The first thing I did when I walked into the Georgia Dome Friday night was to try and count every single Chattahoochee fan in attendance. I gave up after counting 50 fans, but let me assure you, there were more than 50 Cougar fans at the dome. A Hooch administrator said that the school sold their allotment of 5,000 tickets and there might have been as many as 7,000 Hooch fans in downtown Atlanta.

Now, I can't verify that 7,000 number with 100 percent certainty, but I can tell you this: if there were 7,000 people there, half of them went to the game on the MARTA. Every train from North Springs to the Dome was packed with fans wearing blue and white. And when I say packed, I'm talking "standing room only, I got touched in places I've never been touched in before (like the back of my knee you dirty minded people).

The Actual Game

If you read Tim Altork's column in this week's Beacon – it's his first one in about three years, so you might want to read it – he talks about what Chattahoochee might have done if they played AAAAA ball this year. All I have to say is this: the Cougars were the best team I saw in Georgia this year, regardless of class.

The second half of the game was a 24-minute countdown to Chattahoochee's first state title. Starr's Mill didn't get inside the red zone ONCE the entire night. To me, that's the most shocking statistic to come out of the game.

Bylery's Amazing Year

I'm going to keep this short and sweet: if Timmy Byerly doesn't win the AAAA player of the year award, then I'm quitting my job and opening up a hair salon for cats. Here's the deal: I like touchdowns and Byerly accounted for a lot them. The senior quarterback threw 30 touchdown passes and ran for 21 more. That's 51 touchdowns. That's 51 reasons why he should win the award.

Dear Basketball Fans

North Fulton basketball fans, if you're asking yourself, "has the Beacon covered a high school basketball game yet this year?" The answer is no. Now you can blame me or you can blame the Chattahoochee football team (I prefer you blame the Chattahoochee football team), but over the last few weeks, we decided to devote the sports section to Chattahoochee's run to the state title. The understanding was that once the Cougars season was over, we would jump right into basketball coverage. Well, 14 days before Christmas, the season is finally over.

Next week, in our final issue before we take a week off for the holidays, we'll be putting out our annual Beacon basketball preview. Sure the season has already started and yes, some teams have already played nine games, but we're still going to call it a preview and there's nothing you can do about it. We’ll be taking a look at the 11 boys and 11 girls teams in the Beacon coverage area.