Matthew Hatfield Previews the 2026 Virginia High School Football Season

Today I’m joined again by my old friend Matthew Hatfield of VirginiaPreps, the guru of Virginia high school sports. We start with the VHSL’s latest realignment proposal and the continuing challenge of competitive balance. From there we get into the rapidly changing world of high school sports — academies, NIL, transfers and whether the media should be promoting high school transfers in the first place. We also discuss the growth of girls flag football and whether eight-man football could eventually become an option for smaller Virginia schools struggling with participation.Then we get to the football preview. Matthew gives us a terrific statewide overview of the 2026 season, going classification by classification and discussing the contenders, dark horses and players to watch. We cover Oscar Smith, Madison, Battlefield, Maury, Highland Springs, Stone Bridge, Varina and many more teams from Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond and across the Commonwealth.As always with Matthew, it’s a fun and highly informative conversation — and we’ll bring him back later in the season to see how our predictions turned out.