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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Coach Greg Blackman adjusts a child’s helmet and chin strap to fit correctly during football practice at Hoover Sports Park Central. Blackman has been coaching Hoover youth football for 22 years.
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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Coach Greg Blackman works with his players on blocking during football practice.
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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
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Photo courtesy of Greg Blackman.
Greg Blackman poses with now NFL quarterback Jameis Winston after he won the 2013 Heisman Trophy. Winston, whose parents planned for him to play for Rush Propst at Hoover until Propst got into trouble and resigned in 2007, played for Blackman when he was in the sixth grade.
Greg Blackman’s Twitter handle says a lot about his passion.
The 54-year-old Trace Crossings resident is known on the social media network as @Lil_BucCoach.
Blackman is in his 23rd season of coaching youth football in Hoover and, according to people who follow the program, is one reason Hoover football teams continue to be so successful at the middle and high school level.
Entering this season, Blackman’s teams had racked up an impressive 219 wins and only 19 losses and one tie. His teams have won 15 league championships out of the 22 years he has coached.
Hoover High School football coach Josh Niblett said if there’s a better youth football coach out there, he’d like to know about it.
Craig Moss, who has been director of the Hoover Parks and Recreation Department for the past 12 years, said Blackman is “definitely the foundation of Hoover football and where it begins.”
What’s especially noteworthy is that Blackman hasn’t had one of his own children in the youth football program in 17 years.
“For somebody to continue to do it, without having their own kids involved in it, is amazing to me,” said Moss, whose son was coached by Blackman years ago. “It’s hard to find somebody that just continues to go out and do it just because they like it and not get paid a single dime for it. He’s definitely special.”
Paul Sanford, a Hoover park board member who has been a longtime board member of the Hoover Athletic Association and on the football steering committee, said Blackman has had an immeasurable impact on the program and given thousands of hours selflessly to kids in the Hoover community.
“I don’t think our youth program would be what it is without him,” Sanford said.
And Blackman’s success has filtered up into the middle and high school ranks, Sanford said.
Before rule changes required kids to play on teams that fed into the high school zone where they live, Blackman coached kids that went on to play at both Hoover and Spain Park.
Ten of the starters on last year’s state championship team at Hoover played for Blackman in their younger days, and five of the starters at Spain Park played for him. He also coached a player on the Class 6A state championship team at Ramsay High School in Birmingham.
Blackman doesn’t take credit for their success. He just says they were a very talented group of young men. Five of them are going to play football at the University of North Alabama, and four or five others received baseball scholarships, he said.
One of the Hoover players, Jeremiah Moon, is expected to start at linebacker for the Florida Gators this fall. “I fully expect Jeremiah Moon will be a first-round draft pick” when he finishes his college career, Blackman said.
Blackman estimates he has coached 300 to 400 players over the past 22 years, and 25 to 30 of them have gone on to play college football, including Michael DeJohn at Alabama, Blake Patterson at Air Force and Zach Smith at Mississippi State.
Famous Jameis
But one of his former players stands out among the rest — Jameis Winston, who played quarterback at Hueytown High School, won the Heisman Trophy while at Florida State University and had two record-setting seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after being chosen first in the 2015 draft.
Winston, whose parents planned for him to play for Rush Propst at Hoover until Propst resigned in 2007, played for Blackman when he was in the sixth grade.
Even though Blackman only coached him one year, the two developed a strong bond, and Blackman has stayed involved in Winston’s life ever since. Winston calls him every Father’s Day to thank him for the impact he has had on his life, and when Winston won the Heisman Trophy, Blackman was there in New York City to share the moment. Winston received several footballs autographed by other Heisman Trophy winners, and he gave Blackman one of them.
Antonor Winston, Jameis Winston’s father, said Blackman already had a winning football team before his son came along in the sixth grade. Blackman didn’t have to accept Jameis Winston onto his team, but he welcomed him into the fold and taught him a lot, including a hard work ethic, Antonor Winston said.
Most people think youth football coaches just teach X’s and O’s, but “this man was a very integral part in all of our kids’ lives,” Antonor Winston said. “He’s like a brother to me — like Jameis’ uncle.”
Again, Blackman takes no credit for Jameis Winston’s success. “He’s an unbelievably great person,” Blackman said. “He respects everybody that’s been in his life that has helped him get where he is. I was just there for the ride.”
Learning the game
Blackman got his own start in football in the first grade in Gardendale, playing wide receiver. He continued with football through his freshman year but then switched to track, where he specialized in the high jump.
As an adult, he started coaching his stepson, Tyler Belcher, in baseball in 1986. Tyler went on to play baseball at Hoover and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Blackman then started coaching his son, Seth, in football in 1995 when Seth was in the first grade. He coached that same group of players all the way through their sixth-grade year.
