Wildcat Tradition

Football in Alabama is over 100 years old and fans are just as enthusiastic today as they were when it all started in 1892.

When Auburn and Georgia played the first intercollegiate game in the South in 1892 in Atlanta, more than 8,000 people turned out on neutral ground. Most of them had never seen a football game in Alabama. William P. Taylor started a private school in Birmingham around 1891 and shortly afterward formed the first football team. Through Taylor’s urging three other teams were formed in Birmingham. One of them was at Birmingham High School, which is today known as Phillips High School.

Within 20 years there were at least a dozen public high schools and private prep schools playing football, including such familiar names as Albertville, Sylacauga and Oneonta. Almost all of the state secondary agricultural schools, most of them still nicknamed Aggies today, were playing football. By 1917 there were more than 30 schools around the state playing football including the Wildcats of Jackson County High School in Scottsboro. Jackson County High fielded its first team in the fall of 1913.

The 2006 season will bring Scottsboro’s 90th team of record. During the last 91 years since that first team took the field, the Wildcats have established one of the great traditions in all of Alabama high school football. Over the last 89 seasons, the Wildcats have staked claim to one State Championship, an outstanding quarterback tradition and dominating teams under John Meadows, who won 55 games from 1959 through 1965. The Wildcats also enjoyed great success in the mid-1990’s with teams that posted back-to-back 11-1-0 under Larry Morris.

Scottsboro’s great quarterback tradition begins with Pat Trammell who piloted the Wildcats from 1954-1957 and then led Alabama to the 1961 National Championship under the legendary Paul W. "Bear" Bryant. Trammell is one of five Scottsboro quarterbacks to play S-E-C football. The others include Charles Dawson who played at Vanderbilt, Don Webb who starred at Auburn, Don Jacobs who wore the crimson and white of Alabama and Eric Underwood who played for the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

90 seasons and still going strong...great teams, great games, great players, great coaches...ALL PART OF THE GREAT TRADITION OF
SCOTTSBORO WILDCAT FOOTBALL!