COLUMN: The Tragedy Of Paul W. Bryant High Football

*This is an opinion column*

TUSCALOOSA, AL — I was a freshman at Northside High in 2003 when Central High School, "Super Central," as many called it, was split up by the city school system, which had opted to build a new Central High, along with Northridge High School and Paul W. Bryant High.

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In Samantha, we hated Northridge more than any of them, mostly because folks began getting us blue-collar kids confused with those from the fancy new school in the richest part of the county and overlooking the fact that our school had been in existence since the 1950s. I also remember feeling sad for Central High, watching it go from a national power to getting kicked around by schools it had dominated for ages.

It was the beginning of a peculiar new age for high school football in Tuscaloosa County, marked mostly by a steep decline in success for schools south of the Black Warrior River.

Indeed, since 2003, the three schools have a combined football record of 228-394.

Now, compare that to the 197-80 record the Central High Falcons posted from 1979 until the big split. Even more illuminating from a historical standpoint, stack either of those aforementioned records against the pre-integration totals for Druid High School (205-147-22) and Tuscaloosa High School (351-118-38) before they were justifiably forced to merge by a federal judge to become Central High School.

Tuscaloosa has one of the most rich winning traditions of any city in Alabama, even without the University of Alabama. But unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much cause for optimism at present — especially after news broke on Thursday that Tuscaloosa City Schools was in the market for a new head football coach at Bryant High.

There was just one problem ... nobody had informed Stampede head coach Eldrick Hill that he was already out of a coaching job.

After WVUA 23's Gary Harris first broke the story, it was learned that the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education planned to take up the vote on removing Hill as head football coach this upcoming Tuesday. But as of the publication of this story, Hill remains the head coach and a teacher at Paul W. Bryant High.

Still, that didn't stop TCS from going ahead with its coaching search — a decision the central office would ultimately stand by on Friday after making the announcement the day before.

In my little more than a decade of journalism experience, I've never seen a high school football coach treated in such a way.

Sure, at the college or professional levels, it's not uncommon for a millionaire, high-profile coach to find out through a news story that they had lost their job.

But a high school football coach?

"Mr. Hill was notified early in the week about the principal's recommendation on the coaching change," TCS Public Information Officer Lydia Avant told Patch in an email Friday morning. "The Board of Education votes on all personnel recommendations. They will meet on Tuesday. However, that does not prevent TCS from going ahead and posting the position. Coaching is a supplement on top of his teaching position. It is the coaching supplement that will be voted on by the BOE."

Hill will be the first person to admit the program was struggling to keep pace with others in the area as it worked to overcome injuries, regression and lineup turnover on its way to finishing 1-9 in 2022. The Stampede's only win of the season came in a 23-18 victory over Brookwood — one of only a handful of AHSAA Class 6A schools to have a worse football record than Bryant in the time since it opened in 2003.

But the win-loss column is just a part of the story and seems to be more the result of the myriad factors that led to a school named after arguably the greatest college football coach of all time being one of the least successful football programs in its class.

'WHAT DO I DO?'

It's a feeling no one in any job expects — that pang of vulnerability you get in your gut upon receiving news about yourself from a secondhand source.

Hill did confirm that he had met with Principal Lydia Edwards on Monday, who informed him that he could either hand in his letter of resignation as football coach or she would recommend his removal to the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education next week.

Apart from any heartache or disappointment from the decision, though, Hill told Patch that he knew what was coming but initially expected to honor all of his commitments to the program until the final vote came down on Tuesday.

After all, he is in the process of planning the team's annual football banquet and still working to help some of his talented players navigate the overwhelming world of college football recruitment.

"I started getting screenshots of the article and nobody has told me anything," he told Patch in an interview, after mentioning his meeting with the school's principal. "Nobody had told me anything, my [players] are reading this and my son is reading this, but nobody has told me anything. So, I'm wondering should I stop my duties as football coach? What do I do?"

Hill first came to Tuscaloosa ahead of the 2014 season after one year at Gardendale High School and, over nine seasons, led the Stampede to a 36-55 overall record and three playoff appearances — the last being the 2019 season that saw Bryant end the campaign 7-4 with a first round playoff loss.

For those keeping score, Hill's win total represents a little more than half of Paul W. Bryant High's entire win total for its history. Yet Bryant High still opted to move forward ousting its longest-serving head football coach after a disappointing year and an expressed desire from city leaders to see more success on the football field.

