During the last two weeks it's become common knowledge to prep sports fans in metro Detroit that the MEGA Conference, a Wayne County-based power conference, will disband, and many an Oakland County HS athletic director is watching -- and taking notes, too.

It's no secret that athletic budgets, compatibility and competitive balance concerns are on the hot seat in the monster-like, 20+ school athletic conferences that make up the bulk of prep sports leagues in the three-county area. What garnered a lot of attention was the news that Dearborn High was a candidate to join the Kensington Lakes Activities Association (KLAA).

Here's some aspects to consider about why Dearborn, and not Garden City, became a serious candidate for the KLAA.

Parker's A No-Go: It doesn't appear the recently-completed but yet-to-be opened Howell Parker High School will open anytime soon. In fact, it appears the Howell School District cannot open the building at all due to serious budget constraints and a possible miscalculation of population growth in the community. The fact that the district is negotiating a movie contract deal to use the school as a movie set tells you all there is to know about the possibility Parker opens anytime soon.

Garden City Enrollment: The monstrous schools in the KLAA and Garden City are a mismatch. Albeit a fine community with much to offer any league, Garden City would struggle to match up with the expanding populations in Hartland, Brighton, Lakeland, Milford and South Lyon. Dearborn is a still-teeming community with equal distribution among the three big schools, making Dearborn a better choice for a long-term membership.

Fordson - Dearborn Relations: In researching Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, I found a handful of instances when Dearborn High and Fordson didn't play a football game for many years at a time due to conflict between building/district administrators or coaches. In fact, Edsel Ford and Fordson shared the same track & field facility recently when Fordson was having renovations done to their iconic campus. A Dearborn city official told me off the record, "If anyone thinks that Fordson would have been offered to use Dearborn's track, they're delusional. The schools simply don't like one another." Dearborn Superintendent Brian Whiston had to unconditionally guarantee Fordson that the Dearborn game would be available to them before Dearborn could be allowed to seek a different league affiliation.

Royal Oak Made It Work: The two schools, Dearborn & Fordson, might not be a good fit to one another as league members. Now-closed Kimball and Dondero were in the Southeastern Michigan Association (SMA) and Metro Suburban Activities Association (MSAA) for many years and enjoyed almost 35 years of outstanding football rivalry without being in the same league, something that seems to befit Dearborn and Fordson. That was the genesis of the Oakland Activites Association (OAA), combining two leagues with competing schools from the same city in the same league, but it crushed the many local rivalries and enhancing just a chosen few. I mention Dondero because the Oaks used to a fierce Fordson rival when the Tractors and Oaks were in the old Border Cities League (BCL).

Therefore, just because geography makes more sense for Garden City to be in the KLAA, it might make the KLAA even better to have Dearborn in that league. Dearborn would make the KLAA a three-county conference and make for an outstanding cross-county game in many sports.

Former Detroit Tiger broadcaster Paul Carey told me he thought very highly of Ivy Loftin's Dondero football teams because they played Monroe, Dearborn Fordson, Wyandotte, Highland Park, Grosse Pointe HS -- a powerhouse before the North-South days -- and finally, after the rigors of the BCL, the season-ending game with crosstown Kimball. Conversely, place Dearborn in the KLAA today. They would have league games against the three Livonia schools (all playoff teams in '07), Wayne Memorial, the upstart Rockets from John Glenn and crossovers with schools like Howell, Milford, Lakeland or Novi. To top it off, the Pioneers could end the season with Dearborn Fordson.

That's a football schedule.

Edsel Ford Factor: What does concern me is the chance that Dearborn and Edsel Ford would stop playing one another -- that's not good, but in a three-school town, these kind of concerns come up quite a bit. I'm not certain there's a solution, either. On the other hand, because two of the three schools are moving to a manageable conference, this allows Edsel Ford and Fordson to play DC's Falcons a bit more in all sports.

It was great the past two seasons seeing the big crowd for the Fordson-DC football game although I'm sure the Falcons would have liked a different result. It would be my opinion that a matchup of Milford and Dearborn, or Dearborn and Catholic Central, would be of interest to prep fans, because it's the type of matchup that isn't seen much these days, thanks to the monster power conferences that have seemed to have outlived their usefulness.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available at www.Amazon.com and other fine retailers.

Yesterday I received my monthly edition of The Scoreboard, the newsletter for the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association, and the member spotlight was none other than Paul Carey.

Besides being nicknamed 'The Voice Of God' and being recognized as Ernie Harwell's fantastic play-by-play partner for 19 seasons of Detroit Tiger baseball, Carey was a tireless advocate of prep football and basketball in the state of Michigan from his WJR studio seat. Carey hosted the Michigan High School Football & Basketball Scoreboard Show at midnight on 'JR for nearly 30 years. In an age of pre-Internet media, Carey was the only source for the lion's share of scores that mattered most to metro Detroiters until the Saturday papers came out.

