More Hoover, Briarwood Connections

The Birmingham News tonight is reporting that Oxford High School's Josh Niblett is the favorite to be named the new head coach at Hoover High School.

Earlier in the day, the News reported that Hoover had narrowed to six its list of candidates for replacing Rush Propst.

We here at Legal Schnauzer found it interesting that one of the six was Jay Mathews, head coach at Christ Presbyterian Christian Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. Mathews spent 13 seasons as an assistant coach at Briarwood Christian High School in Birmingham.

We have noted in a series of posts that my legal problems coincided with a peculiar real-estate deal involving Briarwood head coach Fred Yancey, my former neighbor and Jay Mathews' former boss. The real-estate deal, which wound up with Yancey moving to a house on the Briarwood campus, coincided with Hoover's previous coaching search. That search ended with the hiring of Propst in 1999.

I have speculated that in late 1998, early 1999, Hoover might have been interested in Yancey for its coaching position. And it might have been even more interested in Briarwood's two star players at the time, Tim and Simeon Castille, who went on to play at the University of Alabama.

I have speculated that Briarwood, in a hasty effort to keep Yancey and two stud players, initiated a poorly executed real-estate deal that led to all sorts of legal and financial headaches for yours truly. And we have noted the curious fact that the ethically challenged opposing attorney who filed the lawsuit (William E. Swatek) and the corrupt judge who unlawfully kept it going (J. Michael Joiner) have ties to Briarwood Christian School.

Several readers have scoffed at the notion that someone who was committed to Christian education at Briarwood would consider taking a position to teach and coach a bunch of heathens at a public school like Hoover.

Well, it certainly looks like Jay Mathews is interested in Hoover. And I still wonder if his mentor, Fred Yancey, was interested in Hoover back in late 1998. Today's News story says Yancey recommended Mathews for the Hoover job. Sounds like we have some connections there.

Some people seem to think that folks who wear their religion on their sleeves are somehow more noble than the rest of us. That, unlike us, they aren't tempted by things like power, fame, money, and even greed.

I'm always amused when I hear that because I suspect almost all outwardly Christian football coaches are just like other football coaches--they want to win games and they want to get paid as much as possible to do it. And if they are more likely to accomplish those things at a public school, my guess is they would be more than happy to leave their Christian school.

Anyway, Mathews' interest in the Hoover job certainly does not prove my theory. But it made a certain schnauzer's ears twitch a bit.