Across town, a somewhat similar scenario played out earlier in the week with the Central High Falcons, as head coach Rodney Bivens, Jr. resigned from his role after three seasons and a dismal 8-22 record with no playoff appearances.

And it also comes just days after the Tuscaloosa City Council approved $500,000 in funding to supplement coaching salaries for Tuscaloosa City Schools as part of Tuscaloosa Mayor and former Central Falcons standout Walt Maddox's proposed "Athletic Excellence" fund.

This fund will now give each of the three city high school "clusters" approximately $166,000 during each budget year that will be allocated only for the operations of the athletic departments within TCS high schools and middle schools.

In August, Maddox also said it was important for officials in City Hall to "acknowledge that the city schools, as in some sports, are not performing at the level that we certainly would want them to perform."

It's worth noting that the school board should be commended, along with Northridge High, for the hiring of highly-sought head coach Ryan Lolley during the last offseason — a move that generated excitement north of the river after luring away him away from Gordo.

But to those who have paid attention to the progression following the split up of "Super Central" years ago, Northridge has consistently proven the exception to problems plaguing the city school system, not just in athletics, but just about everything from academia and discipline issues to facilities.

This is in no way any fault of the students, teachers, administrators and staff at any of the schools, but rather a reflection of both the community's priorities and the overall lack of support.

Indeed, while both schools have made documented improvements in recent years, Bryant and Central both were classified as failing schools by the Alabama Department of Education in 2018 — a title no one could imagine ever being placed on a school like Northridge.

The two schools have both clawed their way off the failing schools list, but I'm also reminded of what someone once told me: If the sprinklers for the football field needs repairs at Bryant or Central, it might take a day or more to get it fixed.

At Northridge, however, the sprinklers are always working.

A HIGH-PROFILE JOB

As previously noted, there are only five schools of the 57 in AHSAA Class 6A that have fewer football wins than Paul W. Bryant High School since 2003. It's one of the most ironic statistics in Alabama high school sports considering the school's namesake.

AHSAA 6A schools with less wins than Bryant since 2003:

• Brookwood (53)
• Russel County (44)
• Robertsdale (40)
• Woodlawn (39)
• Columbia (31)

With that in mind, one could argue that if the head coaching job at Bryant is as "high-profile" as advertised by Tuscaloosa City Schools, then it only became so in the last decade under Hill.

"A lot of people don't understand the magnitude of what coaches bring to the table," he told Patch. "It shouldn't always be about wins and losses. Yeah, everybody wants to win championships, but not everybody can win championships. You have to build champions off the field first."

It's no closely guarded secret that Bryant High is an afterthought when it comes to financial buy-in from the local business community, especially when looking at the support received by its 6A counterparts at places like Northridge and Hillcrest. Businesses like to back winners and despite a winning season here and there, consistency has been the Stampede's biggest hurdle.

It's been a similar story for Central High following the split, with both it and Bryant struggling academically and seeing their athletics languish for the most part.

One of the only true bright spots for any of the three schools on the gridiron can be found in Central High's 2007 undefeated Class 4A state title team — a squad this writer would argue was one of the best teams ever put on a field in Tuscaloosa, despite being counted out along with Bryant during the first couple of years after the changes for the school system.

This author should know, too, as the Falcons beat us 57-0 my senior year at Northside for Homecoming, thanks in no small part to their star running back Demario Pippen, who ran me over or juked me out of my cleats at least half a dozen times that night.

I would have been embarrassed at my own performance if it wasn't for him just being so damn good. I've told people in three states he was the best high school running back I've ever seen, much less had to try and tackle.

"The main thing was just having an underdog mentality and when [the split] happened, we felt like everybody counted us out," Pippen, now the football coach at Eastwood Middle School, told me when I finally managed to catch up with him almost two decades later. "We were already from the west side of town, so we already felt like people thought we were just gonna end up being statistics and we just had that chip on our shoulders to beat the odds and put the work in to be successful."

Pippen went on to play three years at Jackson State and a year at Tuskegee, before making it to rookie mini camp with the NFL's Denver Broncos. He also played in the arena league for two years with the Minnesota Axemen.

What Central has though that Bryant lacks is a rich football history to serve as inspiration, he explained — a history that Pippen himself is an important part of. Even despite Central being broken up, Pippen's class had a deeply-engrained sense of place and identity thanks to the great players that came before them.

"We knew we were on hallowed ground and knew about all the legends that played there," Pippen said.

