Like many of you, I’m more than a little disappointed that we won’t have high school football this fall.

Regardless of what you feel about the decision made by the Michigan High School Athletic Association, I applaud their efforts to play it safe and wait for the chance to play a full season, rather than having to stop and start or slam on the brakes completely before the season is over.

While we’ll get a spring season in some form, it definitely won’t be the same as the Friday Night Lights that players, coaches and fans are used to in the fall.

This fall would have marked my 11th football season in Northeast Michigan. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of great games and dozens of incredible players.

I can still remember very clearly my first weekend of Northeast Michigan football in 2010. Over the course of three days, I saw Austin Leeck run all over Cheboygan’s defense and display his versatility in an Alpena win over the Chiefs; I saw a battle of new coaches in Lincoln where Atlanta’s Mel Skillman earned his 250th career win and Dave Schneider lost in his debut for Alcona, as the Huskies topped the Tigers 21-20; I even got my first taste of eight-player football as Posen–then in its second year as a an eight-player team–rolled to a season-opening win.

Since I’ve seen so many games and teams and players, that give me an idea: With no football this fall, why not look back at some teams from the past?

That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Starting this Friday and for the next nine weeks, I’ll be looking back on what I consider to be the best football team from each school in our coverage area over the last 10 years.

That means one team each from Alpena, Atlanta, Alcona, Hillman, Oscoda, Onaway, Mio, Posen and Rogers City.

This is not a search for the best team of all time at each school. That’s another debate for another day.

These are the simply the teams that I, James Andersen, consider to be the best I’ve seen in my time here, so everything from before 2010 doesn’t apply.

I do realize that “best” is a subjective term. So what am I basing my choices on? It’s a combination of team records, the players on the roster, team accomplishments and my own insights from having covered these teams on the sidelines.

Ten years doesn’t seem like a long time, but things are certainly different here than when I started.

For one thing, four of the nine schools I previously mentioned have transitioned from 11-player football to eight-player football in that time. All but one of those nine teams has made the playoffs in the last decade and several of them made it more than once, including Hillman, who’s in the middle of a 14-year postseason streak that began in 2006.

In some cases, making my choices was easy, but a few proved to be more difficult, especially those schools that found success across different classes of players. But hopefully (fingers crossed), I didn’t completely miss the mark on any of them.

This won’t make up for not having football this fall, but maybe it sparks a little friendly debate among fans of certain schools and if nothing else it’s a fun way to look back at some of the great teams and players who have showcased their talents on Friday nights.