JOURNAL STAFF
In less than a week, the 2022 high school football season kicks off. Before it does, some of the elite senior football scholar-athletes in Bossier and Caddo parishes will begin a season in the spotlight.
The National Football Foundation, S.M. McNaughton Chapter Preseason Scholar-Athlete Watch List will be released just before game day next week. It will include remarkable high school seniors in the Ark-La-Tex who have been nominated by their coaches. These young men have at least a 3.2 grade point average, have won all-district honors, and are involved in extracurricular activities.
Coaches who haven’t nominated still have time. The deadline has been extended to noon Wednesday.
Nominations can be submitted to NFF board member Doug Ireland by email to sbjdoug@gmail.com or by text to 318-471-2086. No transcripts or recommendation letters are needed; it’s a very simple process.
This Watch List will be updated throughout the season as more nominations are received.
After each season since 1980, the NFF’s S.M. McNaughton Chapter solicits nominations for its scholarship program, and as many as eight senior scholar-athletes are honored in the spring at a banquet in Shreveport.
This Watch List is designed to provide in-season recognition for not just the ultimate scholarship winners, but all of the young men in the Ark-La-Tex, including Louisiana’s entire 318 area code and Vernon Parish, who are high-achieving senior football players.
The NFF McNaughton Chapter is led by president Leo Sanford, a Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame member and former All-Pro linebacker for the Chicago Cardinals, and a center on the 1958 NFL champion Baltimore Colts. Other board members are Dennis Bamburg, Jerry Byrd Jr., Toni Goodin, Ireland, Curt Joiner, Bill McConathy, Tag Rome and Terry Slack.
Additionally, KTBS Channel 3 in Shreveport is honoring the memory and legacy of former NFF Board member Bob Griffin, the iconic sportscaster at KSLA and then KTBS for over 50 years, by weekly presentations of a Griffin’s Game Ball to one of the players on the NFF Scholar-Athlete Watch List. The winners will be featured weekly by KTBS, and will be eligible for a separate Griffin’s Game Ball Scholar-Athlete Scholarship at the close of the 2022 season, presented by KTBS.
Griffin, a 2009 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame inductee as a sports journalist, covered Ark-La-Tex high school football in an incredible six decades before he passed away early in 2020. That fall, Griffin’s family members traveled around the area throughout the season presenting Griffin’s Game Balls to winning teams in the “Griffin’s Game of the Week” as he did for years. Because of Griffin’s commitment to the NFF Scholar-Athlete program, the S.M. McNaughton Chapter of the NFF and KTBS have created this partnership to celebrate these outstanding seniors.