Marana HS football really good — perhaps too good for own good | Greg Hansen's Notebook

Since then? Marana hasn't won a state championship in any sport since 1989.

So you might imagine the eagerness created by the Tigers' powerful 5-0 start to the tackle football season, one in which coach Phillip Steward’s team has knocked off prep football titans Salpointe Catholic and Gilbert Higley, the two-time defending Class 5A state champion.

On Friday, Marana shut out defending 4A state champion Canyon del Oro 48-0. Wow. To date, Marana has outscored opponents 213-72 and will be strongly favored in its final five regular-season games, against Sunnyside, Casa Grande, Cienega, Buena and Desert View.

You can't help but think Marana could — should — win a state football championship, ending the school's 35-year shutout.

But it's not as simple in this generation as it was in the Marana glory days, when the Tigers played in the old Class B classification, where its opponents in state championship games were, among others, Round Valley, Page, Safford and Willcox.

Marana, whose city population has grown from a small farm village in the ’60s to a fast-moving suburb with a population of 60,000 today, now plays in Class 5A. In recent years, the Tigers' football program has produced two Power 4 quarterbacks — ASU's Trenton Bourguet and his brother, BYU's Treyson Bourguet — as well as the Green Bay Packers' 2024 first-round draft pick, tackle Jordan Morgan. Marana currently boasts senior receiver Dezmen Roebuck, who has broken the state's all-time prep receiving record with 297 career receptions.

This isn't Class B any longer.

The Arizona Interscholastic Association has now complicated the path to a state football championship. In 2019, the AIA created the Open Division, an eight-team field of Class 6A, 5A and 4A football powers to play for the state title at an even higher level.

That means if Marana maintains its impressive start to the season, they are almost sure to be one of the eight teams (as ranked by Maxpreps' computer rankings) to play not for the 5A title but for the Open title.

That would mean an inevitable showdown with Phoenix super powers such as Peoria Liberty, Chandler Basha, Gilbert Highland, Brophy Prep and ALA-Queen Creek. They were ranked Nos. 1-5 last week, with Marana No. 6.

Winning the Open Division state title would be ridiculously difficult. It means, in a strange way, that Marana may be too good for its own good,

The Open Division state champions of the 2019-23 years have all been Phoenix-area mega-powers: Chandler (twice), Scottsdale Saguaro, Brophy Prep and Peoria Liberty. No Tucson team has made the finals, or come close. In fact, Salpointe is the only Tucson team ever to make the Open Division bracket (twice).

My question is: Wouldn't it be better to win the 5A title than be bounced out of the Open playoffs.

Tucson was witness to this in 2019 when coach Dennis Bene’s Salpointe Lancers rolled to a perfect 10-0 regular season in 4A, outscoring opponents 524-84, only to lose to 6A Chandler 24-16 in the second round. It spoiled what could've been a season for the ages for a team that had current Atlanta Falcons starting running back Bijan Robinson, current Ohio State standout safety Lathan Ransom, and other future college players like Trent Strong, Charlie Raetzman and Connor Witthoft.

Bene put it in perspective when he noted the Lancers had won the 2013 state championship — the school's only football state championship — with a perfect 14-0 record.

"Winning that state championship validates everything,'' Bene told me then.

Alas, Marana doesn't have that to fall back on. In a strange way, Steward's team may actually benefit from losing to the strongest opponent left on its regular season schedule, 4-1 Casa Grande, although Casa Grande was blown out 41-7 by Mica Mountain on Friday, which makes an upset over Marana seem unlikely.

The AIA will release the first official Open Division rankings on Oct. 8. It might be one of the few times in sports history when being ranked outside the Top 10 is preferable to something in single digits.