Erick Kinsey DE Miami Northwestern
Would you want someone from Northwestern considering how the majority of their team basically mailed in their season?
http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1288727
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
The Miami (Fla.) Northwestern High football team finished up its regular season Thursday night with a 34-21 win over Homestead (Fla.) High.
But it wasn't the victory - or even the fact that the school missed the postseason - that was the story here.
This program, which won the 2007 national championship, finished this season without many of its players and most of its fans.
According to media reports, only approximately 100 fans showed up to see the team -
a team forced to play many athletes on offense and defense since so few chose to show up this week.
"I guess we have a lot of 'fair-weather' fans," quarterback Elgin Hilliard told the Miami Herald. "If we're winning, they're behind us, and if we're losing, they are not."
The same can be said for the players.
"It was definitely a tough week," Hilliard told the paper. "Some guys didn't show up to practice, some guys did. The morale was down. We actually had a lot of guys going both ways tonight. But the guys that did show up every day showed true heart and they stood up in the face of adversity."
And while the 6-3 season marks the first time since 1991 that the program did not advance to the playoffs, it marks just the latest filled with adversity.
Last season, the school made national news when its coach, Billy Rolle, was fired and then re-hired in a dispute with the principal regarding athletics vs. academics.
Dallas Jackson, the national high school football analyst for RivalsHigh, feels this latest incident will put a mark on a once-proud program.
"It is a tough, unfortunate, situation," Jackson said. "It is a lot of mixed emotions even as an outsider to the situation.
"Seeing kids quit is hard. Seeing the fans seemingly do the same is even worse."
It's not hard to find the only winners in this situation. They were on the field, representing a program that has produced numerous college and professional players, including the current University of Miami QB Jacory Harris (Class of 2008) and past and present NFL stars LB Marvin Jones (Class of 1990) and WR Antonio Bryant (Class of 1999).
"Those guys are true Bulls with true Bull pride," Hilliard said, remarking about his teammates on the field.
Unfortunately for Northwestern, there weren't many that fit the description.