ORANGE BEACH — With dust settled on the third-annual Gulf Coast Media Day, high school football season has only gotten closer in Baldwin County.

Forty local coaches and players cycled through the Orange Beach Event Center for interviews and photos to preview their upcoming seasons.

After the X’s and O’s were discussed, representatives dished out takes on some non-football questions regarding the new college football video game, which teammate deserves their own reality TV show and what items they’d bring to help survive the wilderness.

A big shoutout to our presenting sponsor, Planet Fitness in Foley, Fairhope and Daphne, and to everyone who tuned in live on Facebook live. We look forward to covering another year of high school sports around Baldwin County.

We got one step closer to the football season today but until then, here are five takeaways from the third-annual Gulf Coast Media Day at the Orange Beach Event Center.

EA SPORTS College Football 2025 a hit with local teams

The new video game depicting college football with current student-athletes has taken the nation by storm and Baldwin County is no different.

The high schoolers aren’t the only ones who picked up the new game, but Elberta head coach Nathan McDaniel quickly realized he had some lost time to make up for since the last version of the video game.

“I think I made a bad bet (with senior linebacker Corbitt Williams) today, I said we can hop on this weekend and if he can beat me, I’ll do five gassers but if I beat him, he’d do 10. But while they were running gassers today, I jogged a little bit and that’s a bad deal,” McDaniel said. “If he’ll take a mid-major and I take a Power 5 I think we’ll make that better. We’re not playing even teams or anything like that. Just let me get the hang of it and you’ll catch that work.”

With a chance to lead your own program in Dynasty mode, some of my top school choices from the player-guests included San Jose State, Kennesaw State, Utah State, Old Dominion, Kent State, ULM, Tulane and James Madison.

Reality TV candidates

When asked who on the team or coaching staff deserves their own reality TV show, coaches and players alike didn’t have to think too hard.

Baldwin County’s William Walker, Elberta’s Corbitt Williams, Gulf Shores’ Carter Byrd, Robertsdale’s Jaheim Howard and Bayshore Christian’s Brooks Jones were unanimously chosen by their team’s media day representatives as someone who would do well on reality television.

Or maybe it’s one big reality show with those guys plus some other characters like Andre Houston from Daphne, Matt Biggs from Foley, Matthew Steele from Orange Beach, Charlie Merchant from Bayside Academy and Dallas Wyatt from Snook Christian that would get producers really excited.

Either way, there seems to be plenty of candidates right here on our local high school football teams.

Speed, strength dominate ideal superpowers

Gulf Coast Media Day guests also didn’t need much time to determine which superpower they would pick to help them on the field but too many (19) picked the easy answers of speed like The Flash or strength like The Hulk.

Points awarded to more creative answers like the stretching ability of Mr. Fantastic (Corbitt Williams from Elberta and Cooper Hermecz from Foley) or invisibility (Harrison Cook from Fairhope, Spencer DeAngelo from Robertsdale, Gulf Shores head coach Mark Hudspeth, Austin Beck from Orange Beach and Monroe Partin from Bayside Academy).

However, teleportation might be my favorite superpower applied to football and Gulf Shores running back Kolin Wilson read my mind when he said he would, “teleport straight to the end zone.”

Does Lightning McQueen buy life or car insurance?

This question might have been the most thought-provoking of the bunch and induced a few back-and-forth interactions between coaches and players questioning each other’s answers.

In the theoretical situation that Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars would need to buy insurance, would he get coverage for life or car?

Life insurance was the more popular answer with 21 responses compared to nine for car insurance. But all six Foley representatives concurred that it’s the same thing, since “his life is a car,” according to head coach Deric Scott.

Peyton Dallas from Robertsdale defended his answer of life insurance with his new head coach Cris Bell when he came with, “He doesn’t own a car, he is a car,” Dallas said.

“Just because everyone else said life insurance …” Bell started before Dallas said, “You have to own a car to pay car insurance.”

“He is a car,” Bell responded to which Dallas asked, “So he owns himself?”

There were no wrong answers to these questions, by the way.

Set up well for a long camping trip

If left to our own devices, plus these items we bring along, the Gulf Coast Media Day guests could probably last a good long while in the wilderness.

From the basics like tents and sleeping bags, bug spray and a flint to more obscure items like a heat lamp or a monster truck or a TV we’d still be able to last a good bit. But then you add on food reserves, a first aid kid, filtered water and the supplies to hunt for more food and we’re set forever.

We’ll also have a battery pack for electricity to power up speakers to play music and charge phones. Plus a boat, and a sword from the Fairhope Pirates, if football fails we might just have a home amongst the trees.

Find Gulf Coast Media on Facebook for the full versions of each interview and get yourself prepared for the upcoming football season.