Well, Monday the new battles began throughout the country for supremacy in both college and high school football.

On the somewhat local scene, the Hogs have a new coach, ASU has a new name, the Indians, Warriors and Wildcats have enough new faces to require a program.

And everyone has a chance to be number one.

Or at least that's what the hopes of the coaches, players and fans are. And mine, of course. And, granted, it's sometimes hard.

Trumann's not that much of a problem. I can tell people in Marked Tree and Lepanto that I cover the Wildcats also and they will say, "Humm. That's ok." And the people in Trumann say basically the same thing in the other direction.

A problem occurs, though, when it comes to the Indians and the Warriors.

When covering games, I try to make sure not to wear red or black at Marked Tree, nor blue or gold in the Lepanto area. It's not that any one would shoot me (at least I don't think so). It's just that I try to play the two teams down the middle as much as possible.

It's not easy sometimes because each coach in each sport at both schools invariably sometime during any conversation say something like, "What are they doing over at the other place?"

Strangely, most of the time they never actually name the other school. I heard once that the late Woody Hayes of Ohio State did much the same thing. He hated Michigan so much that he only referred to them as "the school up north."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with a good healthy rivalry, but it puts sportswriters of multiple schools like myself between a rock and a hard place sometimes. In the three years I've been here, though, I've learned to be "politically correct."

In fact, what I have to do is much like the ferry captain did in the movie The Outlaw Josie Wales. Since he had to ferry both confederate and union troops at times, he was asked how he coped with the problem.

"What I have learned to do," said the captain in response. "depending on who I'm hauling, is to whistle 'Dixie' and 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' with equal enthusiasm."

Well, it's not just whistlin' Dixie to say I have to do much like that ferryman did.

And that's my opinion this week, for what it's worth.