The Whisperer Remembers ... Melvin Foster.

The year 1985 was high school football magic in the state of Texas … but then too, if you’ve ever lived and seen the sport played there, it always feels like magic when the Friday night lights click on. But that year, was different and it was all because of one team, led by one man. The Houston Yates Lions were a force, winning games on reputation alone, before they even got off the bus, instilling fear into players, coaches, parents, and student bodies alike … and this man was at the center of it all. How good was his team? Well, they beat Odessa Permian 37-0 in the 1985 title game.

That’s pretty dang good.

He broke the hearts of Southwest Conference defensive coordinator’s when he chose to head north and play for Hayden Fry and the Iowa Hawkeyes. To be honest, I’m sure there were about seven or eight offensive coordinators in that conference who upon finding out he was going out of the state breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that terror wouldn’t be terrorizing their offenses.

Mean, nasty, tough. Big, fast, strong and he always arrived at the play in a bad mood, knocking players into the next zip code, taking names, and kicking behinds on the next play. The dude was no joke and the absolute triple truth so today, Whisperer Nation, let’s have a nice, hardy round of applause for former Iowa Hawkeye linebacker supreme … Mr. Melvin Foster. RIP sir.