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It's just two weeks into the state high school football playoffs, but it already has been a banner year for the Naples High football team.

On the field, the Golden Eagles have astounded fans and opposing teams alike, crushing the competition for a 10-0 regular season during which their closest game came by a margin of 19 points, in the blockbuster match-up against Connecticut's Greenwich Prep.

Naples will try to continue its march to its second state championship in 10 years on Friday night against Immokalee.

Off the field, the accolades have been just as plentiful.

Back in October, Naples High was chosen as the final of eight high school football teams to be featured on NBC's “Line of Scrimmage,” a mini-drama that airs during halftime of NBC’s Sunday Night Football.

The Naples High feature, two 45-second segments, will air on Dec. 30 during halftime of Sunday Night Football and again on Dec. 31. Watch the segment on Dec. 30 for information on what time and during what program “Line of Scrimmage” will air on Dec. 31.

Additional content is available online at www.lineofscrimmage.com.

According to the “Line of Scrimmage“ crew, Naples High was chosen not just for its success on the field but for its community involvement off it.

The crew taped numerous segments of Golden Eagles having an impact on the Naples community, from reading books to kindergartners at Lake Park Elementary to writing pen-pal letters to youth football players on the Naples Gators to the paramount community experience for many Neapolitans: Friday Night Football at Staver Field.

“Serving the community since 1928,” reads the sign above the football field at Naples High. And that's what the Golden Eagles have done, in a dramatic enough fashion to make NBC choose Naples over thousands of other high school football programs across the country.

“(Coach Bill Kramer) wants all the kids ... all the people ... in Naples to benefit from the Golden Eagles football program, not just the football team,” said Van Weeks, who helped found the Naples Gators youth football program in 1972 and served as an assistant at Naples High in the 1980s.

Today, Weeks coaches the Naples Gators team, which participates in the pen-pal program with the Golden Eagles.

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The videotaping of Naples High for “Line of Scrimmage” started on Oct. 24 when the TV crew arrived at Naples High for Golden Eagles practice that afternoon.

The TV crew stayed until 7 that night to capture the Naples Gators practice afterward.

Of course the Golden Eagles noticed the camera crew at practice. But they didn’t pay it much mind, running through carefully timed drills just as they have since Aug. 6, when football practice for this season started.

Midway through practice, the TV crew asked Kramer to take a break from coaching and step atop the press box at the stadium to talk about his team’s community involvement, specifically his players’ tradition of reading to kindergartners at Lake Park Elementary.

The guys on the field continued on despite their coach’s brief absence. And one “Line of Scrimmage“ host, Joey Thorsen, noticed.

“(The Golden Eagles) look really professional, more so than some of the other places we've been,” he said. “They seem to have a good understanding of what it means to be a high school football player ... how much influence they really carry.”

Filming continued the next day at Lake Park Elementary, where about 25 football players, as well as Kramer, walked over from Naples High to read stories to the kindergartners.

That afternoon, the Golden Eagles practiced again in front of TV cameras, but it didn’t seem to matter.

They were focused on Friday’s game, which would be the culmination of the filming for “Line of Scrimmage,” and, as it is every week for many Neapolitans, the culmination of the work week.

It’s on Friday night at Naples High’s football stadium that the impact the team has on the community is truly felt the strongest.

- - -

That Friday, Oct. 26, it started at 5:45 p.m., when five teams of Naples Gators and three groups of Naples Gators cheerleaders met across the street from Naples High to march together to the game.

Each Naples Gators player wore his blue-and-orange jersey and carried a crumpled piece of notebook paper in his hand.

They were pen-pal letters.

On Friday night, some of the Gators would meet their pen pals from the Golden Eagles for the first time.

Many had already met, some at a pizza party organized by Gators team mom Carol Williams. And some, like Jimmy Pritchey, the lucky pen-pal of Golden Eagles tight end Fred Wingate, already have developed close bonds through several meetings with their pen-pals.

