Bay Area prep football: Changes on tap for our coverage

Monthlong previews begin this week with a new name and expanded coverage area.

Are you ready for football?

The high school season is still a little more than a month away, but why wait to get the buzz started?

We have re-branded as Bay Area Preps HQ to match our newsletter name and stretched our coverage boundaries to include the North Bay powers (yes, you Marin Catholic and Cardinal Newman) and schools at the Southern end of the Central Coast Section (that’s you Salinas and Aptos).

The newcomers will be eligible for our Top 25 rankings and preseason and postseason player recognition.

The Countdown to Kickoff coverage starts this week and will continue until the season opens Aug. 23.

We will publish our Bay Area Preps HQ preseason Top 25 teams over 25 weekdays, beginning with a story about No. 25 on Wednesday and finishing with No. 1 on Aug. 20.

We’ll also have a series of stories profiling our Bay Area Preps HQ’s Fab 40 — the top 40 football players in our coverage area.

These profiles will begin posting on July 22, with Nos. 40 and 39. We will continue to roll out two players each weekday, culminating with Nos. 1 and 2 on Aug. 16 — one week before the season openers.

And that’s just the start.

Once the season gets going, we’ll have game stories, photo galleries, roundups, features, rankings, weekend previews, athletes of the week, analysis and more.

We strongly encourage you to sign up for our newsletter, which gives a sampling of our coverage without a digital subscription.

But if you want all we do — and not just for preps — please consider the digital subscription. It’s just $0.99 for a three-month trial. You can sign up at one of these two links: Mercury News or East Bay Times

This will be a season of change in Bay Area high school football, both for the CCS and the North Coast Section.

Why let them have all the fun?

It’s a good time for us to change, too.