_________________

“People tell me all the time, ‘Well, this is a new era.’ I’m tired of hearing it. It’s not a new era. The rules have been there for years and some are not going by them.”

Central Clay County’s Danny Horn

_________________

 

 

LINEVILLE, Ala. — Danny Horn is the quintessential high school football coach, an idyllic man in an idyllic setting and, by God, that’s the way it was intended.

He’s also an example of how to win a lot of games and championships without wiping his nose on the rulebook, so it can be done. Everyone should seek to emulate him.

Horn, who is approaching 64, remains square jawed but his hair has turned the color of a summer cirrus cloud from a lifetime of teaching his players to sacrifice their bodies for the greater good, of tackles, blocks and decisions made, a few bad but mostly excellent. He’s left most of himself on the practice field, where he’s taught his players how to win more games than anybody in Alabama. Sometimes, he feels like an eraser rubbed across a piece of paper a few hundred times.

“I still want to do the same things I was doing 20 years ago but your body don’t quite work like that anymore,” Horn said.

His office at Central Clay County High School, which is formed by painted cinder blocks, would be a broom closet in some of the state’s more opulent fieldhouses. In the winter, the windows sometimes fog over, obscuring his magnificent view of a parking lot. He sweeps, cleans toilets, mows grass and molds boys into men.

When Horn blows his whistle, it can stop a play but unfortunately not time. It’s one thing for the winningest coach in Alabama high school football history to retire because he feels older but an abomination to feel compelled to walk away because he is sickened by an era in which the ground is shifting and even liquefying into a quagmire under his feet. The modern game has become co-opted by recruiting and transfers and players Horn said are more concerned with fame and money. He wants to blow the whistle on that, too, before it is too late.

“We’re at a crossroads in high school,” he said. “If you’re not going to enforce the rules, then they’re going to keep breaking them. We’re not on a level playing field because of all the recruiting. The Alabama High School Athletic Association has always had rules that you’re supposed to go by but a lot of places are not doing it and that’s what’s got us in a mess now. People tell me all the time, ‘Well, this is a new era.’ I’m tired of hearing it. It’s not a new era. The rules have been there for years and some people are not going by them.”

Horn said part of the problem is the AHSAA’s fear of lawsuits.

“But the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s got lawyers too,” he said. “There’s got to be consequences when you don’t obey the rules. Some of these coaches say, ‘We’re doing a kid a favor.’ You’re not doing a kid a favor. You’re doing yourself a favor.”

Horn practices what he preached way back when. He didn’t transfer from his beloved Clay County High School when he played in the late 1970s, although those teams were average and never made the playoffs — an odd happenstance of history that did not foretell the greatness of the Hall of Fame coach who has won eight state championships. Today, missing the playoffs alone makes kids leave for another school.

“The loyalty is gone,” Horn said. “The hometown hero is basically gone except in certain areas.”

The greatest team in state history, 1988 Vigor, wasn’t built on transfers. Jackson’s fabulous Class 4A state championship teams the last two years were homegrown.

So, you can win championships without transfers. But some coaches believe you can’t win without them.

“You know, I’m a lot better coach if I’ve got better players,” Horn said. “We play with what we have. Most of the people do it right and some don’t do it right.”

Horn said many players transfer for one reason.

“They’re not coming for academics,” he said. “Don’t sit there and tell me the reason why you are getting a lot of transfers is because of your academics. I ain’t buying that. I’m not the smartest guy around but I’ve got common sense.”

Horn may or may not retire before the 2026 season but he wants to wield his stature like the eraser and encourage change — moving forward by going back to time-honored rules, to enforce them no matter who breaks them, to keep high school football and all other sports truly amateur and not solely of those with the resources.

To start fixing the problem, Horn said all transfers should sit out a year and be ineligible until proven eligible and he believes superintendents and principals should also be held accountable if their school is found guilty of violations,

“That would eliminate a whole lot of problems,” he said. “In this state, we’re doing it the opposite way. Instead of ruling transfers ineligible, they are eligible until proven ineligible. And the way you prove it is you’ve got to have documentation of where they live and you’ve got to go by the bona fide move rule. There’s eight districts in the state and each district ought to have their own committee that goes out and checks their district.”

The fact that many players transfer because they feel it will enhance their college chances — or a coach convinces them of that — shouldn’t matter in a wireless world.

“It don’t matter whether you’re 1A or 7A,” Horn said. “If you’re good enough, they’ll find you.”

Private schools once recruited with a free hand — and may again if forced out of the AHSAA.

“Ten or 15 years ago, they put in that competitive balance and put in the multiplier and I think it was probably needed because I think the private schools at that time had an advantage (in recruiting players),” Horn said. “But now, with all the recruiting going on, private schools have a legitimate gripe. They feel like they’re getting bullied because the public schools are doing the same thing or doing it more now.”

If the private schools form their own association with their own rules, there will be consequences.

“If people think recruiting is bad now, just imagine what will happen,” UMS-Wright coach Sam Williams said.

But Horn is optimistic the climate will eventually overwhelm the cheaters.

“I think you’re going to see in the next couple of years things are going to get better,” he said. “I just think people are getting tired of it.”