“Yeah, I've been to about three of (Jimmy's) games,” Fred Wingate said. “There’s a whole group of us from the team who try to go once a week. Me and Jimmy are close. He's a playmaker, and he gets good grades, too.”

Prior to Oct. 26’s game against Golden Gate, the Golden Eagles and their pen-pals already had written about six letters back and forth, one per week of the season.

Gators president Steve Quinn had approached Kramer about starting such a program last spring, and Kramer was more than happy to comply.

“We wanted to find a way to get closer to the high school and the high school players,” Quinn said. “I have a lot of respect for the way Kramer runs his program, and I want to emulate a lot of the things he does with our players. What better thing to do for us than to get together with players and coaches that have been so successful on the field and off ... it’s pretty rare that a high school team devotes this much time to its community.”

Last year, the Gators also did programs with Lely High, as well as Naples.

Quinn said the Gators would love for Golden Gate to participate as well, and that he originally approached Kramer because of the proximity of Naples High to the Gators’ home field at Fleischmann Park and because of the Golden Eagles’ success.

It’s easy to see how the pen-pal program could encourage young football players to come to Naples, but recruitment didn’t seem to be the main point of the letters.

“We tell them to get good grades, always work hard and be nice to their parents mostly,” Wingate said.

“The ones I saw barely even mentioned football,” said Weeks, who had been screening the pen-pal letters to and from the Gators to avoid inappropriate content.

- - -

One of the Gators in attendance that night, Charlie Cannaday, is an eighth-grader at North Naples Middle School. He said he was hoping to go to Naples High and follow in the footsteps of his pen-pal, wide receiver Tay Sanders.

“I met him at football camp this past summer,” Cannaday said of Sanders. “He's just a fun guy to be with ... he's fun, he's nice to everybody.

“He's always telling me to keep my grades up and to always go 100 percent,” Cannaday continued. “He came to two of my games ... he's already taught me a lot.”

- - -

Almost two hours later at Naples High's Staver Field, the community was out in full force. As the National Anthem was sung, and players from both teams stood in the center of the field -- center stage -- it was the community around them that gave the experience its richness.

While the camera crews from “Line of Scrimmage“ focused mostly on the action on the field -- Naples won 43-7 -- off the field the Golden Eagles' impact on that community was truly felt.

The players' community counterparts, the Naples Gators, sat in one section of stands and cheered on their pen-pals.

The next three segments of bleachers were occupied mostly by parents, alumni and plain-old residents of Naples who have come to call the Golden Eagles their team.

The student section, full of custom-made T-shirts, a group called “The Golden Girls,” and a spirited group with T-shirts reading “Step Team,” cheered on their classmates.

Parents, students and other fans lined the fence, behind which hung a gigantic poster reading: “Thank you so much NBC and ‘Line of Scrimmage.’”

The four groups of cheerleaders, three Naples Gators groups from ages 5-6 to 13-14, and one Naples High varsity group, stood on the track between the football field and the stands.

On the west end of the field, the Naples High dance team in golden uniforms shared a set of bleachers with the band in its polyester suits and hats with golden tassels. And like the football team and the cheerleaders, the dance team had “juniors,” too.

A group of 36 girls from ages 7-14 had participated in a week-long dance camp at Naples High in preparation for performing with the band and danceline at that night's game.

All these people of various ages, various backgrounds, various interests ... they had all been drawn together by this event, a Golden Eagles football game.

And surely, it happens at football stadiums across the country every Friday night. Lots of high school football teams talk about enriching their community.

But it's tough to find a group of macho high school football players reading weekly to kindergartners, spending time with middle-school boys they don't even know and attending their football games, writing letters to those young boys ... taking their responsibility as role models beyond the football field.

It's probably more common to hear about steroid use, teenage drinking, academic eligibility problems ...

Beyond their on-field success, that's what makes Naples High unique, and maybe that's why we'll see the Golden Eagles on NBC next month.

For now, look for them to continue their drive toward the Florida state high school football playoffs and a 3A championship.

They won't stand for any commercial interruptions tonight.