Ever wonder what Royal High School football coach Wiley Allred’s parents were thinking when they named him?

Whatever it was, he is as wily as that old Saturday morning cartoon character. The difference is that the coach’s devices don’t usually backfire.

Wiley loves all sports, and he’s been involved in competition long enough to know that complacency can be a problem after a state title. His solution is games with Ellensburg, here, and Zillah, there, to start this season.

Royal will be among the favorites to win the state title this year. It returns the state’s best quarterback for his senior season. It is talented and experienced at every position.

Complacency is the biggest challenge for teams like Royal. They need something to motivate them in the pre-season.

The prospect of knocking off a 2A team could do that. Even more motivating is the prospect of knocking of Ellensburg.

The bulldogs are a 2A state power, battling Prosser every year for the top of the Central Washington Athletic Conference.

Zillah will be just as motiving an assignment. The Leopards dominate the SCAC West and barely missed out on a semifinal with Royal last year.

Zillah has the best all-sports program in the SCAC. The Leopards are tops in baseball, basketball and track. The Royal boys aren’t going to want to cede football to them.

Allred announced that his team will have only four returning starters on offense and defense. Sounds puny. Famed Alabama coach Bear Bryant had the same problem every year.

Once, when he had the best football program in the state at Sunnyside back in the ‘60s, I asked coach George Potter why he didn’t seem to be concerned about the many seniors he had lost to graduation the previous spring.

“Because I know I always have a good group of juniors moving up,” he said.

That’s about what happens at Royal, even more so this year. Because of the blowout nature of most wins last year, this year’s team played a lot of half games. The juniors and some sophomores were ready for this year.

And that’s the way it is at Royal. The lone losing season Royal ever had in football, back in the 60s, was the first one. The cupboard has never been bare from one season to another.

With a coach as wily as Wiley, that should continue.