Pwse……since you were a football coach and seem to enjoy these things I’ll tell my Al Bundy story……All the high school ball had me a little nostalgic….

I was actually ranked by the Birmingham News as one of the top 12 running backs in the state going into my senior year……I was really one of those borderline players to go play college ball though because my size and speed was “good” but just not elite……well, not until track season but that’s another story…..Still though I was getting a lot of attention from the smaller colleges….

So at the tail end of my junior year, our really good football coach who had turned the program around and had back to back 10-2 seasons and coulda/shoulda won the state either of those seasons got into pissing match with the new basketball coach that the school hired and made athletic director instead of him……He quit and went to another school…….The basketball coach wanted it to be a basketball school and was a dickhead on top of that……He purposely scheduled us against people like Hazlewood and ended up hiring the worst coach of the potential prospects he could have hired…..That coach lasted 2-3 seasons before getting fired….my senior year being the first of them….

We had the chance to get a coach that ran our same exact offense and had just taken his team the state championship game…….This was pretty important at the time because we were a 4A school playing a lot of teams above our classification that had superior talent…..The misdirection and all the stuff we ran off of the wing-t offense is how we beat them……The new coach that eventually got hired completely changed everything and went back to running an old school power I……The worst thing we could have done.

So that sets the stage for you…….Now my new coach didn’t really know me and didn’t know that I was the awkward kid who just happened to be pretty good at football….so when we were having a conversation one day and I said the completely wrong thing about becoming G’ville’s all-time leading rusher with “X” amount of yards that season……I guess he thought he needled to humble me after that and make a point……The first game I got 8 or 9 carries and we got beat…..The second game I think I had 11 carries and we got beat…….

Well, we had a preacher that had always went to pregame meals with us as long as I’d been playing…..After the meal was over he always got up and gave some kind of inspirational speech…..He was good at it too……On this particular occasion though he took the opportunity to call out the coach and the play calling and at some point I remember him saying “What in the heck are we doing??.....Give Harold the ball!!!!!”………

So that infuriated the new coach and when we got back to the field house he had a meeting in front of the whole team where he blew his lid and said this and that about him being the coach and making the decisions, blah, blah, blah……Needless to say he took about 2 more games to make his point and halfway through the season I think we were like 0-5 and I had about 200 yards….maybe……About the 6th game of the season he finally gave me the ball…..I was the 4a player of the week with 236 yards and 4 td’s……missing my 5th by one yard when the ref wouldn’t get out of the way….lol…….Next game I had 197 and that was with a 70 yard and a 50 yard run being called back…..

It was kinda too late after that though because the next week we played North Jackson who was stacked with size and talent and had the #1 linebacker in the state that year…..The dude was supposed to go to Bama but ended up stabbing a guy or something …..Anyways, the coach got me abused that game trying to run that power-I right at the guy….. it was the only game I ever played where my attitude was one of just wanting the game to be over……Just getting beat on hurts after a while.

Long story short……my senior season ended up being a disaster and it pretty much tanked my chances of a football scholarship…..I had folks wanting me to walk on but I was soured as hell after all of it and didn’t go……Maybe I should have……I look at it now as all just being meant to be and I’m where I should be…..Who knows where that road might have taken me……..I sure probably didn’t need 4 more years of getting knocked in the head…… laugh

Well, I think I’ve reached my quota for sad reliving high school glory days football stories now…….Carry on. smile

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Last edited by CNC; 12/05/24 01:30 PM.