How Big Is Football Here?

Football is serious in this part of Alabama. Our local high school football team, the Spanish Fort Toros, were 5A state champs in 2010. Daphne, our rivals in the local youth football league, their high school has been 6A champions the last two years running. This in the state that has posted the national champion college football team the last three years in a row. How big is football? Spanish Fort High's season opener on September 3 – Labor Day – is being televised nationally on ESPN – not ESPN 8, ESPN!

I am assistant coaching for one of three under nine-year-old teams our city is fielding in the Baldwin County youth football league. Our head coach, Coach Johnny Morris, has six assistants just like me on the practice field. Spanish Fort fields nine youth teams below the middle school level. Assuming every youth football team has the same number of coaches, Spanish Fort, population less than 6,000, has a total 63 volunteer youth football coaches – more than 1% of the population of our city coaches football!

In fairness, our city teams draw players from the unincorporated parts of the county outside the city limits, so the denominator is actually larger and the percentage smaller. However, add to that our middle school team, freshman, junior varsity, and, of course, varsity, and every Friday night you'll find half the city at Toro stadium cheering on our boys.

I'm not saying it is good or bad, but that is what it's like down here in coastal Alabama, where we're about equidistant to Auburn, University of Alabama, and LSU.

Go Toros!