Justin M. Bowen / Photo Illustration

Basic High School students David Romero (left) and Cody Brady show off the shirts they created to poke fun at Home News sports editor Ray Brewer. Brewer has a tendency to pick Basic to lose his weekly football game predictions. Basic faces Del Sol in the Sunrise Regional semifinals on Friday.

By Steve Silver · November 11, 2008 · 5:29 PM

Home News sports editor Ray Brewer does not exactly keep his disdain for Basic football a secret.

Brewer picks the Wolves to lose nearly every time he pens his weekly predictions column. He has picked against Basic nine out of 11 games.

Yet Basic keeps winning.

The Wolves (8-3, 5-1) locked up the Southeast Division title by dropping arch rival Green Valley 33-28 in the Henderson Bowl on Oct. 30 and have since advanced to the Sunrise Regional semifinals to face Del Sol on Friday night.

Armed with their team's success on the gridiron, Basic sophomore David Romero and senior Cody Brady knew they had to take a stand against Brewer, whom they call their "chief hater."

"Everyone would always talk about Brewer picking against us, but then I found out that even coach (Jeff) Cahill knew about it, so I just knew I had to do something to get back at (Brewer)," Romero said.

Romero wanted his retaliation to be humorous, so he called his friend and fellow Basic baseball player Brady and asked if he could do anything with Brewer's mug shot in Adobe Photoshop.

The two decided to print Brewer's face and an animated pink T-shirt proclaiming his love for Basic on a plain, white T-shirt. The creation was an instant success.

"Everyone loved it," Brady said of the Brewer T-shirts. "It wasn't just the football players either because it seems like Brewer picks against Basic in everything. I don't know if he does it on purpose, but we definitely made these on purpose."

Brady and Romero unveiled their shirts the week of the Henderson Bowl and then wore them to the game hoping Brewer would show up.

Their favorite pigskin prognosticator was thrilled to see the shirts and decided to invite the students to join him on this week's edition of "All In," which airs on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. on Las Vegas TV channel 14 and on the Las Vegas Sun Web site.

"I think it's great that the kids are reading and they care enough about their school to do this," Brewer said. "I love the school spirit and it really adds more excitement to the playoff atmosphere."

After touring the Las Vegas Sun and Home News offices, Brady and Romero filmed the high school sports segment with Brewer and "All In" host Alex Adeyanju.

Unfortunately for the students, Brewer stuck to tradition and predicted that Del Sol would end Basic's season on Friday.

"He's wrong, we got this one locked up," Brady said.

Steve Silver can be reached at 948-7822 or steve.silver@lasvegassun.com.