hot tend to spend the season defending their lead.

For the schools, the attention matters too. Being on the panel’s card means extra eyes on Friday night — from a readership that follows Gulf Coast high school football as closely as any college beat. Programs across Mobile and Baldwin counties appear on the card all season, and players grow up reading the panel’s verdicts on their matchups.

The panel will publish results from this week’s 12 games alongside next week’s picks, updating the season-long standings and the guest tally as the fall unfolds. By season’s end, the record will sort the prescient from the lucky and the consistent from the contrarian — the same reckoning high school football delivers every week between the lines.

Until then, six unanimous calls and a handful of bold solo picks stand as Week 1’s opening arguments. The evidence arrives Friday night — and in Fairhope, under the lights and the cameras, on Saturday.