After years of covering high school sports in metro Birmingham, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard a variation of this line:

“Boy, if we only had what Hoover has.”

Usually that’s in reference to Hoover High School, one of the best-known prep football programs in the nation. Often it’s in reference to the Hoover City Schools as a whole, which includes Spain Park High School as well.

But as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Under that flashy veneer of an athletic program that rivals that of some NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (that’s still Division I-AA to most fans), there’s a school system that sometimes acts more like one from a small town in rural Alabama.

I saw that first hand a few years back, as the managing editor of a start-up newspaper called The Hoover Gazette. This was during some rather heady times for the city: native son Taylor Hicks winning “American Idol,” President George W. Bush visiting the city, and a little show on MTV called “Two-A-Days.”

That show put the Buccaneers into the national spotlight, along with bigger-than-life head coach Rush Propst.

Problem was, Propst had a secret. And it really wasn’t even much of a secret, because it was one of the first things I heard as I went on meet-and-greet visits with Hoover officials and business people before the Gazette first went to press.

“You know Rush Propst has another family with a couple of kids on the side, don’t you?”

We didn’t run the story because we didn’t have anything to back up the rumors.

Meanwhile, Propst was building his reputation and his ego. I was as guilty as anyone in promoting him — I ran a profile of Propst, written by legendary prep sports writer Rubin Grant, on the top half of the front page. It was the best-selling edition in the very short history of the Gazette.

Fast forward a few months. I had left the Gazette, after a staff meeting where the paper’s owner — a country-bumpkin lawyer from Fayette, Ala. — announced that the only reason he started the newspaper was so that his son (the 25-year-old publisher) would have a job.

News was starting to filter out that there were problems regarding Propst and his pressure to change the grades of some players to keep them eligible. After those issues became public record, reporter Hunter Ford — who had already been investigating the seedier side of Propst’s reputation — went on the Paul Finebaum radio show, where he mentioned the coach’s additional family.

Three days later, when Ford was on the show again, the Gazette publisher called Finebaum after Ford’s appearance, and basically fired Ford live and on the air — an episode which still lives on in Finebaum Network lore.

The rest is history. Propst’s wrongdoings, on and off the field, were exposed and he was fired, largely at the behest of new Hoover School Board member A.W. Bolt, a local attorney whose stepson played for Spain Park. (The Gazette also went out of business about the same time.)

Most of the board members had known about Propst’s personal failings for a while, but apparently kept them under wraps. One member, whose son attended Hoover High, was famous for saying, “I don’t care if he’s dating a goat, as long as he wins ball games.”

Now, fast forward to today, where current Spain Park coach David Shores has been suspended over a “physical incident” with a player during practice. Athletic Director Gena Morris has already resigned over the incident, supposedly because she wasn’t kept in the loop about the investigation.

And back in the middle of everything once again is Bolt, now the chairman of the school board. Shores’ fate lies largely within his hands. Bolt has never been shy about sharing how he feels, and his actions in the past have sometimes led to school board functions pushing three-ring-circus status.

I have no idea whether or not David Shores should be fired. I’ve heard too many different versions of what happened.

But this issue will probably be decided by what amounts to political football, no pun intended. Propst was fired by a board whose loyalties lied largely with the Spain Park side of the school district. That’s still the same here, so the issue may be more of an intramural squabble, as Bucs supporters have yet to see the Jaguars as any sort of threat.

Say what you want about the Jefferson County Schools, but its structure largely prevents these sorts of shenanigans. Their schools may not have the on-field success of Hoover, but theydon’t have all of the off-field foolishness, either — just the disgruntled parent or two that goes with any school sports program.

Sometimes, being out of the spotlight isn’t such a bad thing.

This column includes two corrections from the printed version.