It's time to recognize Paul Carey for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of prep sports in Michigan.

I'm proposing an idea to the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) to create the Paul Carey Award. Presented at the association's football championships at Ford Field, the award would recognize a state media member for their contribution to covering prep sports, a deserving writer or broadcaster of high school sports in the state of Michigan. The award's recipient should be decided by a committee after culling a list of deserving nominees from the athletic directors of the state association. Yes, it would garner a little additional attention to the state football finals, but more importantly, it would bring light to the outstanding contributions of so many dedicated media members statewide that treat prep sports like most writers treat a SuperBowl.

Speaking from personal experience, I'll never forget waking up on a Saturday morning and finding a picture of myself and my Ferndale High rival on the cover, above the fold, mind you, of The Daily Tribune sports section. Royal Oak's public schools had many great athletes in the last 50 years -- trust me, I wasn't one of them -- yet there I was. It's a thrill many of us never forget and something I notice still today, how hard the local media works to bring positive attention to prep sports in their respective communities. This is one of the facets of prep sports that make me proud to still be around school sports today, and I can't think of a better namesake for such an award than Paul Carey.

Carey wore a touching yet compelling foreword for my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, and for my money, the foreword alone is worth the price of the book, a great retrospective of Detroit prep football. Paul Carey grew up the son of a highly-respected high school football official, the referee on many a Saginaw High-Saginaw Arthur Hill Thanksgiving Day game. After a stint in the military, Carey returned to Michigan and took up the craft of radio. Because of his upbringing in and around Michigan prep sports, he developed a strong vernacular for the who and why of The Mitten's high school scene, like how to pronounce Ishpeming and Escanaba, which games were most important for schools like Muskegon and Marysville, and who were the emerging powerhouses in Detroit's rapidly-emerging suburbia like Southfield, Utica, Dearborn, Pontiac and Grosse Pointe.

After being hired by WJR, he asked permission of the station's programming director to do the scoreboard show, and WJR jumped at the idea. It was free programming and it tied the station in with every community it reached in a very passionate way. If you think high school football is big today, it was everything back then. And so it began, a programming addition inserted at the midnight hour that became the song and verse of prep football long after the marching band had played it's last note on Friday night.

It didn't take long to catch on. Carey added a basketball show on Tuesdays and Fridays of the prep basketball season, and for one season, it was sponsored by the Detroit Pistons, even though the basketball show didn't stick like football. If you were a prep sports fan like so many of us are in metro Detroit, you were up until midnight, waiting for Carey's scoreboard show at the twelve o'clock hour. Sometimes Tiger baseball ran late, pushing the Tiger postgame, WJR news report and SportsWrap back -- it didn't matter-- the football show went on, even as late as 12:45 am on one particular Friday night / Saturday morning.

I can still remember Carey reporting the Friday night scores vividly: "It was Detroit Pershing 20, Detroit Denby 16, Cass Tech defeated Cody 14-9, Detroit Martin Luther King 36, Detroit Chadsey 9..." Carey would read every Detroit Public School League score first, a clear nod the the city WJR operated within, and after the final PSL score, Carey would declare, "I'll be back with the suburban scores after this." Back from the commercial, Carey would rattle off every metro score with unfettered clarity and resonance. No one score was more important than any other, because Carey knew every score mattered to someone.

Carey worked nearly four decades at WJR, broadcast with a Hall-Of-Fame partner for 19 seasons of baseball with one of the charter franchises of the American League and was the soundtrack to the Tigers Bless You Boys' championship season of 1984. Yet as many people in metro Detroit remember Carey for the Michigan High School Football Scoreboard Show as they do for Tiger baseball, in a city that will be a baseball town above all else, no less. Even today, from his home in Florida, Carey still collects the All-State teams from the Detroit dailies and the Associated Press.

That's a great, lasting legacy if you ask me, and one that deserves to be remembered by the state's prep sports leadership.

(Photo courtesy Ernie Harwell collection)

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

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.

If I said Brad Cochran fundamentally changed the Michigan High School Athletic Association and switched sports 30 years before the MHSAA was forced to do so under the weight of a federal judgment, you might expect a more detailed story.

Let me explain. And no, Cochran doesn't live in Grand Rapids.

I spent last Saturday at West Bloomfield High School, watching Birmingham Brother Rice advance to the Division I regional this weekend at Birmingham Seaholm. During the final I spent some time talking with longtime Birmingham Groves baseball coach and teacher Jim Crosby along the left field foul line. We talked about the many years Crosby and longtime assistant Phil Roy have coached at Groves. Later, as we recalled the MHSAA's transfer rules were born when Cochran's parents enrolled their son at Rice for the 1980 season, Crosby's eyes lit up.

