Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking: Football season leaves some final impressions

This will be our last TMQ of the season, as after today, we collect the equipment and turn our attention to basketballs, pucks, wrestlers, gymnasts, swimmers and trackies.There?s so much to say, on a lot of different themes (not all of them high school), that the only way to do this is to just present some random observations. To wit:Nick Bona of Bishop Fenwick is the prototype high school football player. He?s listed as 5-8, 165 and he?s a whirling dervish on a football field, especially on defense. For all he contributes on offense, Bona is all heart on defense. You probably won?t see him playing for Alabama or Auburn in the next few years, but that hardly matters. Coach Dave Woods got every ounce of what Nick Bona had to offer during his career at Fenwick, and he knows it …Seeing Rob Gronkowski go down Sunday reminds us of watching St. John?s Prep?s Johnny Thomas tear his ACL during the Eagles? game against Everett earlier this season. But the difference is in Gronk?s case, he?ll play for the Patriots again. This was Thomas? senior year and he had to sit and watch a difficult season unfold. He?ll play again, but it won?t be for The Prep. Just a shame …The upside to the new playoff system: Nobody can accuse any team who got to last Saturday?s Super Bowl of backing in. There was no upset loss on Thanksgiving that opened up the door for another team; and no set of Byzantine tiebreakers, and no technicalities or concessions to teams that hadn?t been there before. It was straight head-to-head competition, with the best team standing at the end …The downside: It just didn?t seem as if the season was in any way fluid. Just when you started getting used to things, they changed. There was the truncated non-league season (which is when a lot of coaches experiment before settling on certain combinations) and then a quick league season that ended in October … Even the most rabid high school sports fan had to be happy when the Fenwick-Northbridge game ended Saturday. Six games in a day is plenty, and if you had to hang around for all six of them, you can?t be blamed for being on sensory overload for a couple of days. But at least Gary Tanguay and Andy Gresh (the TV/radio announcers) showed proper appreciation for the name “Rufus Rushins.” It is almost the perfect football name …Speaking of Tanguay and Gresh, doing a simulcast for TV and radio has its pitfalls. Listening to the St. John?s-Mansfield game on the way down to Foxborough, we noticed Gresh talking about something that he was picking up from watching the replay on his monitor. And — of course — we couldn?t see the replay! …Still, let?s give Bob Kraft and the Patriots props for giving the high school kids the perfect reward for their accomplishments. Six games in one day may be a lot, but if it means 12 high schools get to have their kids play on the same field as Tom Brady, then it?s worth the long day.As an aside, whether it?s that the Red Sox and the MIAA can?t get together on a date, or something else, it?s really too bad that the state baseball championships can?t be at Fenway Park. Yes, there?s the possibility it could pour rain on the day of the state finals, and that the window of opportunity for using Fenway can?t stay open forever, but I?m pretty sure teams from Central or Western Mass. aren?t going to mind going the extra distance to play there. They go to Lowell to play at LeLacheur. What?s the difference?One final note before we begin counting helmets and sets of shoulder pads: Coaches devote an awful lot of time to this. Their seasons may be over, but they don?t spend a whole lot of idle time before preparing for next year. The work they do, and on so many different levels, far outstrips the pay they get. Most will tell you it?s almost a second full-time job, especially in season, and even more so when things don?t go well. Perhaps it would be nice to remember that the next time anyone feels compelled to rip a coach for some arcane Xs and Os differen