There are some among us who look at the rest of us and just can’t figure out why we make such a big deal out of something as insignificant as high school football.

For those who ‘just don’t get it,’ let me offer a quick study.

High school football has been a part of the fabric of our community for over 100 years. Just like other treasures, here in Thomasville and Thomas County it is part of the family heirlooms that are handed down from generation to generation.

My grandfather, D.C. Duren, pretty much raised me. He was one of the heroes of my life. He was a behemoth 230-pound offensive lineman for the Thomasville Bulldogs back in the 1930’s, and the lore surrounding his stories regarding the epic games he was a part of against teams from Albany, Tifton, and Valdosta, were an important part of my childhood.

For him, his participation in football was something that was a milestone in his life, a proud part of his existence that he was so proud to share with me. Through him, a love for the sport became a basic part of who and what I was.

That story is not unique to our family. The pride associated with being a Bulldog or a Yellow Jacket is something that almost every family that is from here shares individually and collectively.

Names like Ward, Jones, Reddick, Guyton, Walden, Brooks, Choice, Clark, Christopher, Bogan, Flounoy, Rawls, Petrey, Majors, and so many others represent literal generations of families that have fielded young men on our local teams. It is a gift handed down from grandfather to father, from father to son.

As Thomasville legend Lawson Neel once said, “these boys, and their parents, and their grandparents, all grew up here together, and they’re out there playing for one another and all those who came before them. It’s the living embodiment of ‘the pride of the regiment’.”

High school football here is something that is as much a part of our basal DNA here as red clay, brick streets, quail, collard greens, and rose bushes, and whether you do or don’t get it, ‘it’ isn’t going anywhere in the next 10 or so generations either.

In other words, if you’re going to call this county your home, you may not get ‘it’ but you might as well get used to ‘it.’

During the historic run that Thomas County Central has had the last two seasons, winning their region last year and going 12-1 and winning region again this year, undefeated and playing for a state championship this evening in Atlanta, something much larger than football has emerged as an integral part of the story.

The Yellow Jacket fanbase has become something that is quickly becoming legendary in and of its own right. Of course, the games at The Jackets’ Nest have been consistently sold out, and teams are figuring out that place is one of the most difficult stadiums anywhere to win in.

No, what has stood out is how that fanbase has tasked itself to literally take over stadiums when their Yellow Jackets are playing on the road. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. They have altered the outcome of the games from the stands. I’ve been calling football games on the radio now for 37 years, and I’ve never seen coaches complaining about the noise made by fans in their own stadiums.

But I have now.

And here’s what Paul Harvey used to call ‘The Rest of the Story.’ Those fans, many of whom might not have known each other from Adam’s housecat at the beginning of this fantastic run, have now become a sort of extended family themselves, and it runs totally across all color lines. There isn’t any black or white — it’s all about the blue & gold.

They see each other now and their faces light up just like they’re seeing kinfolk, high fiving (literally invented by a Central guy, by the way, Daryl Cleveland), shaking hands, and hugging. Heck, they are even joining together to sing ‘We Ready For Y’all’ before their feared Yellow Jackets ever take the field.

Let’s just call it a Thomas County version of “We Are Family.”

Thomasville and Thomas County have always been a tight knit place. As ESPN noted in their piece done 30 years ago about the 1993 state championship game between Central and Thomasville: “…our concern for our kids breeds community, which breeds a certain kind of fanaticism (hence the word ‘fan’), which breeds tradition. But in sports, tradition is built on wins and losses, and those are built on athletes.”

In Thomas County, those athletes are our kids, individually and collectively.

And I have no doubt that when that game kicks off this evening in that cavernous stadium in Atlanta, 10,000+ of those fans will once again join together in a singular, thunderous voice to support those boys — their boys — on that field of battle.

There, just like in places like Quitman, Leesburg, Tifton, Warner Robins, Rome, and Marist, the buzzing, horn-blowing, cowbell-ringing, swarming Yellow Jacket commUNITY will help write another chapter in the lore that they, too, will now be proudly handing down to future generations of Thomas Countians to come after them.

See y’all on the radio tonight from The Benz.