"Did you know Brad Cochran was a cross country runner at Royal Oak Dondero when he was a freshman?" Crosby asked with equal part smirk and smile. I was already surprised when Crosby told me he had been a cross country coach at Groves, but a high school freshman running five miles races and starting at defensive back in the Big Ten a handful of years later? Brad Cochran was All-Big Ten at the University of Michigan, earned All-American honors and was the 3rd round pick in the 1986 National Football League draft of the Oakland Raiders.

Are you kidding me?

When you think of names from the running circuit of south Oakland County, you think of guys like Birmingham's Kermit Ambrose. Hazel Park's Jack Broughton and Dan Lutkus come to mind quickly, and Dick Zulch, too. Trust me, I was shocked, and I like to think I know a little prep football history. Most kids who run cross country have as much chance of becoming Big Ten football heroes as the kid playing tuba in the marching band has at becoming the next Tom Brady or Broadway Joe Namath.

I ought to know -- I was a skinny track guy in high school.

"It's true. I remember the races we saw him at," Crosby said of his time coaching the harriers. "Brad Cochran was a tall, lanky kid who hadn't filled out. He was about 6'2" without any meat on him. Of course, the next year we saw him on the football field and he had turned into a man among boys. He was filled out and was a natural for football."

The MHSAA's transfer rules were, for many years, nicknamed The Brad Cochran Rule among the media covering prep sports statewide because of Cochran's sudden transfer. It wasn't the first time a Royal Oak kid had spurned the public school. When I cornered John Wangler at last season's Michigan-Michigan State football game media event, I boldly told John, "If you had gone to Kimball instead of Shrine, Paul Temerian would have won three state titles!" Wangler laughed and diplomatically offered, "I would have loved to play for Coach Temerian!"

We then both laughed because Wangler would have thrown the ball about four times a game if he had gone to Kimball, where running the football was the alpha and omega of the playbook. Wangler would have been the greatest prep quarterback to ever hand a football off a million times consecutively - that would have been a shame.

Brad Cochran was different. He could return punts and kicks. He covered opponents like a glove, and was big, fast and strong. Playing under head coach Ivy Loftin, the '78 Dondero team finished a game behind league champion Birmingham Groves at 4-1 in the Metro Suburban Activities Association (MSAA) and 6-3 overall, but the season ended bitterly with a 14-0 setback to Southeastern Michigan Association (SMA) champion Kimball. In '79, with Cochran as a junior captain, Dondero marched to the MSAA title, going 5-0 in league after opening the season with wins over Ferndale and Hazel Park. At 7-0, Dondero was ranked as high as No. 2 in the state and primed to earn their first playoff invite. But the Oaks stumbled in a 14-12 loss at Cass Field to their former Thanksgiving Day rivals, Birmingham Seaholm.

The next week, playing 4-4 Kimball, Cochran hauled in a 23-yard touchdown pass for Dondero's first score on the game's opening possession. That would be Dondero's lone highlight - Kimball trounced the Oaks by three scores, 27-6, in front of an upset-minded rival crowd. This loss specifically drove Cochran's parents to seek out a different option for their son. They were upset that no scouting and no film prep had been put into The Oak Stump game, a game that, if won, could have salvaged the season and possibly still earned Dondero a playoff berth.

The next year Cochran was proudly wearing the orange and black of Brother Rice. With no transfer rules to stop him, Brad Cochran joined future Big Ten players Paul Jokisch and Dave Yarema in taking Rice to a 12-0 slate and the season's Class A title. The Warriors outscored their opponents 345-74. They topped Sterling Heights Stevenson in the quarters 25-13, and defeated Detroit Central's Trailblazers 49-12 in the semifinal. In the Pontiac Silverdome, Yarema found Yokisch for a touchdown late in the 4th quarter to give Rice a 6-0 win over Dearborn Fordson, completing an undefeated, championship season.

In the months to follow the transfer rules were drafted and later enacted. In every MHSAA membership bulletin since, those affiliated with the state's prep association can read the minutes and details of the many requests to waive the transfer regulations, month after month, and often with little success.

Today, Cochran doesn't hate Dondero. He doesn't hate Kimball, either, where his brother, Brett, played football for both George Hanoian and recently-retired Terry Powers. Cochran still gets his hair cut at the Kimball Barber Shop, where Tiger broadcaster Paul Carey visited regularly for nearly 20 years when he lived in Royal Oak.

Thirty years ago, an All-State football player was a cross country runner at a different school. The one-time runner, turned footballer and head-turning transfer, became a state champion, All-American and NFL draft pick. He broke hearts, leaving one big school for another, and changed the high school landscape we live in today.

That was Brad Cochran.

(Photo courtesy of The Oakland Press)

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

Author's Note: This is the first of a two-part story of a football program, the game it featured and the season of 1955 for several metro Detroit schools. The 'golden age' of high school football was the period that stretched post-World War II into the late 1960's.