For a school only a couple of decades old like Bryant, though, there's no real history or lore to use as a motivator. Bear Bryant had been dead more than two decades by the time the school opened, with his name becoming something of a misnomer.

But internal operations, decision making and priorities can also be brought into question, especially considering Paul W. Bryant High School in 2019 reportedly did away with offering an athletic period during regular school hours — a decision Hill said was initially made due to scheduling issues and ultimately retained by the administration due to low ACT scores.

"All high schools run on the same period schedule, but may vary in what is done with the time block," Avant told Patch when asked about athletic periods at the three TCS high schools. "Athletic periods still exist."

Tuscaloosa County School System Public Information Officer Terri Brewer confirmed to Patch that the county school system's six high schools — including Bryant High contemporaries Brookwood and Hillcrest — each offer athletic periods as part of their normal schedule. This decision is based on staffing availability, she said, and one that is, for the most part, in place at its high schools.

This is a particularly odd component of the story, as other school systems likely make it a high priority to look for any advantage they can to give their student-athletes an edge in preparing for Friday nights or the range of other school-sanctioned sports. But if indeed academics at Bryant was the impetus for doing away with an athletic period, then its strange that Hill would be asked to resign based on his win-loss record.

Hill also mentioned that issues in the offseason caused his team to pivot its approach come August, namely the removal of three seniors from the team, having two players transfer to Hillcrest High and two others transfer to a high school in Georgia.

But when you mix the lack of the athletic period with the turnover in the lineup and the longterm implications of restrictions placed on the Bryant High football program and others during the COVID-19 pandemic, the source of the regression comes into clearer focus.

"I understand that we haven't won a lot of games as of late, but there's a lot that goes into that," Hill said. "As head coach, I'm gonna stick my hand up and take most of the blame, but as big of an entity as it is, I'm also going to say I'm not the only part of the blame either."

Indeed, while blame can come in many forms with a range of interpretations, this author refuses to blame the kids who are out there trying their best. And it's not so much the talent that's lacking as it is the diversity — a concept Super Central was celebrated for, with many pointing to the mix of races and backgrounds as being the secret to the mega-school's success.

Cottondale is a fairly diverse place, but Hill explained that when he took the job expecting and hoping for a diverse mix of races and backgrounds at Bryant similar to that seen at Central before the split, he was shocked to see how many white families were leaving the system in favor of private school after their kids finished middle school.

No, the players don't seem to be the problem at all, with Hill's program churning out numerous young men currently proving themselves in the college ranks. Their success on the field and in the classroom stands as a testament to the football program and school that gave them the chance to excel.

Athletes like defensive back Brylan Lanier — a redshirt freshman at Indiana who recorded his first career sack at the end of the first half against Maryland this year.

Others include University of Alabama walk-on defensive back Chase Davis; Delta State sophomore wide receiver Alphus Shipman; Jacksonville State sophomore defensive end Javarius Hoskins; Birmingham Southern senior wide receiver Lionel Grant III and senior offensive lineman Derrick Maddox.

The list goes on and doesn't include the numerous Stampede standouts who have already finished their college careers after benefiting from Hill's tutelage.

Hill is thankful for those connections and those moments. He also expressed gratitude to the city school system for giving him the opportunity to be a head football coach for nearly a decade. He made it clear he was more surprised at the decision than bitter or remorseful that he could have done more.

"We're still pushing and pumping for the kids but I'm thankful for Tuscaloosa City Schools giving me this chance," Hill said on Friday. "I will do what's right and continue with my head coaching duties until I'm officially told I'm not the head coach at Paul Bryant anymore."

It's unclear if much will change between now and when the school board votes on removing Hill as Bryant High's football coach Tuesday. Still, this author can't help but wonder what kind of message is being sent to prospective coaching candidates looking for their next job.

I'm not a sportswriter and admit I don't know every single fact relating to this specific situation, which is why I chose instead to write an opinion column based off what I know and can prove.

But, when considering the City of Tuscaloosa's recent commitment to raise coaching salaries for the city school system, one can't help but ponder a possible scenario where quality hires are still scared away from job openings at Bryant and Central based on the way this all played out.

Not saying it will happen, but the possibility certainly exists that the schools will not only struggle to find coaching candidates capable of winning, but will be on the hook to pay them more than ever before.

Only time will tell.

Ryan Phillips is an award-winning journalist, editor and columnist, in addition to being the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The views expressed in this opinion column are his and not necessarily reflective of those held by our parent company or sponsors.