Nothing lasts forever. All good things must come to an end.

Cliches they are, conveying the same message. Great careers – Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter – reach an ending point. When you are living amidst such eras in professional sports, you don’t even think about these legendary athletes not being out there dominating their sport.

Exception: Tom Brady’s career will never come to an close, much to the irritation of every other NFL team trying to win a Super Bowl. Everyone else does reach that time when they simply can’t go on.

The same holds true with other eras in sports, be it coaches or teams.

In case you missed it, Bobby Bowden did step down as Florida State head coach.

Exception: No matter how many operations he has (knee replacements and herniated disk this year already), Mike Krzyzewski will always be coaching Duke basketball and always snagging a No. 1 rated recruit.

Who would have thought the San Francisco 49ers or Los Angeles Lakers would be in the position they are now? The Atlanta Braves go from a laughing stock to a model franchise to mediocre.

What brings up this topic of discussion is a comment made on a national sports show last week. The idea is that Atlantic Coast Conference football is now better than the Southeastern Conference. The evidence is the record of the ACC against the SEC head to head last season (10-4) and that going into the 2017 campaign ACC teams are favored in early contests with the SEC (including Georgia vs. provisional ACC member Notre Dame). But if you still believe that the SEC is No. 1, you can point to six AP Top 25 teams to five for the ACC.

It has been an amazing run since the 2006 season where an SEC team either won or played for the national championship every year save for one.

This is where I inject personal reflections into the subject.

A gentleman named Michael Murphy does what I used to do, covering the Americus sports scene for the city’s main newspaper. This summer, he reached into the archives to recap the 2000 football season where the Americas High Panthers won the Class AA championship with an unbeaten 15-0 record. It was a fun trip down memory lane, especially when Murphy talks about how brilliantly and with amazing insight the reporting of this season was done (yes, I get mentioned by name).

It could be argued that this was an era where the best collection of high school football talent in the entire state of Georgia rested in Americus. You could back two years or more when Fabian Walker played quarterback and Alonzo Jackson defensive end as major Division I prospects. 1998 was their senior years, and 1999 was a bit of a rebuild leading into what was eye-popping play from 2000 to 2003. The Panthers repeated as champions with Leonard Pope – All-American tight end – leading the way in 2001. They reached the semifinals in 2002, falling to Buford at the start of a streak of play still going on now, and then finally lost a region game in 2003 that put them on the road in the state second round.

Americas lost to Vidalia that year, and what happened next was the long talked-about merger with Sumter County High. Sumter never could reach that same level of success in football, but people still raved about their athletes. Bringing them all together meant the program would move to a higher level. As great as those Panthers were, they never got to play a power program in a higher class (maybe because one wanted nothing to do with the other, or vise versa).

Some thought initially the mixture of Panthers and Rams would be like oil and water. Well, they’ve had more than a decade to get it all together. Since the Americus-Sumter debut in 2004, there’s been one state playoff win in football. It looks like, to put it plainly, the caliber of athlete has not been the same. When is the last time you heard of a major Division I prospect coming from Americus?

Never would have guessed it back in 2000.

Example No. 2: This is the 10-year anniversary of the shot heard around the world, when Warner Robins American Little League represented Georgia and the Southeast region and blasted a walk-off home run to win the Little League World Series over Japan.

Afterwards, WRALL went back to Williamsport, Penn., two times in 2009 and 2011. It could be argued that both of those teams were stronger than the 2007 club, but neither reached the finals. Everything just went right 10 years ago.

But WRALL also added back to back World Series championships in softball, 2009-10. So with all of these banners and appearances on television, WRALL is seen as a gold standard Little League program. It could be no coincidence that the Southeast Region chose Warner Robins for its new headquarters and stadium.

What has happened lately? Nothing. The last state championship in baseball was in 2012, five long years ago. Since the 2010 softball championship, WRALL won one state tournament in 2015. That six-year span (2007-2012) brought a lot of expectations and eager anticipation about how good and how far the next team could go. Didn’t seem like there was an end in sight.

One more example that may or may not be a part of this series yet. Northside High football set a state record of 17 straight seasons with 10 or more wins. It’s easier to count the number of losses during that time: 22. There were nine one-loss seasons, meaning you go 10-0 in the regular season, and the one time you lose it’s over.

The streak ended in 2015, the last season I covered up there, with a mere 9-2 record. The Eagles rebounded last year to go 11-3, falling to Tucker in the 6A semifinals.

Also, during my 11 years, Northside only lost to big rival Warner Robins two times. In 2015-16, the combined margin of victory against the Demons was 113-17. This year’s final: Warner Robins won 28-17. We’ll have to see what this means for the Eagles the rest of the way.

And what does the big win for the Colquitt County High Packers over Norcross – one the Packer Nation may have thought it’d never see – last Saturday mean for the rest of the way? See you at the ‘Hawg Pen’ on Friday.

Next week, there will be an outlook for that college football team called The University of Georgia Bulldogs and one particular NFL player of note.