There doesn’t seem to be a lot of good books — heck, there aren’t many of them out there at all — about high school football.

“The 80-Yard Run,” published last year, is one of them.

It’s not “Friday Night Lights,” but that book’s author, Buzz Bissinger, says, “The 80-Yard Run is a marvelous look at high school football across America in all its hues, in all its magic.”

Cleveland football coach Kirk Potter visits with some of his players during the recent 7-on-7 competition at Rio Rancho Stadium.

Cleveland High School football coach Kirk Potter has a small role in the book, basically a 20-week coast-to-coast adventure by author Theron Hopkins to get an up-close look at the game.

Potter gets mentioned in “Week 18 — Forty-Eight Minutes for Redemption.” That 12-page chapter deals with the preparations being made by then-head coach Jim Bradley and his Mayfield High School Trojans, who are about to play host to undefeated La Cueva in the 2003 championship game.

The Bears were on a roll that year, steamrolling everyone they played in the regular season by 28 or more points and racking up seven shutouts.

The Bears’ eighth shutout was a 63-0 romp over Las Cruces in the quarterfinals, followed by a 27-3 victory over Rio Grande in the semis, setting the stage for the trip to the Field of Dreams in Las Cruces.

Bradley and his sons, Michael, now the Trojans’ head coach, and Gary, now the head coach at Farmington, but a finalist for the Rio Rancho High School job after Phil Lopez resigned following the 2006 season, are agonizing over the way their team is preparing for the big game and unable to detect trends in the Bears’ offense.

Maybe worse, the Trojans had been to and lost the previous two 5A championship games, 17-10 to Clovis in 2001 and 17-14 to cross-town foe Las Cruces in 2002.

Sorry, folks. The chapter doesn’t have a happy ending for the Bradleys and the Trojans.

Although they weren’t steam-rolled by “Da Bears,” the Trojans came out on the short end of a 24-21 game.

Don’t feel sorry for the Trojans, though, because they avenged those three straight losses with a vengeance, winning three straight titles from 2005-07.

Getting back to Potter, he’s cast in a good light, but that was because of a 12-0 loss to Mayfield in a semifinal game that season.

Although Jim Bradley, the winningest high school coach in state history, knows what it’s like to get to the championship game — Bradley took Mayfield to nine championship games and, before that, six with Roswell — Potter took only one of his Carlsbad teams to the championship game. Coincidentally, that was in 2000, when the Cavemen (11-3) lost to Las Cruces, 45-21, and had beaten Rio Rancho in a quarterfinal game, the first time RRHS made it to the postseason.

That 12-0 loss to Mayfield turned out to be Potter’s final game at the helm at Carlsbad.

Hopkins tells readers of a call Jim Bradley made to Potter after the semifinal meeting, how Potter had been Bradley’s assistant at Roswell for 14 years, and how Potter’s son Jason had played in the game.

“The best thing about old Potter is his wife and kids. … (Jason is) a great kid. It’s a good thing you got a good family, Potter. I don’t know what you’d be if you didn’t have them.”

A dozen pages out of a 342-page book is better than nothing, especially in light of the little attention New Mexico receives for its version of Friday Night Lights, which, by the way, inspired Hopkins to take a stab at writing.

Of the 20 chapters, only Texas and California have two chapters apiece, so a lot of states were left out.

Potter hadn’t seen the book but, like most if not all coaches, remembered the 2003 season.

“We dropped a pass in the end zone (against Mayfield),” he said, thinking the score hadn’t been 12-0 and if that pass had been caught, it could have led to a win.

It was the second meeting between the two teams that season.

“The first game they jumped out on us quite a bit. We came back and made it a 28-27 game. I went for two and they had that stud defensive end and he came off the corner and got to our quarterback before he could get rid of the ball,” Potter said. “We had a guy wide open in the end zone but we couldn’t get rid of the ball.”

Bradley is more than a friend to Potter.

“Our families have been close for years — he’s my mentor,” he said. “He’s the guy who brought me up in the sport. He hired me as a coach in Roswell in 1980.”

Times have changed, Potter said, itching to get the season started. “The state championship used to go through Clovis now it goes through Mayfield or Las Cruces.”

Indeed, only once in the 21st century has a 5A championship game been played without Mayfield or Las Cruces in it. That was in 2004, when La Cueva repeated after beating Clovis, 17-7. Not to disrespect Clovis, the Wildcats have appeared in three of the last five state championship games but have been bridesmaids each time.

Now, Potter’s busy getting his team ready for its Aug. 28 opener with Capital High.

As of press time, it was unknown if that game would be played in Santa Fe or Rio Rancho, if the Jaguars’ new turf field isn’t ready.

“Well, there’s been some added stress to it, trying to get Cleveland open, doing makeshift things we’ve done,” Potter said.

“I don’t think it’s adversely affected our players. It feels good; it’s whole diff headache … equipment issues, eligibility issues.

“We need to get that out of the way and start preparing for teams and getting into your regular schedule. It’s good to have the feeling again,” he said.

How about that Storm game in Carlsbad on Oct. 16?

“Nobody wans to go out of your district schedule to Carlsbad, but it’ll be nice to see people,” Potter said. “My mom lives there. Coach (Ron) Arrington was on my staff.

“I’m pretty happy with the sched we’ve got

attendance was great and I thought we took major strides in our competitive nature … I felt we grew up …

I think every game for us is going to be an adventure because of the kids we have … lot of sophs, jrs w/o a lot of experience … we really need a good sept as far as maturity and exevcuton go. If we can continue toi improve, I think we can be a force …

A part at the start, T-shirts from last year … i