TIFTON — Region 1-AAAAA has long been considered one of the toughest football regions in the state, and maybe the country. The region’s coaches certainly feel that way.

All seven Region 1 head coaches showed respect for their fellow region teams, and said they expect it to be very competitive again this year, at the region’s Media Day Saturday at the University of Georgia’s Tifton Campus.

“This is the toughest region in the country,” Colquitt County head coach Tim Cokely said.

“These are some of the best coaches and teams in the state,” Coffee head coach Jerry Odom said. “You can’t outcoach people in this region.... Any team that makes the playoffs from this region has a chance to get hot and win state.”

“It was a lot of fun to coach in this region last year, because of how good every team was,” Warner Robins head coach Bryan Way said. “When you get into region play, you play tough teams week in and week out. It’s like a playoff atmosphere every week.”

Last season, six of the seven Region 1 teams had winning records. The average margin of victory in region play was just 7.6 points, and two games went to three overtimes. Cokely pointed out that those two triple-overtime games, which Colquitt lost to Tift County and Coffee, were the difference between his team being 2-4 and 4-2 and making the playoffs.

The coaches who made the playoffs last year said they found the competition in 1-AAAAA as tough or tougher than the teams they saw in the playoffs.

“Last year, we beat Mundy’s Mill in the first round of the playoffs, then we went to Camden, which was ranked second in the state, and beat them (27-7). The next week, we beat Norcross (14-3), which was No. 1 in the state and was supposedly ranked 15th in the country,” Way said. “They wouldn’t have been ranked that high if they had to play in this region. Those teams were good, but they weren’t any better than the six teams in our region.”

That respect for last year’s region teams extended to Valdosta, despite the fact the Wildcats won only one game.

“We played Newnan and M.L. King the first two rounds of the playoffs. I’ll play those teams any day before I’ll play Valdosta,” Houston County coach George Collins said. “When we left Valdosta last year, our players wanted nothing more to do with them. They were a tough team.”

Most of the coaches neglected to make predictions about how the region would turn out in 2007, knowing how competitive the games would be. The one coach who did, Tift County’s Jay Walls, said Coffee looked the best to him.

“Coffee’s going to be tough. They were real good last year, and they’ve got a lot of players back this year,” Walls said. “Lowndes will be tough, as well. I think Valdosta will be one of the best teams, and the rest of us will be good, too.”

Coffee returns arguably its best offensive and defensive players, running back Melvin Loving and defensive end C.J. Mizell. But the Trojans will have to replace two All-Region linebackers and the entire secondary, each of whom signed college scholarships.

“We’ve got a good nucleus coming back,” Odom said. “On offense, we’ve got seven starters back, and seven other guys who played a lot last year. On defense, we have to replace a very good secondary and two good linebackers. Losing our kicker and punter, Will Goggans, is going to hurt. This team’s got a chance to be pretty good.

“We open with Madison County, which is supposed to be one of the best teams in Florida, so we’ll find out how good we are real quick. Then we’ve got Clinch County the next week.”

Defending region champion Tift will also be a team to watch, as it returns most of its defense and offensive line, and 1,000-yard rusher Kaream Hess. Walls is optimistic junior Nick Prostko or sophomore Malcolm Dixon can do the job at quarterback in the team’s spread offense.

“I’m the guy with the bullseye on his back,” Walls joked. “We won’t sneak up on anybody this year.”

Collins is the coach with the toughest job this year. Only three weeks ago, Doug Johnson, the only football coach in school history, suddenly stepped down due to heath problems. A week later, Collins, the team’s offensive coordinator since 2000, was named the head coach.

“It was hard to lose Doug. But our coaches haven’t missed a step,” Collins said. “Our players have stepped up and responded after what happened with Doug.”

Houston will have the most rebuilding to do. Collins said the Bears lost 36 of their top 44 players from last year, including All-State running back Eric O’Neal, the region’s Offensive Player of the Year. Collins said most things would stay the same, but that the Bears, who run a wing-T offense, would probably throw the ball more, with senior Jeff Thompson back at quarterback.

Like Houston, Colquitt and Warner Robins also graduated most of their starters.

“We’ve got two starters back on offense and three on defense,” Cokely said about the Packers. “We graduated a lot of seniors. Like Houston, we’ve got guys we’ll have to leave on the field (playing both offense and defense), because we’re so thin.... Our offense will be a vertical passing attack, like it has been the last two years. We like to stretch the field vertically.”

“We lost 38 seniors, and some of those guys were very good football players, especially on defense,” Way said about the Demons. “We’ve got a lot of players to replace. We’re a wing-T team, and we graduated our halfback, fullback and wingback. We have ability in the backfield, but they need experience. Defensively, we lose Brian Buford (a linebacker that signed with Valdosta State), who is the all-time leading tackler in Warner Robins’ history, and Roderick Rose, who is our eighth-leading tackler all-time. It will be hard to replace those guys. But we’ve had a good summer, and we’re looking forward to getting the season started.”

Lowndes head coach Randy McPherson kept his speech brief, talking less than two minutes. McPherson postponed a trip to the beach to attend the media day, but headed for St. George, Fla. afterwards.

“We’re looking for good things from this team,” Lowndes’ sixth-year head coach said. “Last year, we only had (four) starters back. This year, we’ll have 16 back.”

Valdosta head coach Rick Tomberlin was the best-dressed coach, showing up in a suit and tie. Like he has most of the offseason, he praised his players for their work in trying to turn around last year’s disastrous 1-9 record.

“We’ve been getting after it in our workouts,” Tomberlin said. “The kids have done a great job. We’ve had anywhere from 106 to 135 players at our summer workouts. I believe we’re on the right track. We’ve got 10 of our top 12 players back on defense, and a three-year starter back at quarterback in Michael Turner.”

The event’s keynote speaker was former University of Georgia football coach Ray Goff, who was a quarterback at Moultrie High School in the early 1970s.

Goff echoed the coaches’ opinions about how tough Region 1 football was.

“I like South Georgia and I like South Georgia football,” Goff said. “You look at the championship teams Georgia has had, and they all had a nucleus of South Georgia players. When we won the national championship in 1980, our quarterback was Buck Belue from Valdosta, and a lot of other guys from this region also had great careers at Georgia. I liked signing players from South Georgia, because they knew how to play football.”

The event was hosted by South Georgia Sports Media in Tifton.