Only one player in the past two decades, current Denver Broncos linebacker D.J. Williams, has won Mr. Football State Player of the Year honors after winning state junior player of the year honors the season before. Read below for some of the reasons the state's best underclass players over the last twenty years haven't been able to avoid the Cal-Hi Sports Junior Jinx. Can last year's winner, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame quarterback Ryan Kasdorf, buck the trend?

By Ronnie Flores, Senior Editor

Note: CalHiSports.com will kick off its preseason football coverage for the 2009 season beginning on July 6. We'll first review the past quarter century of prep football in the Golden State with a detailed look at each season dating back to 1985. We'll then move on to our team previews -- coaches can email ronnie@studentsports.com or call (800) 660-1334 Ext. 4414 for details on how to get your team included -- release our various preseason all-section teams and finally our preseason state rankings for 2009. It's the kind of prep football coverage you just can't kind anywhere else of the Internet.

Following the 2007 season, quarterback Matt Barkley from Mater Dei High School of Santa Ana was not only named the Gatorade National Player of the Year, he was also named the Gatorade National Male Athlete of the Year. He was the first non-senior ever to win either prestigious award.

While the media attention bestowed on Barkley following a junior campaign that saw him throw for 3,560 yards and 35 touchdowns in only 11 games was a bit over the top, he definitely deserved state junior player of the year honors from CalHiSports.com. But, if you follow California prep football as close as we do, it would have been hard to make an argument he was the best player in the state two seasons ago. Perhaps if the Monarchs had won the CIF Southern Section Pac-Five title, he could have been the choice. Still it would be hard to convince a die-hard California football fan or a prep sportswriter that Barkley was more important to his team that season anymore than Corona Centennial's Ryan Bass, Napa's John Boyett or eventual Mr. Football Milton Knox of Van Nuys Birmingham.

Going into Barkley's senior season in 2008, Mater Dei had to replace a talented group of receivers and its offensive line wasn't nearly as strong. Despite Barkley's obvious talents, he struggled throwing the ball to his new crop of receivers, partly because he had less time to throw and partly because he pressed to make the spectacular happen on many of his passes. The result was a 23-touchdown, 18-interception campaign that again came to an end in the CIFSS Pac-Five quarterfinals. Barkley was not chosen for the all-state team and wasn't an all-Orange County selection, either.

Barkley, for various reasons, was the latest victim of the Cal-Hi Sports Junior Jinx. Since 1999, every player named state junior player of the year has not been selected Mr. Football the next year. In fact, only one player in the last 20 seasons has won he coveted award and we think that particular player, De La Salle of Concord running back-linebacker D.J. Williams, is the best all-around player in the state since the dawn of the Internet. In fact, Williams was class player of the year in each of his three seasons at De La Salle between 1997 and 1999. Even as an underclassman, Williams showed signs of becoming what he is today: a starting linebacker for the NFL's Denver Broncos.(Read full post)