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