Tonight Berkley High School, a school long known for boys' basketball above all else, rolled into the parking lot at Rochester High School off of Livernois for a north-south Oakland County tilt. The young coaching staff at Berkley have molded the Bears into a scrappy, hard-nosed bunch while Rochester is well-versed in the heavy-handed competition the OAA offers.

The wrench in the game? The Bears were an hour late, and when you're playing a freshman, jayvee and varsity game back-to-back-to-back, it makes for a long night. As far as the game went, it was worth waiting for, as Rochester fought off the Bears to the very end, surviving a half-court heave to tie at the buzzer to win 63-60.

Oakland County's sprawling traffic, available bus service to the Berkley teams and a pancake batter snowfall made punctuality all but impossible. This isn't an isolated incident within the OAA and it's not because the member schools don't have reliable transportation, qualified leadership or dedicated employees. It's because the league has outgrown it's usefulness. As one OAA athletic director put it this week, "Conceptually it's a fabulous league; Speaking practically, it's a nightmare."

Word has long been out that the OAA might be ready to follow the MEGA and dissolve. Ironically, the OAA and MEGA were also within a couple of years of each other's inception, too, back in the early 1990s. Now comes reliable information the I-75 corridor schools of the OAA might be poised to branch off together and soon. With Pontiac's impending consolidation of Central and Northern into one high school all but a forgone conclusion by the final half of this school year, the OAA athletic directors are meeting more regularly to address the changing landscape of the league.

It appears imminent that Clarkston and Lake Orion could merge with Troy and Troy Athens, Rochester, Rochester Adams and Stoney Creek to form a smaller, more manageable league. That would leave the southern Oakland County schools like Royal Oak, Birmingham, Berkley, Hazel Park and Ferndale to reconvene the defunct Southeastern Michigan Association.

The question unanswered? Where does that leave Pontiac and Avondale? Some have openly wondered why Grand Blanc joined the Kensington Lakes, and those questions would intensify if a north Oakland County league as aforementioned were to emerge. However, to even consider poaching Grand Blanc while leaving Avondale and Pontiac aside would evoke quick memories of the MEGA Conference disaster when a handful of schools successfully sued the original lineup of MEGA schools to gain inclusion into the league. Could Avondale be part of a northern-based county league? Will Pontiac be considered for a southern-based county conference?

And where do the 'Bloomfields' park themselves? West Bloomfield is on a bit of an island while Lahser and Andover have also been rumored for consolidation.

Times change, schools close, leagues come and go. As the death of the super-sized conference begins to play out, how Oakland County's schools re-invent themselves for athletics in today's recession-based economy will become the face of a new age in prep sports.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, released in August 2008 from Arcadia Publishing. Cameron's second title, Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, is due in August 2009.

I read this morning that Avondale High School football coach Steven Deutsch was quoted in today's Detroit Free Press as saying no one plays defense in high school football anymore. The Yellow Jackets defeated tough-luck Hazel Park this past Friday with a 34-yard touchdown on the game's final play by a 53-52 count. That 100+ point tally was one of a handful of near triple-digit games this past weekend in metro Detroit.

I'm not certain that's true as much as high school football has evolved with the collegiate game in leaps and bounds on the offensive side of the ball. Power-I formations? Yeah, right. Off-tackle? Maybe once in a while. More and more, though, it's traps, sweeps, veer and several variations that feature and specialize in the single-wing offense. Nowadays, when you see four-to-five receiver sets, I half prepare for a run or short screen to a halfback as an official working the wing or in the back judge's position.

The bottom line is prep defenses can no longer gear to stop the run or pass exclusively, and with the proliferation of passing camps, quarterback schools, weight, speed and skill training, how can a defense keep up with the expansion of the typical offensive playbook, multiplied by the power of three, in high school football today?

Fight The Good Fight? An ugly donnybrook nearly came to fruition this past Saturday before the kickoff of a small college football game when the home team and visiting team were both waiting to take the field, poised from opposite endzones. By rule, when both teams refuse to go onto the field before their opponent, the home team is required to go first. So the hosts thundered onto the turf, went 100 yards into the opposite endzone and engaged in a testosterone-powered shout-down with their opponents that was quickly addressed by all seven officials.

