That Christmas morning feeling is back for high school football as the first week of the season opens up with some great games in central Illinois.
The opening game is a trusty measuring stick for every team to see where they stand after an offseason’s worth of practice. Many teams will take on non-conference foes in order to prove themselves and gain experience against playoff-worthy teams.
Some specific non-conference matchups are going into their second, or even third year of being played, such as Morton taking on Mahomet-Seymour, Canton traveling to Eureka and Washington clashing with Maple Park Kaneland.
Many schools in the Big 12 and Illini Prairie kick off their conference season right away, including IVC starting off the year once again with Paxton-Buckley-Loda and Peoria High hosting Champaign Centennial.
Normal West hosts Peoria Notre Dame in our WMBD Game of the Week, which you can watch live and for free on ciproud.com. Week 1 also marks the debut of CSM’s Small Town Throwdown live audio broadcast, which will feature West Hancock at Dee-Mack. Listen to that game live and for free on clutchsportsil.com.
Our staff has made their picks and comments for 10 of the best games in the Central Illinois area this week. Broadcasters for our broadcasted games are ineligible to pick winners for the games that they are broadcasting and will pick the winner of an 11th game instead.