It is Monday, so time for another installment of the Hoover drama on the Paul Finebaum Radio Network. I know my radio will be tuned to the show this afternoon—where else would we get to listen in on someone getting fired?
So much for reality television. Finebaum is reality radio.
But how does Finebaum top Friday’s show? It had sex allegations worthy of Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearing, and it had the Hoover Gazette management firing writer Hunter Ford.
And for good measure, the Hoover grade chanage scandal is in full swing.
High school football is now as sordid as college football.
Ten years ago, would any of us have thought a retired federal judge would be leading a probe into grade changing allegations? Of course not, but high school football is now big business; from the Super Six to Two-A-Days, high school football is a commodity.
Hoover has benefited from millions of dollars of publicity from the MTV series, and the school system has benfitted from the exposure the football program brings. One football coach I know, said it best: “Sometimes the football team is all other towns see of (our town), and how they behave reflects on all of us.”
For many years, the Hoover football team brought a positive reflection to Hoover, but the scandal that now embroils the high school undermines all the positives—Hoover looks like a football factory.
And the firing of the Gazette reporter just makes it look that much worse.
Ford said on the Finebaum show, “I have something, but I don’t want to say anything until I have all my ducks in a row. I don’t want to say anything specific.”
Then Ford went ahead and spilled the beans. Basically, it has been rumored for years regarding Propst having an extra-marital affair. But no media outlet has printed it or broadcast the innuendo.
Ford said some interesting things during the interview, which you can listen to here, namely that Propst has a strong faction of supporters, who fanatically defend him.
Ford said many people in Hoover were “scared of retribution from the people who are so far into the football program they can’t see anything else.”
Was Ford the first casualty of this cabal?
