Mary G. Montgomery has canceled plans to televise its Aug. 21 home season opener against Saraland, Spartans coach Jeff Kelly said Wednesday, ending a broadcast that had been arranged since January. Kelly said television station officials notified him of the decision, which he said was backed by the Mobile County Public School System.
“I was notified by station administration today that the TV broadcast of our first game versus MGM was being cancelled by MGM school officials and (the) MCPSS,” Kelly said in a text message. “We are disappointed in that decision, as it gives kids from both schools a chance to showcase their hard work on TV. Most kids won’t ever get the chance to play on TV and it is an honor.”
As recently as two days before the announcement, the station set to air the game still listed it on its website. Neither the Mobile County Public School System nor the television station returned messages seeking comment.
The cancellation removes one of the most anticipated broadcasts of the early season along the Gulf Coast. Openers between the area’s two flagship programs do not come around often, and a weeknight telecast would have put one of the region’s premier matchups in front of viewers across the Mobile area — a stage that high school games in Alabama rarely get outside of championship weekend in Birmingham.
The Region’s Marquee Rivalry
Saraland and Mary G. Montgomery have been the two dominant programs in the Mobile area over the last four years. Saraland is 40-3 over that span with four straight appearances in the Super 7 state championship round, while MGM is 31-5.
“I just don’t understand the decision to not highlight all the great things about high school sports,” Kelly said. “Nonetheless, we look forward to kicking off our season next week in Semmes against a great opponent.”
The numbers explain why the game carried so much weight. The Super 7 — the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s state championship event — is where every classification’s season ends, and reaching it four consecutive times, as Saraland has, requires sustained excellence that few programs in the state manage. MGM’s 31-5 mark over the same stretch made the Spartans the only program in the Mobile area operating in anything close to the same company, and the annual meeting between the two had grown into the game circled on calendars across the region.
Kelly’s team opens at home in Semmes, the western Mobile County community the school serves, before a schedule that will again test it against the area’s best. Saraland, on the eastern side of Mobile County, has turned its program into a model of consistency, with deep playoff runs becoming the expectation rather than the exception.
MGM’s Turbulent Offseason
The broadcast cancellation comes after a tumultuous three months for Mary G. Montgomery. The Alabama High School Athletic Association ruled the school had violated the organization’s recruiting rule and handed down a one-year restrictive probation and playoff ban, along with a one-year suspension for then-coach Zach Golson. Golson was ultimately removed from his position by the Mobile County Public School System.
The AHSAA’s recruiting rule bars member schools from unduly influencing athletes to transfer for athletic purposes, and restrictive probation is among the more serious penalties the association can assess short of permanent ban. A playoff ban means that even if the Spartans qualify on the field, they cannot participate in the postseason during the probationary period — a consequence that reshapes an entire season’s stakes for players who had nothing to do with the underlying investigation. The removal of Golson, who had built the program into a contender, added a coaching transition on top of the competitive penalties.
Kelly said he was surprised the school pulled out of the broadcast agreement given the negative publicity already surrounding the investigation.
“I know they’re a really good team with a lot of great players and a proven coaching staff,” Kelly said. “They’re going to be a tough challenge for anybody.”
Anticipation Once Ran High
Kelly said in January he expected a huge turnout for the game, and Golson said at the time there had been discussion of moving it to Hancock-Whitney Stadium on the University of South Alabama campus.
“It’s an exciting way to kick the season off,” Kelly said then. “I know the kids will be excited about that. A lot of those guys know each other. … They’ve had a great run and we’ve been pretty good lately, too.”
Golson, at the time, said his players would be motivated to face Saraland.
“They’ve definitely been the standard for the last five to 10 years,” he said. “We’ve been the best two teams in the 251 and that was one of our goals when we got to Mary Montgomery, being the best in the 251. We’re going to get a chance to go prove it. It’ll definitely give our kids something to be motivated about, just knowing that they’re going to get to go play on a big stage like that.”
The “251” — the telephone area code that covers southwest Alabama, from Mobile out through the surrounding counties — has become shorthand in the state’s football culture for the region itself, and being “the best in the 251” is a claim programs in the area take seriously. Both coaches treated the opener as more than a Week 1 game: it was a measuring stick, a showcase and, with the television arrangement in place since January, a planned event months in the making. The discussion of moving the game to Hancock-Whitney Stadium, the on-campus home of South Alabama football in Mobile, reflected how large the matchup loomed — neutral-site games at college venues are reserved for the kind of matchups that outgrow a high school stadium, and this one qualified.
That stage is now gone, at least for the broadcast element. The game itself will go on as scheduled at MGM’s home field, but without cameras, and without the months of buildup that a televised opener would have generated.
What the Cancelation Means for Players and Fans
Kelly’s stated disappointment centered on the players. Televised high school football is a rare experience for most athletes — a memory that outlasts the season and, for a handful, a highlight that follows them into college recruiting conversations. An opener between two programs with this level of talent would have put dozens of college prospects on camera at once, in front of an audience that rarely sees the Mobile area’s regular-season product outside of playoff highlights and championship broadcasts.
For fans, the loss is a practical one. Families with scheduling conflicts, alumni who have moved away, and the broader audience of Mobile-area high school football followers who keep up with the region’s top teams will now have to follow the game the old-fashioned way — in person at the stadium, or through score updates after the fact.
Neither the school system nor the station has explained the decision publicly, and with neither side returning messages seeking comment, the specific reasons — whether cost, the fallout from the AHSAA investigation, or school system policy — remain unstated. What is clear is that the decision came from within the school side of the arrangement rather than from the station itself, according to Kelly’s account of how the notification reached him.
Looking Ahead
The teams are still scheduled to meet again in Saraland to open the 2027 season.
“If we’re lucky enough to get chosen for the game of the week to open the season next year — or any game for that matter — we would never pass on the opportunity,” Kelly said.
That forward-looking posture suggests the broadcast idea is not dead, merely deferred. High school football telecasts in the Mobile area depend on arrangements between stations, schools and the school system, and a matchup of this caliber will remain an obvious candidate for future “game of the week” selections. The 2027 meeting — on Saraland’s side of the series rotation — gives both programs a built-in date to try again, presumably with the current season’s turbulence behind them.
Until then, the Aug. 21 opener in Semmes stands on its own: two of the best programs in southwest Alabama, one coming off four straight championship-game appearances and the other reloading under new leadership after an offseason it would rather forget, meeting under the lights with no cameras rolling. Kelly, for one, has moved on to preparation. The disappointment, he made clear, is for the kids who lost a stage — and next week, both teams will have a game to play regardless.
In the meantime, the opener still carries everything that made it the game of the early season except the cameras: a home opener in Semmes for a program determined to show the penalties have not broken it, against a Saraland team that has spent four years setting the pace for everyone else in the region. Whatever the motivation on each sideline, the kickoff Aug. 21 will answer the only question that has mattered all offseason — how good Mary G. Montgomery still is — and it will do so in front of a crowd that no longer needs a television schedule to know when to show up.
