AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > September > 01 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USReal football, without Hollywood subplots
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The opening of the Georgia high school football season this weekend was interrupted by only natural causes: thunder, lightning, the occasional green quarterback whose timing is still a bit off on the inside slant.
The good news: MTV and its ill-conceived programming were nowhere close to us.
See, there is this natural law in sports: They lose their level of purity as they ascend to higher levels. In football, innocence decreases as you go from dirt lot to rec league, rec league to high school, and high school to Big State With Rich Overbearing Coach U. The stakes get bigger. Economics begin to dictate decisions. Novel concepts like playing for the fun of it get stomped on.
We witnessed some of the good Saturday in the Georgia Dome. Over 600 players from eight high schools playing four games in something called the Corky Kell Classic.
Just football players, students, parents, cheerleaders, painted faces, painted torsos and bands. Nobody on probation, no drug scandals, no federal indictments. Remember what that was like?
“It’s what attracted me to high school football to begin with,” said Jimmy Dorsey, the longtime McEachern coach. “It’s at the grassroots level of sports. You’re dealing with kids who for the most part are still playing for the fun of it.”
As opposed to, say, what we’re witnessing now in Hoover, Ala., where a high school sports nightmare is being played out. For two years, MTV hatched a virus called “Two-A-Days,” a reality show about the Hoover High football team.
The Alabama school system pimped itself out for a reported $20,000 a year. Cameras followed the main characters — high school kids — through the hallways, and at practices, and in those wonderful made-for-TV private moments.
It turned high school football into a bad cliché. A maniacal coach (Rush Propst), leading goofball players, ogled by dimwitted cheerleaders named Brittany. What — no orgy in the teacher’s lounge?
MTV has now descended on a high school in Louisiana for season there. Meanwhile, consider the wreckage it left behind. There’s an investigation into possible grade fixing for football players. The principal, Richard Bishop, was dumped. No telling if they’ll ever find the body. Propst may soon be out of a job himself, not merely for the alleged academic fraud but for reported indiscretions in his personal life.
Some of this might’ve happened without MTV. But logic says the cameras and the theater made it worse.
“I watched that show a couple of times,” Dorsey said. “I didn’t enjoy it. It gave us all a black eye. The way that was portrayed has nothing to do with high school football. It seemed like there was always a connotation of something sexual going on. And I wouldn’t have my job if I behaved the way that [coach] behaved. If that’s what it’s come to to be successful, I don’t want to be successful. We’re tough, but I’m not going to talk to my players like they’re dogs.”
McEachern and Parkview, two former powerhouses on the road back, met in the Dome. It was just the kind of game you wanted, two teams desperately swapping leads. The Panthers took a 25-22 lead with less than seven minutes left on a 5-yard run by quarterback Clayton Wilkin, then held on when McEachern missed a field-goal try in the final seconds.
Real football. No Hollywood subplots.
“I’m always proud to play in a game like this,” Parkview coach Cecil Flowe said later. “The first time we brought the kids here, they were awestruck, just looking around at everything.”
Flowe’s program has been in the spotlight before. Parkview won three straight state titles, from 2000 to 2002, with consecutive 15-0 seasons. Last season the Panthers dipped to 5-6, their first losing record since 1991. The win over McEachern, Flowe said, “starts to get the bad taste out of your mouth.”
Should Parkview ascend to the top again, MTV shouldn’t bother calling Flowe. He would never allow his program to become a TV script.
“I suppose some things are reality, to a degree,” he said. “But it also exposes your program to a lot of stuff that you just don’t need. It can only lead to something negative. This is high school football, not a big-time college program. People need to realize that.”
There’s your reality show.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: High School, Jeff Schultz
Comments
By BnB
September 2, 2007 11:03 AM | Link to this
On the other hand, with this sort of football what are you going to write about?
By Howard
September 2, 2007 11:58 AM | Link to this
Jeff…great column…always look forward to college and high school football seasons when you’re at your best. I couldn’t believe that show about Hoover HS when I first saw it. Like Dorsey, and myself being a former 24-year coach…I couldn’t believe what that moronic coach was saying and doing to his players. I only watched one episode and then never watched another one…pure disgusting!!! I did enjoy it thoroughly though when a Christian school out of Louisiana called JT Curtis handed Hoover their helmets in a nationally televised game…now that was a great reality show!!
By b. perkins
September 2, 2007 1:08 PM | Link to this
why \is it i can not get any high school scores ,schedules .rankins.etc. get with it
By To b. perkins
September 2, 2007 5:25 PM | Link to this
Why is it that you cannot spell or form a proper sentence?
By Chris S
September 3, 2007 1:16 PM | Link to this
Very funny, To b. perkins. Good read, and MTV sucks.