MONROE -- If you noticed the dateline, you already know Oakland County's prep sports scene these days has few ties to Monroe, Michigan, but that wasn't always the case. And as it relates to high school football, the 1955 game between the host Monroe Trojans and the Acorns of Royal Oak High played on October 14th reveals the story of rivalries since lost and a platform for so much Michigan sports history.

Why the Royal Oak - Monroe game of 1955? I came across an eBay listing for the program featured here. I bid on and won the program's auction and decided this would be a fun, internal fact-finding mission. What I discovered was a significant piece of local and statewide history, hidden neatly in a garden variety, four-page, high school hopsock-era program.

The victory on this night went to Royal Oak's Acorns by a 34-6 count. The win put Royal Oak in a three-way tie for second place in the now-defunct Border Cities League (BCL) with Grosse Pointe High and Wyandotte, thanks to Wyandotte's 17-0 blanking of the Pointers. That left the Tractors of Dearborn Fordson High atop the BCL, a league former Royal Oak resident and Detroit Tiger broadcaster Paul Carey called, "the toughest league in the state, hands down", in a recent 2008 interview. Royal Oak got a pair of touchdowns each from halfback Ralph Forbes and tailback Darrell Harper. Oakland County residents will recall that Harper went on to star at the University of Michigan and would return to south Oakland County as head coach of Southfield Lathrup's gridders. Harper passed away late in 2007.

Also of note is Royal Oak's No. 29, Herb Deromedi, who played but wasn't mentioned in the game's recap found in Royal Oak's Daily Tribune. Royal Oak's Jerry Snider netted Royal Oak's last score, a 37-yard touchdown. Monroe tailback Richard 'Bud' Jeric notched Monroe's lone tally. Joe Vestrand also earned praise for Royal Oak.

The Tractors would best Royal Oak for the BCL title in '55 with an 8-1 slate, one game better than the Acorns' 7-2 ledger. Fordson earned a No. 8 ranking in the Associated Press season-ending state poll. Birmingham High, now renamed Seaholm High, took the state's No. 5 spot with an 8-1 mark, including a perfect 5-0 as champions of the Eastern Michigan League (EML). Ann Arbor High was the top-ranked team in the AP poll with an 8-0 record. Lincoln Park's Railsplitters earned the state's No. 9 slot to round out teams from the metropolitan Detroit area in '55.

Royal Oak was a perfect 4-0 in '55 against their Oakland County counterparts. The Acorns ran around Hazel Park's Vikings 25-7, blanked Ferndale's Eagles 20-0 and earned a 26-2 decision over the Chiefs of Pontiac High at Wisner Stadium. Finally, in their annual Turkey Day game, Royal Oak survived a gritty showing by the then-undefeated Birmingham High Maples in the last Thanksgiving Day affair played at Maple Field, 27-20. Birmingham was coached by Vince Secontine, whose son Marc operates The Varsity Shop, a downtown Birmingham staple and the source of letter jackets for scores of Oakland County youth. The Varsity Shop also houses the old Royal Oak - Birmingham Game trophy, a red, white and blue-painted jug.

Royal Oak's '55 showing was part of a five-year span from 1952-56 that saw Royal Oak go 35-9-1, claiming a share of the BCL title in both '53 and '54. The contests of 1955, as recorded by The Daily Tribune, revealed the school's future name as the paper began referencing Royal Oak High as Dondero before the school was re-christened in the name of Royal Oak Congressman George A. Dondero in September of 1957. That fall the Acorns would become the Oaks and gain a bitter crosstown rival, a school christened for the Knights of Royal Oak Kimball, named for former Royal Oak school board president Clarence M. Kimball. The famed Royal Oak home at 1705 Greenleaf Drive is still referenced in the city's municipal building as The Kimball House.

The BCL champion Tractors completed a rivalry hat trick in '55 by virtue of their 19-0 win over Monroe, a 21-0 blanking of neighboring Dearborn High and a 42-6 pasting of Dearborn Edsel Ford, the inaugural year of varsity competition for the Thunderbirds.

Monroe, by contrast, was suffering through one of it's worst spans of football in their long history. From 1954-1958, the Trojans went 9-29-1. Royal Oak defeated Monroe consecutively from 1953-1956. Monroe's lone victory from the '55 campaign was a 7-o win over the Adrian High Maples, a rivalry that dates back to 1896, easily making the game one of the longest-running feuds in the entire state. To date, Monroe's rivalry with Adrian has been played 106 times, with Adrian holding a narrow 51-49-6 margin through 2007.

Part II: A look at the many participants from the 1955 Royal Oak - Monroe football game and how the players and coaches from a single HS football game went on to play pivotal roles in Michigan's local and statewide sports scene for years to come.

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