You know the drill, kids. Get your homework done, your chores completed. If you’re my age or older, put your kids to bed and kiss your wife (or husband… I know you ladies are out there, too) and hop on for a little high school football chat with me and The Advocate’s Dave Ruden.

We’ve done two of these so far and, in lieu of my weekly podcast (discontinued temporarily as I tend to new responsibilities), I think it’s a good way for us to recap and look ahead to the next big week of games.

We kick off a 8:30 and will go until 9:30. We’ll field as many questions as possible, but since the comments come faster than we can respond, it may take a few minutes or more before we get to yours. So be patient.

See ya then.

Full disclosure: I’m no mathematician. I never considered joining the debate team. …When it comes to math and logic, I’m more James T. Kirk than Mister Spock (right).

But here’s a concept we can all understand because we do it all the time while trying to judge our fair high school football teams, especially early in the season.

In logic, it’s called the Transitive Law. It goes something like this:

If A=B, and B=C, then A=C.

For our purposes, the formula goes like this. If A > B, and B > C, then A > C.

I’ve been doing it all week as the scores started coming in Friday and Saturday. Here’s how it works:

• Danbury defeated McMahon, 31-8 in Week 1.
• Darien defeated Danbury 31-0, 31-0 in Week 2.
• Fairfield Warde defeated Darien 14-0 in Week 1.
• Therefore, Fairfield Warde is better than Darien, Danbury and McMahon.

I’m sure few would argue with that right now.

But, of course, there are far too many variables to make this logic valid. As the high school football season plays out, we’ll begin to understand this equation is far too simple and things certainly don’t work out this way.

Without getting too technical on y’all, this is more of an example of an intransitive relation. A may be greater than B, and B may be greater than C, but that doesn’t necessarily make A greater than C.

Yet we use the Transitive Law anyway, especially us sports writers trying to rank the state’s football teams because, really, it’s all we have to go on until the rest of the games are played.

The reason I bring this up is because of last week’s barnburner at Jarvis Field.

Ansonia, which thoroughly destroyed Hillhouse in Week 1, struggled to beat Crosby in Week 2. The week before, Crosby got buried (at home) by St. Joseph, 37-0.

So here’s what’s been goin’ round and round my head as I submitted my polls for Week 3 when trying to figure out where St. Joseph fits among the top teams in the state.

• In Week 1, St. Joseph beat Crosby 37-0.
• In Week 2, Ansonia beat Crosby 16-13 on a late field goal.
• Therefore St. Joseph is better than Ansonia.

So, if St. Joseph is better than Ansonia, doesn’t that mean the Cadets should be ranked higher than the Chargers?

Right?

It’s all a part of the who-beat-who-beat-who game. Since everybody can’t play everybody, this is the next best thing.

This is just a roundabout way of asking: Week 2, what did we learn? I’m curious to hear some of your thoughts/arguments.

If you have any good Transitive Law logical examples for me, I’d love to hear them.

Live Long and Prosper.

Man, these last seven or so days felt like an eternity.

Can we start playing football again?

Why, yes. Yes we can.

Tonight as a matter of fact, we fully integrate ourselves into the 2009 season. Week 1 is in the books, plenty of intriguing results and news to chew on — Ansonia crushing Hillhouse, Wilbur Cross beating up on Xavier, St. Joseph’s Tyler Matakevich going buck-wild vs. Crosby of the NVL, Pomperaug looking like it invented football vs. Stratford, Brookfield going down to New Milford, Khairi Fortt going down vs. Ridgefield and deciding to skip this week’s Greenwich game, Norwalk’s Pete Tucci getting tossed against Greenwich, Oxford winning its first varsity game.

Beyond our fair region, lights  Nonnewaug bowing out of varsity competition just days before it was supposed to play defending Class S champ Cromwell (now 2-0), East Haven football players getting the boot for the season, and then getting a reprieve from the school board.

Catch your breath now because it’s on to Week 2.

So let’s hop to it.

Lot’s going on tonight, and today if you happen to be in the New Haven area (my alma mater’s at Wilbur Cross). Not a ton of really great matchups, but a few intriguing ones.

Our featured game is, of course Cheshire at Shelton. Check out William S. Paxton’s feature on the Gaels here.

Dave Ruden has the skinny on “dueling” New Canaan quarterbacks, Willie Ouelette and Turner Baty.

We have comprehensive SCC/NVL and SWC notebooks. Plus all of the extra curricular stuff like scoring leaders, standings, games to watch, my Guide to the Games, and, of course, the updated Elite 8 rankings.

Peruse it all for yourself at any of our four papers’ High School Football pages. The Connecticut Post, The Advocate of Stamford, the Danbury News-Times and the Greenwich Time. You can find all kinds of stuff there, including Week 1 videos and previews, historical links, etc. etc. and find links to our live scoring update blog.

OF COURSE, we are taking your predictions here. So have at it in the space below.

Just remember: be nice… or, at least, reasonably civil. This is football, after all.

