The Northside Rams, shaking off an early chest bump from the Ashford Yellowjackets, ultimately pulled away for an easy 49-13 win in the first round of the Class 4A AHSAA state playoffs in Samantha last evening.
The Yellowjackets were trailing by just eight points, 21-13, before Northside began pulling away, scoring 28 unanswered points the rest of the way.
The win clinched yet another 10 win season for the Rams, something that is becoming common place where 10 wins might have taken six or seven seasons to achieve not that many years ago.
Next up is perennial power Williamson out of Mobile, who will travel to Samantha and present Northside with an unusually brutal second round test.
The Lions finished runner up to Vigor in Class 4A Region 1, having outscored their opponents 317-37 in a season where they played only eight regular season games.
Teams like Williamson often find it impossible to fill out a ten game regular season schedule due in large part to the reluctance of non region opponents to agree to schedule them.
The Lions play in a region that, according to computer calculations, is among the most difficult in Class 4A (#3 out of 8), while the Rams hail from one that resides in the lower half (#6 out of 8).
Williamson has produced ten players that went on to play in the NFL, ten more than Northside (unless you count the strike shortened 1987 season, where former Ram standout Kenny Rogers played as a replacement player).
The past and the present are not part of the now, however. The Rams were historically bad for decades. Aside from intermittent success here and there, from 1959-2011 Northside compiled a miserable 175-347-8 record, a winning percentage of only 34 percent.
Since 2012, when Chris Hilliker took over the moribund program and continuing with current head coach Robbie Jones, the Rams are 123-46, a winning percentage of 73 percent.
That’s the stark difference. 52 years and 175 victories compared with 14 years and 123 wins.
It seems harsh for a number 1 seed to have to face an opponent like Williamson so early in the playoffs, but it is reality. The Rams will have to beat the best eventually if they’re going to win a state championship. For them and their long suffering contingent of loyal fans, it’s better to face them in Samantha rather than their Lions’s Den.
Eventually Northside is going to win the State championship in football. If they’re going to win it this season, they’ll have to dispatch teams like Williamson along the way, whether it’s early in the playoffs or later.
For a few weeks now, I’ve been of the opinion that it’s going to be this year. This season. This team. They’re going to beat the Lions on Friday night in tiny Samantha. And for the subsequent four weeks, they’ll conquer whoever stands in their way. And sometime around 10PM on December 3 at Mobile’s Hancock Whitney Stadium (capacity 25,450), the Northside Rams will be crowned Class 4A state football champions. Where are we gonna eat afterwards?
