A couple of weeks ago, the Big 12 Conference football parade invaded Dallas for the annual three-day extravaganza known as Media Days, a celebration of soundbites concerning all things North and South.

For those of us in the business of feverishly recording anything and everything coaches and players say in hopes of turning 15 to 20 minutes of “conversation” into three or four stories down the road, the event is an absolute gem.

Sure, a lot of what’s said there is cliché and can sound more like a class on coachspeak than hard-hitting interviews, but in the dog days of summer you take what you can get.

Being that my primary focus at the paper is the local high school sports beat, I skipped the trip to Dallas, but the whole thing got me thinking: Why don’t Lawrence High and Free State High (at least) have a Media Day of their own?

After all, high school sports across the nation — as well as in our backyard — have started roaring down the path of imitating college programs more and more in recent years. Why not go all the way?

Think about it. Fall practices begin on Monday, Aug. 17. Why not gather the city’s fall coaches at both Free State and LHS for a few hours in the morning the Friday before?

We could go sport-by-sport, with both schools sending their soccer coaches or volleyball coaches at the same time. Or we could go school-by-school, with all of the fall coaches for one school going in order 30 minutes apart, followed by the other school later in the day.

Wait, it gets better.

We could do it at each high school, say in the gymnasium, or at a neutral site, perhaps a private banquet room, giving it that Media Day buzz and flare of which the college version drips.

It wouldn’t have to be fancy to be effective. Invite whatever media from the surrounding area might be interested in the smallest way. So what if the other guys only show up for the football portion from 9:20 to 9:50? We’ll be there the whole time, and that means we’ll be more likely to leave coaches alone during the first week of practice when they’re trying to get the important things accomplished like picking the teams and handing out equipment.

The Olathe News helped organize something similar for the Sunflower League football programs for a handful of years. The idea died last season because of a lack of sponsorship, but it was a good time while it lasted. At that one, coaches sometimes were accompanied by players, usually a team captain, which only made the whole thing more fun for the players and the media.

Once the fall season is over, the winter sports would take center stage for a similar day in November, followed, naturally, by the spring sports in March. By the end of the year, every program would have had its day in the sun — or 30 minutes in this case — and interest in all of the local high school athletic programs, citywide, could rise.

The idea might be a stretch. It might not be time for something like this just yet, but I bet it happens every year in states like California, Florida and Texas.

Kansas finally just caught up with the rest of the prep world when it comes to coaches working with their players in the summer months. Wouldn’t it be great to be in on the first wave of something cool for a change?