His best friend was commissioner of the youth football program and asked him to come back and coach again, even though his son’s group was moving on to middle school football.
“I told him I’d do it one year,” Blackman said. “I just kept doing it.”
Blackman started with a new group in the first grade and followed them all the way through sixth grade. He is now coaching his fourth group of kids in their sixth grade year. That group of kids came into this year with a 61-2 record, winning 47 games in a row, he said.
“I just really like working with kids,” Blackman said. “Not just teaching them how to play the game, but trying to help them learn about life. I try to spend every day teaching them something that’s going to help them in life, more than athletics.”
His biggest focus is teaching respect, he said. “I think we’ve lost that — teaching kids respect for everything: themselves, their peers, teachers, adults, authority,” he said. “Just by watching the news, you can see that.”
Blackman, who runs his own plumbing and irrigation businesses, also stresses the importance of hard work and said he always tries to play the best players instead of giving everybody equal playing time.
“I try to teach them — life is not going to be given to you,” he said. “When you get in the real world, you don’t get a trophy for just showing up. You’ve going to have to fight for it.”
‘Life’s about winning’
And Blackman doesn’t like coming in second place. “Life’s about winning. Nobody wants to lose. If you don’t win, you’re not going to be successful,” he said. “It’s not OK to fail at anything you do, whether it’s taking a test, riding a bicycle or learning how to swim. You fail, you get hurt. I try to help prevent that.”
He wants everything he does to be at the top, he said. “My dad and mom taught me — you be the absolute best you can be, and whatever it takes, doing it the right way, you do that,” Blackman said.
Niblett, who has coached five state championship teams at Hoover and one at Oneonta, and whose youngest son has played for Blackman several years, said Blackman gets it.
“He understands relationships. He knows how to communicate at every level,” whether he’s talking to a kid who is five years old or out of college, Niblett said.
Blackman does an excellent job of teaching kids the fundamentals of football, particularly in regard to safety, Niblett said.
Blackman said he usually spends at least two weeks reviewing the fundamentals of tackling and blocking at the beginning of every season.
His teams hit hard, he said, but added, “I try to instill in these kids how to do it the right way without hurting yourself,” he said. “I tell them all the time, ‘I don’t want to come visit you in the hospital.’ … In 22 years, I’ve never had a kid with a concussion.”
Blackman also works hard at preparing kids for the next level, Niblett said. As an athletic director for the football program, Blackman makes sure other youth coaches attend the coaching clinics put on by high school coaches, he said.
The idea is to get the young kids familiar with the terminology used in middle and high school so when they get to that level, it’s not a foreign language to them, Niblett said.
There obviously are differences in the skill levels and intellectual abilities of kids at different ages, but Blackman tries to do as much as he can like they do in high school, Niblett said.
As the kids get older, they can start running some of the plays used at the higher levels but more important than the schemes used is the culture developed, Niblett said. Blackman helps develop a culture that promotes a hard work ethic, commitment and understanding and playing by the rules, Niblett said.
Building relationships
And he invests himself in the kids’ lives outside of football, building relationships, Niblett added.
Kids at the high school level talk about Blackman all the time, in a good way, he said. They know he rides them at times, but they also know he does it because he loves them and wants to help them get better, Niblett said.
DeJohn, who was in Blackman’s first group of players and later played four years at Alabama, said Blackman has always been a huge influence in his football career and life in general.
DeJohn said he was heavy-set as a young boy and didn’t know if he wanted to play a contact sport. Blackman talked him into playing on the 75-pound team. He wanted to play running back but started out as a center because of his size. Blackman stayed on him about keeping his weight down and eating right, he said.
“As a kid, you don’t want to do that. That’s the last thing you want to do,” DeJohn said, but he learned perseverance and was able to start playing running back and linebacker, where he eventually found his niche, he said.
DeJohn, who turned 29 in August and is now a commercial real estate developer in Birmingham, said Blackman taught him a lot about hard work, toughness, commitment and sacrifice — all traits necessary to succeed in life itself.
“He was just a great coach.”
When asked how long he plans to keep coaching, Blackman said when he finishes with this year’s group, he’ll start with at least one more group of young ones and follow them through, “the good Lord willing and I live long enough.”
Blackman said he’s been fortunate to work with a lot of great kids, parents and assistant coaches and to be in a city and school system supportive of their youth sports programs. The parents, in particular, have been great, he said.
“They don’t question a lot of what we’ve done. They trust me with their kids, I think, and that’s a huge blessing as a coach,” he said. “I appreciate that they let me do it and the opportunity to keep coming back.”