No fists were thrown and one 15-yard unsportsmanlike foul was assessed to start the game, plus a delay-of-game before the game's first kickoff legally took place. Thankfully both teams marched to early touchdowns. That was important because once the game was tied 7-7, both teams settled down into a rhythm. However, that start was the precursor to 20 more penalties before the clock read 0:00.

That's the reality of officiating a hotly-contested game with first place on the line.

Forfeit Ends Polar Bear Season: Highland Park High was a no-show on Friday night at Dearborn Edsel Ford last week. This meant no walk-up ticket sales, concession money, program or spirit gear sales, either. Hopefully it wasn't homecoming for the Thunderbirds, which would be the end of a lot of memories for the Edsel Ford student body as well.

It could be called admirable that Highland Park head coach Cedric Dortch had the stones to make a tough decision to deliver a message, but in these economic times, that money is vital for some of these schools and the memories of a high school football season's game cannot be replaced, either. The coach's decision was reported within this morning's edition of The Detroit News.
I never like forfeits in high school football. One, finding a replacement game in nearly impossible for the offended school. Two, the money that one home football game generates cannot be found elsewhere.

Ironically, all three forfeited games remaing on the Highland Park schedule to end the season will either grant or greatly improve playoff chances for the three offended schools.
Edsel Ford qualified for the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time in school history with the awarded victory on Friday, their sixth of the season. The Thunderbirds entered the game 5-1. Ypsilanti, Highland Park's Week Eight opponent, now sit at 5-3 with the forfeit win, and will have a chance to qualify for the playoffs if the purple 'n gold can defeat Dexter's Dreadnaughts (1-6 so far) in Week Nine.

Dearborn Fordson, ranked somewhere in the top five of nearly every state divisional classification poll after the Tractors' 24-14 win over rival Dearborn High, will end the season undefeated if they can beat the undefeated Southgate Anderson Titans this Friday in a huge match-up to decide the Mega Red championship. Because Highland Park was the Tractor opponent for Week Nine, Fordson is nearly guaranteed at least one home game in the playoffs no matter the result this Friday.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, and is working on a follow-up title, Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries!

This fall I'm going to be offering metro Detroit's prep football fans a breakdown of a specific rivalry game to coincide with each Friday of the season. I'll pick from a small handful of games that have long-standing implications in the communities that gear up for the annual game each year and write a feature about the game's history and some of the intricacies that the game features.

On the season's opening weekend for example, Livonia Stevenson plays Livonia Franklin, Dearborn Divine Child faces Dearborn Fordson and Hazel Park opposes Berkley. Did you know that Livonia Franklin won the state's first Class A football title and didn't return to the playoffs until last season? Were you aware that Hazel Park and Berkley played for a Little Brown Jug, the awarding of to the winner long discontinued, that currently is on display at Hazel Park's student atrium? Fordson and Divine Child is a rare, inter-city game that previous to last year was played just twice before.

That's just Week No. 1. There's the North-South War, the last year for Fordson-Monroe, The 40th Baseline Jug Game, The Boys Bowl and more! High school football in metro Detroit is loaded with great history and story lines and there's an entire season to get to it. It doesn't have to be that week's biggest game, just a game that means a lot to each school playing it. In short, a game that is as exhilarating to win as it is devastating to lose -- that's the alpha and omega of a great high school rivalry!

Thanks to the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association for highlighting my book tonight on it's website. Of course, I wouldn't be living up to my end of the bargain if I didn't mention DSBA Lifetime Honorary Member Paul Carey, the lead man for Detroit's original high school football radio show, wrote the book's foreword. For years Carey hosted the Michigan High School Football Scoreboard Show on Detroit's 50,000-watt blowtorch, WJR, AM 760.

Often on any given Friday night Carey would have to first finish the Detroit Tiger game he broadcast with Ernie Harwell from Tiger Stadium, plow through the Tiger postgame show, race back to Midtown and put together WJR's SportsWrap show at 11:15 from the 'Golden Tower' of the Fisher Building and then compile all the scores for his football show's midnight broadcast. And before you discredit this, remember, there was no MHSAA.com, MLIVE.com or other resource mediums. It was the barely-faster-than-molasses Associated Press wire service and more than a few phone calls to The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press and the now-defunct Detroit Times, not to mention The Pontiac Press!

Finally, I've shored up some signings and will be announcing these signings later this week.

Thankfully, there's only a few more weeks until football!

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.