Regular season football in Dallas County couldn’t start off with a better matchup, as cross-town rivals Selma and Southside meet up at Memorial Stadium on Friday night.

The Panthers have not won a game in the series since 2006 and have only won two games against Selma since 1999, but Southside head coach Daniel Flowers feels this is the year his team can break through in the series.

“It is the Super Bowl of [our] season because we haven’t beaten Selma since 2006, so it has been almost 10 years since the last time we beat them,” Flowers said.

Although Miles didn’t call the game Selma’s “Super Bowl,” he did compare it to another very popular rivalry in the state.

“Record of course doesn’t matter, because it is the first game of the season, but it kind of puts you in a mindset of the Alabama-Auburn game where you can throw the records out the door,” Selma head coach Leroy Miles said. “Kids are going to play well.”

Miles has urged his players to get a lot of sleep during the week, because he knows it won’t be easy for them to rest Thursday night. His other big concern this week has been on his team being too excited for the game, something he felt was a problem in last week’s jamboree win at Keith.

“Last week we came out in pregame warmups and we were just overly excited about the game and I think we exhausted a lot of energy before the game even started,” Miles said.

Miles is worried about the same problem occurring Friday and he admits he is more worried because his team is playing Southside, a cross-town rival where a lot of the players have friends on the other team.

“A lot of adrenaline is pumping before the game and that can hurt you,” Miles said. “It can cause you to come out and be flat.”

On the other side of the rivalry. Flowers — now in his second season at Southside —admits he probably didn’t realize the magnitude of the game last season.

“I kind of didn’t know what I was getting into,” Flowers said. “Last year I was thinking it was like a regular game and I realized real soon to people in Selma this is not a regular game. This is Southside versus Selma.”

With an extra offseason under his belt as head coach, Flowers believes his team is better conditioned to deal with Selma’s depth, although he doesn’t believe the depth is a big concern.

However, he is worried about how many different ballcarriers Selma can put in the backfield and still have success.

“They have three running backs. If they start running the ball on us, it may be a long day for us because they have three different running backs they can put in the game to run the football,” Flowers said.

Selma showed that ability during their jamboree victory against Keith, as Cinque Coles and Adam Bruno carried the offense. The Panthers showed the same ability, with Derick Daniels and Damian Watts leading the way.

Miles said the Panthers did a lot of things in the jamboree that they haven’t done in past years, but he knows there is probably more to come.

“I’m sure they’ve got some things they are going to do that they didn’t do in the jamboree and we do too,” Miles said. “This is a game where coaches are going to have to make adjustments on the fly to be successful.”

The Saints went 4-6 last season and the Panthers were 2-8. Selma continued its dominance in the series last year in a 36-0 victory over Southside.

The game starts Friday at 7 p.m. at Memorial Stadium.