![]() ![]() How big a deal is it to be a Wildcat? When a famed coach died suddenly in 1996, 7,000 mourners packed Cleveland Field to pay their respects as his body, dressed in the Wildcats’ gold and black and cradling a football, lay in repose on the 50-yard line. “It kills me I’ll never get over it,” said Nelson, who carried his firstborn son home from the hospital in a Wildcats helmet. His only regret was that he never got to be a Valdosta Wildcat. Nelson, 65, said that he has never considered the loss a tragedy. That was the end of the horse and might have been the end of Nelson if the doctors hadn’t taken off his gangrenous arm at the elbow. ![]() He got the nickname after his horse stepped in front of a pickup truck with him in the saddle. Not many people know that Nub Nelson’s real first name is Michael. Nelson boasts that he is one of the fiercest Wildcats fans in town history and calls himself a “one-armed white Jihadist.” He lost his right arm at 13 and since then has used his other hand to sign his name as “Nub.” That would be Michael Nelson, the recently deposed (meaning both fired and placed under oath) executive director of Valdosta High’s Touchdown Club. Poignantly, this racially split community seems unsure whether it can come together even around football.įor now, Valdosta is plumb out of coaches, with its current head coach on administrative leave after he was caught on tape whispering about a recruiting slush fund and the previous one, a white man, alleging racial discrimination after he was fired, though a five-touchdown loss to a local rival can’t be dismissed as a factor. So the Wildcat faithful can only bemoan the scandal suddenly unfolding before them, one involving mysterious hirings and firings, rampant rumors and allegations of dirty dealing by some of the South’s most famous college coaches. The Valdosta Wildcats are undoubtedly one of America’s most successful high school football teams, with more than 900 victories, two dozen state titles and its star players seemingly on a conveyor belt to football meccas like Georgia and Alabama. There is no joy in Titletown, as this South Georgia city calls itself. ![]()
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