Nothing, and I mean nothing, brings out the spirit around here like football.

Not Rose Festival. Not Victorian Christmas. Not Old South Day, mini-marathons, Gnat Day or Peacock Day. These things all have their place, but in south Georgia football rules all.

Sure, a few around here dislike it. They are the unfortunates in our area. They say they “just don’t get it.” Translated, quite simply, they just ain’t from around here and, therefore, are to be excused for they know not what they are missing.

Those of us who do “get it” were raised with it alongside our grits and understand there is nothing like the spectacle of fall Friday nights and Saturdays all over the South. When the band takes the field, plays the national anthem and those teams tear through those run-through signs as their fans go bonkers anticipating the kickoff, if you don’t get at least a tingle in your belly, then something is way wrong with you.

Since I was little, football has been a part of me. My grandfather talked about Thomasville, Cairo, Tifton, Moultrie and Valdosta as if they were parts of mythology. He played as a behemoth 230-pound lineman for Thomasville in the 1930s and to his last days wore his football limp as a badge of honor. Of course, the colleges always got their due as well, with Georgia Tech always spoken of respectfully and Georgia’s Bulldogs in a league all to themselves.

My first real game was the 1976 Thomasville-Central game. I’ll never forget it. Central won 7-3 in a contest that still is talked about nearly 40 years removed.

I can still see Vance Hurst catching that lone touchdown pass down toward Jackson Street just like it was last week. And, I’ll never forget the photo in the newspaper that ran after that game with the “County Maintained” sign strategically placed over the “Bulldog Country” billboard that sits in front of the home side press box.

Every time I see Veterans Memorial Stadium, I think of that game and so many others I’ve had the pleasure of watching there. It is still one of the most hallowed places to experience a game. I was living in Jacksonville, Florida, when Thomasville won that national championship in ’74, but I read about it in the papers there and knew who William Andrews was. In my mind’s eye, I still can see Guy McIntyre and Johnny Chastain running on that field. All the titanic battles with Valdosta and those legendary games against Central, some of the best high school football games ever played. Sean and Mike Jones, Eric Curry, Alphonso Ellis, Johnny Kavouklis and those bowed legs, Charles Bostick, Fred Hill and Shannon Monroe all come to mind, among many others. Six state titles, in 1925, 1945, 1958, 1973, 1974 and 1988. Almost 700 wins, one of the highest totals in Georgia.

And, of course, I always imagine my grandfather there, too — leather helmet and all.

Cairo tradition runs as thick as the purest cane syrup in January. I knew the names of Bill Stanfill and Bobby “Big Toe from Cairo” Walden when I was a kid, Joey Hester and Duke Donaldson were as dangerous as any two players our area has ever had. The 1990 team was simply an awesome one to watch play. For me, Raymond Taylor’s speed and toughness that season personified all that is being a Syrupmaker: undersized but never outplayed. I was on the sidelines of that ’90 championship game with Worth County, pulling for Cairo with all I had in me. I am sure the collisions that night between Worth’s legendary running back Robert Toomer and the man Cairo then called “Big Shake” are still resonating somewhere in outer space. And, of course, the ’08 juggernaut, a state champion, too.

For the last 30 or so years, I’ve been the radio voice of Thomas County Central football, one of the most successful programs in Georgia in that time. Last week, I stood in the press box at the Jackets Nest, preparing things for the upcoming week. Looking down on that field, memories simply flooded me. Terry White and those tearaway jerseys hanging in tatters off his body. Charlie Ward baffling opposing defenses. Tommy Rainge running like a 250-pound deer. The ’92 miracle season, with that frantic stop on a Peach County two-point conversion toward the field house to secure an improbable first-ever state championship after a 1-5 start. The epic ’93 state title game with Thomasville, almost universally regarded as the single greatest high school football game ever played in Georgia. That defense in the title year of 1994, and the dominating 29-1 combined record of the ’96 and ’97 championship teams. Johnny Cooksey, Charles Reese, Lashon Christopher, Matthew Nathan, J.T. Fuller, Gemika Ivey, Joe Burns, Leonard Guyton, Raytorrie Newkirk, Chris Daniels, Erik Walden, Ray Drew, Adam Choice, Austin Bryant …the list of names in my memories are endless. I feel so blessed to have been able to be a small part of them.

How blessed we are, as football fans, to be where we are. All of this — and so much more — all within 15 miles of each other. Add to the mix Brookwood, with several state titles in the private school ranks, and ask the following question: how many communities do you know, regardless of what year it is, has someone regularly contending for a championship in anything? I bet you can count them on one hand.

Now how many communities are always in the hunt for that championship in football? Don’t need more than two or three of those fingers there.

Outsiders assume our teams here hate each other. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. There is a near fraternal admiration and respect between these tradition-laden programs. Each of them have pushed each other to excel. The only time they don’t pull for the “other” folks is when their team is the one lined up against them.

It’s there that the gloves come off. At least for those three or so glorious hours of community facing community in the brotherhood of sportsmanship, pageantry and red-clay tough combat, we want to beat the heck out of each other. But after the final horn and the dust settles, we shake hands, gather at each others homes with food and fellowship on Saturday to cheer for our favorite college teams, and then rehash all the action at church on Sunday — all the while looking forward to the next weeks’ action.

That’s what football in south Georgia has been about for more than 80 years and continues to be today. I learned that lesson from my grandfather. It is in our blood, our bones, our souls, literally a part of what we — all of us around here — are as one big family, and what makes us thankfully different. I can only pray it — and I — will endure so I can teach my great-grandchildren about it, too.

Let the games begin.