With just one year left in his high school football career, Nathan Bradford knew this was his last chance to get noticed by college coaches and potentially earn a scholarship.
Having played for a struggling program at Meigs County the last two years, Bradford opted to transfer to Cleveland, a program with a tradition for sending talented players to the next level.
“It was tough because I had friends at Meigs, but I felt education-wise and football-wise, this was a better opportunity for me,” Bradford said. “Looking back at it now, I’m real happy with my decision. Hopefully it will pay off in the future.”
The linebacker is one of four senior transfers who have made an immediate impact for Cleveland, which moved up to No. 5 in the state’s Class 5A rankings this week and is just one win from matching last year’s total. The other new Blue Raiders are tailback Jamarcus Mobley and receiver Jeremy Simpson, who moved from Soddy-Daisy, and two-way lineman Justin Williams, who moved from Killeen, Texas.
“Any time you get a transfer, or especially when you get more than one, you wonder about how they will mesh with the kids already in the program,” Cleveland coach E.K. Slaughter said. “Fortunately we don’t have egos on our team. There weren’t any big ‘I’ guys, and the new kids have come in and worked hard and become good leaders for us.
“Honestly, they’re all really good players and they’ve been a big part of where we are right now. I mean, you’re talking about four starters, and two of them get their hands on the ball quite a bit.”
Several other area programs have been given adrenaline shots by transfers as well. Speedy Donnie Garner is averaging 14 yards per carry and has four touchdowns for Signal Mountain, and Deuntae Johnson is the leading rusher at perennial Alabama power North Jackson. Like Cleveland’s foursome, Garner and Johnson are seniors.
North Jackson also gained four transfers, three of whom have established themselves as difference makers, including Khaleem Jones, who has two interceptions and has scored two touchdowns. Adding salt to the wound for North Jackson opponents is the fact that all of the Chiefs’ transfers were at county rival Scottsboro last season.
As second-year programs, East Hamilton and Signal Mountain have benefited from parents wanting to send their kids to new schools. Both also have coaches (East Hamilton’s Ted Gatewood and Signal Mountain’s Bill Price) with proven track records of winning, which also helps. Price believes too much attention has been given to the list of transfers that has come into his program.
“I’m really tired of hearing about it, to be honest,” Price said. “We’re a new school so we’re going to have kids coming here from other places. We’ve really only got one kid (Garner) who is playing for us that wasn’t on the roster last year. We had a few that came to us that aren’t with the team anymore, either. I tell kids from the first day they get here what we expect, and if they can’t follow that, they don’t stay with us very long.”
According to TSSAA assistant director Matthew Gillespie, 547 cases of transfers were filed with the state’s high school governing body before this football season. Football, with larger rosters of players, has nearly triple the amount of transfer cases as any other sport and also has by far the most instances of recruiting accusations.
“Transfers as a whole is a massive job for us,” Gillespie said. “Just checking to make sure every case is looked at and those kids are eligible takes up quite a bit of our time. As a whole, transfers happen so frequently, and like any program, people are going to send their kids to a program that is winning. We understand that happens.
“Not to say that recruiting doesn’t happen, but actually proving it is really tough. Everybody wants to point the recruiting finger, but we spend most of our time concentrating on whether their transfers are within the rules.”