I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Eli Thomas from Valdosta, Georgia. That’s so odd to me because I have read all about Valdosta and even written some about that city. As a huge football fan, Valdosta is my kind of town, then here comes a guy that played football there.

Let me tell you, Eli Thomas has a true underdog story and is a guy that has a giant heart. College football and the NFL has had many stories of guys with the heart of a champion that keep fighting and playing even though the odds were against them. Those are the guys you want to pull for on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon. Eli is the kind of guy you want to pull for.

Raised in the poor side of town in Valdosta, Georgia, Eli did not have the best of childhoods. His family lived in what they call the projects.

It’s basically a well-known story of the kid growing up in the worst of neighborhoods with drugs, gangs, murders, and all kinds of opportunities for trouble. How does a kid stay away from the crack, the violence and all of the other things that go on in the worse neighborhoods in town?

But, in spite of the hardships, Valdosta is maybe the best city in America for a high school football player. It’s called Title Town for a reason. Valdosta has won more football games than any high school football team in America, so they say.

I don’t know if the Valdosta Wikipedia page is accurate and up to date, but it says that Valdosta High School has 913 wins in football all time. They have an amazing 24 state championships in the state of Georgia which is an excellent high school football state, one of the very best. They are also credited

with 6 national championships.

Like many growing American cities, Valdosta opened up a new high school in 1959 named Lowndes High School. Lowndes has even won 5 state championships since they started playing football.

Even the private school in town, Valwood, has won 6 state championships in football.

There must be something besides just alligators in the water around Valdosta, Georgia.

Great teams mean great players and Valdosta has had some outstanding players over the years. At Valdosta High School Buck Belue, John Lastinger, John Bond, Dusty Bonner, Malcolm Mitchell, Stan Rome, Jay Rome, Brice Hunter, Michael Wakefield, Dexter Daniels, Willie Gary, and Coleman Rudolph and many others played at least college football and some of them beyond.

Stan Rome may have been the best high school player in his era and he chose to play football and basketball at Clemson. He also played briefly in the NBA and the NFL before drug addiction nearly cost him his very life.

Lowndes High School produced Randall Godfrey, Telvin Smith, Jay Ratliff, Josh Harvey-Clemons, Greg Reid, Doug Belk, and Vincent Burns.

Eli Thomas was a Valdosta High player and ask him about Lowndes and he will tell you that he hates them with a passion still to this day. Valdosta versus Lowndes has been called by some, the most intense high school rivalry in the country. Some might argue that, but I doubt one of those some disputing the magnitude of that rivalry will be Eli Thomas because he still growls at the very mention of Lowndes.

Thomas was a sophomore on the 2010 Valdosta team that had superstars like Malcolm Mitchell, Jay Rome, and Michael Wakefield.

While Eli Thomas was a starter at Valdosta, he was on the smaller side while in high school. When he was done as a senior, he didn’t have a single scholarship offer from a college to play football at their school. Of course, most guys would have just given up on football right then. But, Eli Thomas is not most guys. You can believe that.

Eli found an opportunity for himself at a Junior College in North Dakota at Bottineau and Dakota College.

Can you imagine the culture shock? Here was a young African-American from Valdosta, Georgia

moving to nowhere North Dakota. I mean most people today don’t have real maps, but if you do get out your map and find Bottineau, North Dakota. It’s in the absolute middle of nowhere in possibly the coldest part of the continental United States.

Eli went from a city in Georgia with approximately 135,000 folks to a small town in North Dakota with just over 2,000 people.

Valdosta’s population is over 50% black and North Dakota just might be the whitest state in America. If it’s not, it’s awfully white and awfully close.

Here we have a young black guy from the south suddenly living in North Dakota with a bunch of really white people and never even mind the huge difference in the climate. Valdosta, Georgia’s average temperature in January is 54 degrees Fahrenheit. The average high in Bottineau, North Dakota is 15 degrees in January and that is the high temperature for the day. That is also very, very cold for a southern man.

Only rarely does the temperature in Valdosta even get down to 15 degrees on a very cold winter morning.

The average snowfall in Bottineau is 45 inches per year and Valdosta may occasionally see light snow. But, you can usually count with one or two fingers the number of snow days if it even happens at all.

Bottineau has one radio station and it’s country music, while Valdosta has many and is close enough to Tallahassee, Florida to get their television programming.

A lot of famous people have lived in Valdosta starting maybe way back with famous old west gunfighter Doc Holliday and to more recent NFL players and other entertainers.

Bottineau’s claim to fame is being the birthplace of Gary Dahl, the inventor of the pet rock.

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