By Lee Davis
For Hoover fans, the Bucs’ 7-6 loss to Spain Park in the Class 7A football playoffs Nov. 20 came down to a good news/bad news scenario.
The bad news is that Hoover will not be the 2015 Big-School Class football champion for the fourth consecutive year. The good news is that the streak had to end sometime, and the Bucs are far from finished.
Admittedly, it wasn’t the greatest year in Hoover football history. The Bucs finished “only” 10-3, lost twice to cross-town rival Spain Park, was beaten by arch-foe Vestavia Hills and missed the state championship game for only the second time since 1999. To get an idea of the narrow width between victory and defeat, remember that if Hoover had been able to kick a last-second field goal against the Jaguars, I wouldn’t be writing about this topic.
Of course, the only reason 2015 is considered a down year is because of the incredible standard set in the Rush Propst and Josh Niblett eras. The numbers are mind-boggling. Since the turn of the century, Hoover has played in the championship final 14 times and claimed nine titles. In many of the other years, the Bucs were only a play or two away from claiming more championships. Throughout the tenure of two coaches and the off-the-field issues identified with the latter part of the Propst era, Hoover maintained an uninterrupted run of excellence on the field.
Now that the Bucs have been dethroned – at least temporarily – that excellence is not likely to change. Hoover still has the same resources it has enjoyed for the past 15 years: great facilities, supportive parents and, most of all, an abundance of quality athletes. Niblett is one of the best coaches in Alabama, and if anything, this season’s failure to produce another champion may make him and his staff more focused than ever.
There is one thing that may have changed: the quality of the Bucs’ opponents, and even that may be considered a tribute to the wide-ranging influence of the Hoover program. Rival teams, who understandably got tired of losing to the Bucs more often than not, upgraded their programs to become more competitive.
It’s become almost a cliché to say that no team in Class 7A will ever dominate the way Hoover has, and that may be true. But it would also be premature to say that the program is backsliding in any significant way. If someone started an office pool on which team will win the 2016 Class 7A football championship, who would be disappointed to draw Hoover’s name out of the hat?
Nobody. That’s because one year of falling short doesn’t foretell the demise of a program. Just because the opposition is stronger doesn’t mean Hoover won’t get stronger, too.
