WTF? Hudson Football?

I'm watching TV last night, minding my own business and I happen to turn the channel over to Fox Sports Ohio.

Now, I don't watch a lot of FSN Ohio, mostly because the Tribe is over on Sports Time Ohio (and the Cavs haven't started yet). I watched a little of the Kent St. - Miami game last Saturday mainly because my sister and brother attend those colleges, respectively. The video for for the KSU-MU game were awful. The announcers were bad, the production was awful and the camera could barely follow the ball.

You can imagine my surprise last night when I turned to FSN Ohio and they were showing the Hudson-Solon High School football game. And not only were they showing it, it was really well produced. They had the score, time and down on the top of the screen, they had coach and player cutaways on the field and sideline and they had Jeff Phelps announcing the game. What the hell was this?

side note: I love Jeff Phelps. When I was in high school, before we had cable, my brother and I would always watch Channel 43's sports segment at 10:45. Phelps was funny and always seemed to have good information. I foundly remember the 1998 season, when the Tribe purused free-agent-to-be Roberto Alomar at the trading deadline, but the deals fell through. It was common knowledge that he would sign in Cleveland that following offseason. And during the telecasts Phelps would always show Alomar highlights and refer to him as "Future Indian Robert Alomar" (playing off the "former Indian Albert Belle" type stuff). Shut up, I liked it. Anyways, I'm rambling, but it was kinda cool/weird to see Phelps calling my former high school's (Hudson) football game.

Not only that was that weird, but Terry Pluto, far and away my favorite columnist, wrote an excellent column on attending the game at Dante Lavelli Stadium. He mentioned a ton of kids by name, praised both team's coaches and even mentioned the bands. You can tell he enjoyed himself by the whole tone of the column.

As for the game itself? Hudson lost to Solon in overtime and by all accounts it was a pretty good game.

The game was well played, well coached, the bands did a joint halftime show and it was a beautiful night. As my dad (who attended the game) said, "it really was a slice of Americana".