By Lars Anderson
It's a tar-meltin'-hot Friday night in July in Alabama, and Ross Wilson is once again walking toward the brightest lights in his small city. With his helmet in hand, the 17-year-old quarterback for Hoover High strides through the double doors of his school's locker room and onto the asphalt road that leads to Buccaneer Stadium. Before Ross reaches the field, he's stopped on the sideline by his older brother, John Parker Wilson, the starting quarterback at the University of Alabama. As Ross chats with John Parker, a former Parade All-America who led the Buccaneers to state titles in 2002 and '03, a seven-year-old boy approaches, holding a football and a pen, and asks for an autograph from the most famous football player in all of Hoover. The brothers smile, and then John Parker takes a half step back while Ross gladly scribbles his name on the ball, then turns and strides onto the field.
The Southeastern Select 7-on-7 Tournament in Hoover is one of the biggest high school football events of the summer. Twenty teams representing 11 states have traveled to Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham, to showcase their quarterbacks, receivers and defensive backs for recruiting analysts from around the nation in what is, essentially, a glorified version of touch football -- the quarterback has four seconds to throw, defensive players can't rush, there are no running plays and no linemen, and tackles are made simply by the touch of a hand.
Hoover's opponent tonight is perennial power Huguenot High of Richmond, but it takes just seconds for the Falcons to see why Hoover, SI's preseason No. 1 team, is the most successful big-time high school football program in America. On the game's first play Wilson takes the snap, drops back and looks to his right. No one's open, so his head snaps left, and he quickly zeros in on a receiver 25 yards downfield sprinting toward the sideline. Wilson pivots, sets his feet and slings a crisp, tight spiral that the receiver catches in stride just before he runs out-of-bounds. The unlucky defensive back shakes his head, the crowd roars and the jaws of several scouts bounce off the grass.
