There are undoubtedly some unhappy folks in the Route 74 corridor that connects Red Lion and Dallastown.

The longtime high school athletic rivals now have something very much in common. Both are feeling snubbed right about now.

The reason?

Two of their favorite sons were overlooked on Saturday when the Pennsylvania Big 33 team was announced.

Dallastown's Ben Kline and Red Lion's Andrew Zeller both boast credentials that are certainly worthy of Big 33 consideration.

Both are headed to major college programs. Kline is headed to Penn State and Zeller is bound for Maryland.

Both were also two-way York-Adams League Division I all-stars. Kline was the unanimous Division I Player of the Year and Zeller was a dominant force on both lines when the Lions made a surprising run to the District 3-AAAA title game.

And both earned second-team Class AAAA all-state berths from Pennsylvania sports writers.

But both got bypassed by the panel picking the Big 33 roster. They're not alone, of course. There are dozens of other seniors with similar backgrounds -- all-state players headed to Division I programs -- who also missed the cut.

Should Kline and Zeller have been on the team? I honestly don't know.

What I do know is this -- the people on the selection panel spent hours upon hours making their picks. They take their job very seriously and try to be as objective as humanly possible.

Unfortunately, it's a largely thankless task. Pennsylvania has nearly 600 high school football teams. If each team has an average of 17 seniors, that means more than 10,000 players are eligible for the Big 33 team in any given year. Only 33 will be happy.

That's an extremely small percentage -- about 1/3 of 1 percent. There's going to be a lot of grousing. It's the nature of the beast.

But Kline and Zeller -- and their loyal fans in Dallastown and Red Lion -- can still take heart. Once college practice starts in the fall, the Big 33 honors won't mean a thing. Everyone starts from scratch.

Remember, the college football landscape is littered with former Big 33 players who flamed out at the next level. On the other hand, there are also plenty of athletes (Dover grad John Kuhn, for example) who didn't make a Big 33 roster, but who still went on to productive college -- and even NFL -- careers.

Yes, Kline and Zeller are likely a little disappointed right now. But they need to channel that disappointment into motivation in a determined effort to become productive players for the Nittany Lions and the Terrapins, respectively.

If they can do that, in four years, no one will remember that they didn't make the Big 33 team.

Steve Heiser is sports editor of The York Dis patch. He can be reached at sheiser@yorkdispatch.com or 854-1575, ext. 455.