In the first four weeks of the Knoxville Football season, the Panthers will either play a team they have not played in several seasons or not at all. Week one is the only exception as Fairfield, who Knoxville has played the last six seasons with each team alternating wins on their home field for a 3-3 series record. The other three teams are ADM, who Knoxville has not played since 2011 and have a 2-6 record against losing the last four matchups to the Tigers. PCM was an exciting series until it ended in 2013. Both the Panthers and Mustangs each have won ten games in the series that started with a PCM victory in 1996. The outlier is Keokuk. The Panthers and Chiefs have never played in football, due largely to the 146 miles between the two towns. Panthers Coach Eric Kellar tells KRLS Sports he did not have Keokuk on his list of teams that he submitted to the Iowa High School Athletic Association. That said, his goal this season was to play teams that the Panthers could be competitive with and put them in position to have a chance at the postseason.

Kellar:
“We try to get teams we can be competitive with and then look at the drive, we don’t want five or six games with two hour drives. We just look around, and Fairfield is not really a rivalry, we just have got used to playing them the first week and we had them at number one and they had the same thing with us.”

Kellar adds they will go into each game with the mindset that they can win. He adds the schedule is challenging, and he hopes his team is up for the challenge when the ball is put in the air in week one.