The Georgia High School Football Hall of Fame inducted its first class of 45 players Saturday in Atlanta. The Hall of Fame hasn’t determined how many it will induct next year, but expect it to reload with little talent drop-off. For a sampling, here are 10 players the GHSF Daily endorses for 2023. To be eligible, players must be eight seasons removed from high school and retired from football. The webcast of the 2022 induction can be found here. Don’t miss former Trinity High and Cleveland Browns star Clarence Scott dancing at the 2:00:57 mark and College Park’s and Georgia Tech’s Bill Curry explaining how he became a center at 2:17:25. Visit the GHSF Daily website for bios on the 45 players inducted in this year’s class.
*Jeff Backus, Norcross: The only offensive linemen voted in this year were Bill Curry, Chip Kell and Matt Stinchcomb. Somebody’s got to block, and Backus has premium credentials. He was a three-year starter on offense and defense in high school. He had 74 tackles, five sacks and eight blocked passes as a junior, according to his preseason AJC Super 11 bio, but he would make his name on offense as a four-year all-Big Ten lineman at Michigan and a first-round NFL Draft pick who started 12 seasons with the Detroit Lions.
*Tray Blackmon, LaGrange: Blackmon was the AJC’s and Gatorade’s all-classification player of the year and the state’s No. 1 college prospect in 2004, when he led LaGrange to its second consecutive Class 3A title. LaGrange went 29-1 while allowing 6.4 points per game those two years. Blackmon had more than 100 tackles and made first-team all-state both seasons. Blackmon had his ups and downs at Auburn and played one season in the CFL, but he checks two of the most important Hall of Fame boxes: Was he the best high school player in Georgia when he played? Yes. Did he win state a championship? Yes (two).
*Reggie Brown, Carrollton: Brown was the AJC’s all-classification player of the year in 1998, when he led Carrollton to its first state title in 24 years. As a senior, he had 62 receptions for 1,046 yards and 10 touchdowns during an era when 1,000-yard receivers were extra special. He was a two-way starter who played every play of the 1998 Class 2A championship game. Brown started all four seasons, and Carrollton was 50-6 during his time with two state finals appearances. Brown played at Georgia and then five NFL seasons as a first-round draft pick.
*Charles Grant, Miller County: Grant was a first-round NFL Draft pick, a nine-year NFL player and a Super Bowl champion as a defensive end, but he was a star running back in high school. He tied Herschel Walker’s state record with 45 rushing touchdowns in 1997, when he rushed for 2,530 yards. He scored 101 touchdowns in four years. He also had 102 tackles and two interceptions as a senior. He was the AJC’s 1997 Class A offensive player of the year and the 1996 Class A defensive player of the year. Grant played at Georgia.
*Deon Grant, Josey: Grant won a high school state title (1995), a college national title (1997) and a Super Bowl (2011), an unmatched feat for a Georgia high school player. He was the AJC’s Class 3A defensive player of the year in 1995, when he had 14 receptions as a tight end and eight interceptions as a defensive back and led Josey to its first and only state title. Josey remains the only Augusta public school with a state title in the past 50 years. Grant was a two-time first-team all-state player and a 1996 Parade and USA Today All-American. Grant was a consensus All-American at Tennessee and played 11 NFL seasons.
*Ernie Green, Spencer: Six of the 2022 inductees played in the Georgia Interscholastic Association during segregation. There are many more where those came from, and the best might be Green. Known as the fullback who opened holes for Jim Brown with the Cleveland Browns, Green was outstanding in his own right with 5,240 yards from scrimmage and two Pro Bowl appearances over a seven-year career. Green and Brown were the starting backfield in the 1964 NFL championship game, which Cleveland won. This is a high school hall of fame, and Green shines in that category, too, as a star runner on Spencer’s 1956 championship team and 1957 runner-up. Green played at Louisville and was the team’s leading rusher twice. Green, 84, became a successful businessman in Dayton, Ohio.
*Mackel Harris, Americus: Harris, a state-champion sprinter with 9.3-second speed over 100 yards, was the star of Americus’ 1974 and 1975 Class 2A championship teams that went 28-0. He made first-team all-state on both. The 1975 team shut out 13 of 14 opponents, and Harris averaged 12 tackles per game and was named the AJC’s Lineman of the Year, although he was a linebacker. Harris was a four-year starter at Georgia Tech. He never played in the NFL.
*Jamal Lewis, Douglass: Lewis rushed for more than 10,000 yards in a nine-year NFL career and topped 2,000 yards in 2003, and those watching him in high school might’ve seen it coming. He played for an Atlanta city school that hadn’t had much recent success and brought it to relevance in Georgia’s highest class when he rushed for 4,879 yards over three seasons. He ran for 1,713 yards in 12 games as a senior, when Douglass won a region title and reached the quarterfinals for the first time since 1978. Douglass and Lewis gave eventual Class 4A champion Southwest DeKalb and Quincy Carter their only loss. Lewis rushed for 137 yards and two touchdowns in the Florida-Georgia All-Star Game when it was in its heyday. Lewis was the SEC’s freshman of the year at Tennessee and overcame a knee injury to become the No. 5 overall pick in the NFL Draft.
*Hutson Mason, Lassiter: Perhaps no other single player demonstrated the effectiveness of the pure spread offense in this state better than Mason, whose world changed when Chip Lindsay became head coach of unsuspecting Lassiter in 2008. Lindsey got rid of Lassiter’s run-style offense and inserted four wide receivers and put Hutson in the shotgun as trigger man. In two years, Mason passed for 8,265 yards and 85 touchdowns. He was the Gatorade and GSWA state player of the year in 2009, when he led a program that had never won a region title to a 12-1 finish in the highest classification. Mason’s 4,560 yards passing as a senior were 800 more than any Georgia quarterback before him. Mason, now a sports commentator at Atlanta’s 680 the Fan, started one season at Georgia and didn’t play in the NFL.
*Everett Strupper, Riverside Military: The 2022 class shined a light on legendary old-timers such as Bob McWhorter, the state’s first real football star, and Clint Castleberry, a Heisman Trophy finalist as a Georgia Tech freshman who was killed in World War II and got a posthumous standing ovation at Saturday’s ceremony. Another of those forgotten heroes is Strupper, a partially deaf athlete who starred for Georgia’s best high school team in 1913 and became the first former Georgia high school player to become a consensus college All-American. Strupper’s high school coach said of his 5-foot-7 halfback: “He is a splendid broken-field runner, running as well to either side of the line. He is a good thrower of forward passes and a deadly tackler. In another year he will make some college a valuable man.” Strupper became a three-year starter at Georgia Tech, leading the Yellow Jackets to a 24-0-2 record and the 1917 national title. Tech’s 1917 club was the South’s first great college team. Strupper could read sign language but hear only shouts, so Tech’s center snapped the ball on Strupper’s counts instead of the quarterback’s. After his playing days, Strupper went into banking and became the first president of the Touchdown Club of Atlanta.
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