That’s all we ask.

Until tonight…

PS> Oh, before I forget. If you’re going out to a game, have a mobile phone and a Twitter account, send us your scoring updates! Just add #ctfb to your tweets and every Twittering football fan can see how your game is going. Your tweet will wind up in our live scoring blog. We’re happy to say Joe Palladino of the Waterbury Rep-Am has agreed to help further this fledgling cause along. So expect lots of NVL stuff from him and regular twitterers like NVLFOOTBALL and the rest of his crew. We also have our usual compliment of reporters who will be twittering away from their games.

That is all. Carry on.

It used to be that high school athletics were covered by their local newspapers and local television, and that’s it. Then, maybe 15 or so years ago, came the rare high school TV highlight show, which eventually dipped its toes into the odd game broadcast.

Then came the internet, MaxPreps.com, which dedicated itself to being the ESPN of high school sports across the nation–with its streaming video shows and national game coverage to go along with its revolutionary statistical database. As interest spiked, copycat sites followed and the big media executives suddenly realized there was good ol’ fashioned money to be made — and lots of it — at the high school level.

Nowadays, you can watch a high school football game on every Fox Sports regional channel in the country. CBS threw its weight behind MaxPreps. Local cable TV quickly upped its coverage last year, in our case, WTNH’s affiliate “MyTV9″ started broadcasting a football game of the week. CPTV and WFSB’s joint venture Connecticut Sports Network started broadcasting all the CIAC championships and recently debuted “Game Time” a weekly high school football show.

Perhaps no one, to my knowledge anyway, has done high school sports broadcasting better than the Madison Square Garden network during the last 15 years or so. Mike Quick and his crew have been scouring the Tri-Date area, covering games and broadcasting highlight shows forever — and doing them well.

So the powers that be over at Cablevision/MSG finally decided to get into the game full time. Using the power of the internet, MSG is attempting to tap the high school market deeper than ever before.

POINT (and there is one): Today is the official Launch of MSG Varsity, a multiplatform high school network covering the entire tri-state, from New Jersey all the way up into Westchester, Long Island and Fairfield County.

MSG Varsity will broadcast at least three, maybe four high school games (not just football) on tape delay for every region, every week (Fairfield County is lumped in with the Westchester group). it will also feature high school roundtables, highlight shows… you name it.

Not only will it be a 24-hour television network, filled with everything sports network should feature, it will also broadcast additional content from its website and provide an interactive service to all of the high schools of the region.

What that means is while the network’s focus will be on sports, part of it will appeal to all extracurricular activities — debate, band, drama and dance… you name it. MSG will attempt to work with high schools to provide content as broadcasters, technicians, camera operators, producers… How many AV departments (do they even call them that anymore?) would love to get their hands on MSG’s technology to broadcast their events?

“There’s always been an interest in high school sports and activities,” said Theresa Chillianis, general manager of MSG Varsity in a recent AP story. “I think you’d agree that, today, kids are already using everything from a cell phone to a video camera to capture their own stories. MSG Varsity is simply providing them with a greater platform to tell those stories. And we can do this more cost effectively than others because we already have the technological and operational infrastructure in place.”

It’s a bold venture for MSG, especially in this economy. But it’s smart. Over the last decade, the network has seen its programming undercut by the likes of YES and SNY for New York pro coverage. So why not try to make some coin by going local, like every every other big news conglomerate? It’s only a matter of time before ESPN and its ultra-local push gets here, anyway… if they’re not already.

What should make this work is this: nobody knows the tri-state better than Quick and the rest of his high school crew, including the guys at Cablevision-owned News12 (Damien Andrew, et. al.) MSG Varsity’s brass have even met with the local newspapers (i.e. Cablevision-owned Newsday and the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers — that’s us) to see how we can contribute to the venture.

The only rub is that this network is available only to the 3 million Cablevision subscribers, which reaches deep into Fairfield County’s coast, but no further — the same way the Connecticut Sports Newtork is only available to Comcast and Cox cable subscribers. The MSG Varsity debut is today, but I can’t watch at home or online in New Haven county, nor can I even attempt to get it.

Cable TV is a pain in the you-know-what, always has been. Just ask UConn fans.

Update:YOU CAN, however, still watch Quick’s High School Weekly show online and on MSG’s regular channel. It’s back after a year spent on satellite channel MSGPlus. Watch High School Weekly here. Or just watch the video below for this week’s episode.

Regardless, this has the potential to be a wonderful outlet and opportunity for the region’s high schools. I’m anxious to see how the first few weeks of programming go. MSG Varsity already has a feature on Kolbe Cathedral’s Chris Smith. We’ve heard the Varsity crew paid a visit to Trinity Catholic‘s volleyball team. Among the venture’s many new hires is Connecticut Post intern Brian Fitzsimmons, who took in Central’s 53-28 football win over Fairfield Ludlowe, looking for a feature on Central QB Christon Gill.

So it’s here, it’s here, it’s here. Check it out…and then tell me what it’s like.