Would you have voted Clay-Chalkville No. 1 in this week's football poll?

The 31 members of the Alabama Sports Writers Association prep football poll committee found themselves in unexplored territory earlier this week.

When the ASWA’s prep football poll came out Wednesday of last week, undefeated Clay-Chalkville High School (CCHS) found itself ranked No. 1 in Class 6A for the first time in school history during the regular season. CCHS’s only other appearance at No. 1 was in the 2000 preseason poll, which followed their 1999 state title season.

No sooner than the ink was dry on newspapers across the state Wednesday of last week, the Alabama High School Athletic Association announced that CCHS had been fined $300, placed on one-year probation and ordered to forfeit nine football games for using an ineligible player in violation of the state’s Suspensions Rule.

They went from 9-0 to 0-9 with the stroke of a pen.

On Friday, the AHSAA’s Central Board voted unanimously to deny an appeal by CCHS regarding the use of an ineligible player.

As of Monday, CCHS’s official record is 1-9 thanks to their 38-35 win last Thursday night at Class 6A Spain Park, but they are 10-0 on the field.

The ASWA has been publishing weekly prep football polls since 1960, and in 51 years they’ve never had a No. 1 team in this situation.

So, the question for voters this week was do you vote CCHS as the No. 1 team in Class 6A?

In coming to my decision, I considered a number of factors regarding CCHS.

Despite all that happened to them during the past week, they won on the road against a decent, playoff-bound Spain Park team after being down by 10 after fumbles on their first two drives.

CCHS’s past performances were also a factor. Prior to last Thursday, their closest game of the year was an 11-point win against region rival, Oxford.

Five weeks later, they went on the road to Decatur and beat 6-1 Austin High School, 55-21, posting 772 yards of total offense in the process. CCHS led by 35 points at the half, having already compiled more than 500 yards of offense. They scored 35 points in the second quarter of that game alone.

Also in making my decision, I considered the impact of the player who was ruled ineligible. As it should be, his name is never mentioned in any of the AHSAA press releases about the matter, but according to Jeff Sentell, the Prep Sports Editor at The Birmingham News, the ineligible players was not their best player. He wasn’t even one of their top 20 players. He was a sometimes-starter, who was in a playing rotation of about eight players on the team’s defensive line.

Unbeaten Mountain Brook was the No. 2-ranked team in Class 6A last week, so you have to stop and consider whether they deserve to be No. 1 in light of the CCHS situation. Who would win in a game between these two teams?

We’ll never know the answer to that question because the two teams will never play, but in my mind, CCHS is the better team.

With all of that in mind and for what it’s worth, I gave CCHS my No. 1 vote this week. It’ll be interesting to see how the other voters vote and to see where Clay-Chalkville ends up in the final poll this week.

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Here are my picks for this week’s slate of SEC football games.

I like Alabama over LSU, Arkansas over South Carolina, Ole Miss over Kentucky, Mississippi State over Tennessee-Martin, Florida over Vanderbilt, Georgia over New Mexico State and Tennessee over Middle Tennessee State. Auburn does not play.

Last week: 5-0 (.1000), Overall: 56-10 (.848).