Along the main drag in the seat of Tangipahoa Parish, a police car siren bursts and a caravan of school buses carrying the Amite High Warriors whiz past a squat red building where Vincent Sanders is holding court.
Wielding a pair of clippers inside the dingy hut that houses his barbershop, Sanders pays no attention to the procession outside as the sun’s orange glow filters through the dust-caked blinds on this Friday evening. Peering at the television across a room with cracked linoleum tiles and chipped wood counters, he continues his impassioned defense of his role in the recruiting battle between Alabama and LSU being waged on this very turf. Roughly 60 miles from where they will play in Baton Rouge this Saturday, the two SEC powers are locked in a struggle here over a pair of the nation’s top prospects — Ishmael Sopsher, the No. 1 defensive tackle in the country, and Devonta Lee, a four-star receiver. The two players, along with Crimson Tide wideout DeVonta Smith, have raised the profile of this rural outpost that just now is gaining recognition for being the talent-rich football hotbed it’s been for generations.
“That’s the thing that is beautiful,” says Amite’s defensive coordinator Chris Gordon. “It’s a small community. But the eyes are on it.”
For college coaches around the country, it’s become impossible to ignore even though it’s quite easy to bypass. Amite City sits alongside Interstate 55 not far from the Mississippi border in a tiny swath of Southeast Louisiana. It’s far enough from Baton Rouge and New Orleans to be considered out of the way, and with a shade more than 4,000 residents no one would ever confuse it with a city, which is probably why the locals simply call it Ay-meet. This is a place where the grown men are referred to by their childhood nicknames, families are intertwined, gossip gets around quickly and the whole truth seems within grasp but often remains an arm’s length away.
To understand how insular the community is, the current head football coach, Zephaniah Powell, admits he saw himself as an “outsider” when he was hired three years ago even though he grew up 45 minutes up the road in Mississippi. Such is life in the hometown of the Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, where the folks these days are more apt to crow about Smith — the local product and national championship game hero who cradled the 41-yard pass from Tua Tagovailoa that beat Georgia in overtime.
After that famous catch, Amite paraded Smith through the streets and celebrated the rising star raised in the shadow of Butler’s Memorial Park in a hardscrabble neighborhood where decaying homes rest on cinderblocks and rusted-out cars are parked on grassy plots near doublewides. Still remembered as the spindly kid who once wowed as a receiver, defensive back and return specialist at Amite, Smith is now lionized in his own backyard. After all, he realized the dream that every boy in Amite begins to harbor when they start playing pee-wee football with the Braves at the age of five. Almost overnight, the young man known as Tay became a symbol of hope.
“Because they see, ‘Wow, if I can excel or succeed in whatever I am doing I can possibly find my way out of Amite as well,’” says Powell.
The man who has made it his mission to open Amite’s exit door for Smith and other top prospects is Sanders, a nebulous character with a lineman’s build who has morphed into something akin to a human Rorschach test. To some, he is a mentor, father figure and advocate who generates exposure for the area’s young talents through his organization, BEAST 1 Athletics. To others — especially anonymous souls lurking on message boards and Twitter — he’s a power broker, scout, promoter and middleman who favors Alabama over LSU and claims to have the contact info for the “top 50 coaches in the nation.” What can’t be denied is that Sanders, known as “Big Fella,” is the link between Amite’s past and present in a town where relationships are everything and bonds formed decades ago are as meaningful as ever today.
In the late 1980s, Sanders, 47, walked the halls of Amite High Magnet with Sopsher’s father, Rodney Sr. They also sat in classes and lumbered out to the football field alongside Sam Pettito, who works for Nick Saban as Alabama’s director of personnel operations. Rodney calls Pettito a “good friend.” And, as Sanders explains, it was Pettito who told him six years ago he could help put Amite on the map by shepherding the Warriors’ best players across the region to summer football camps held by the nation’s biggest programs. So Sanders loaded up his vehicle and began taking weekend excursions with teenagers, spiriting them to Arkansas, Georgia, Florida State, Florida, Tennessee, Miami, Alabama and LSU.
Another stop was at Clemson — where Amite’s first ballyhooed recruit, Michael Carr, had enrolled back in 1988.
The year before, as a high school senior, the sensational Carr guided the Warriors to the 3A state championship game at New Orleans’ Superdome, accounting for 35 touchdowns along the way and being named to the Parade Magazine All-America team. At a time when the world seemed bigger than it is now and unquestionably more disconnected, Carr was larger than life to a community that worshipped the football team.
“Mike was a phenom,” Sanders says, shaking his head.
One of Carr’s starry-eyed fans was his brother-in-law, Alan Ricard, a member of the 1994 state championship team who forged a nine-year NFL career as a fullback and is now an assistant coach at Louisiana-Monroe. Beyond the high school field where Carr would dazzle on Friday nights in the fall, Ricard and kids of all ages played pickup games behind the stands in the faint glow of the stadium lights. It’s here where friendships were formed and toughness was instilled.
“Everybody loves Amite football,” Ricard says. “That’s what brought us together as a town. I couldn’t wait to get to the high school and put on that purple helmet because that was everybody’s life in Amite. That was like going to NFL. And we idolized Michael.”
As one of Ricard’s old Amite teammates, Jonathan Foster II, puts it, “He was the next savior of Amite. Everybody had their hopes on Michael going to college and doing well.”
But Carr ended up a cautionary tale. He became embroiled in a recruiting scandal, transferred to Texas-El Paso, was busted for drug possession and then receded from the spotlight for good. In spite of that, Carr’s name still rolls off the tongue in this corner of the globe.
And it continues to resonate in Clemson, too.
When Sopsher and his family paid a visit to the ACC power for a summer camp, Carr factored into the Tigers’ sales pitch.
“Man, come up and try to redeem that,” Rodney Sr. remembers hearing.
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Amite defensive tackle Ishmael Sopsher is one of the nation's top prospects in the Class of 2019.
Rodney, an operator at an area sawmill, shares the anecdote as he leans against a fence at Springfield High School while watching with mild interest as Amite marches to its eighth victory in nine games. Before the first quarter ends, the Warriors lead by four touchdowns and eventually prevail, 40-0. It’s hardly a fair fight, and in the second half the clock runs continuously to ensure the score won’t be too lopsided. This is the way the season has gone for Amite, which has designs on winning its fifth state title and its first since it dropped to Class 2A last year.
“It’s championship or nothing,” says Powell. “That’s what it is.”
The expectations are understandably high. Three SEC-level prospects, all in the same senior class, play at a school with a total enrollment of 405 and a student population that is 96 percent black, according to Powell. The quarterback, Amani Gilmore, committed to Kentucky last month. Lee and Sopsher, meanwhile, hold offers from every school in the conference’s western division.
Then there is Daran Branch, a 6-foot-2 junior defensive back who has already been tendered scholarships by Auburn and Ole Miss.
The collection of talent is impressive and rivals the group that led Amite to its second state title in 1994, when Ricard, P.J. Franklin and Foster launched careers that landed them in the pros.
“This area has always produced great athletes,” Powell says. “It’s mainly genetics. Genetics.”
The Amite fans, who made the 30-minute journey here on this cool night, celebrate their embarrassment of riches as they watch the slaughter of Springfield unfold.
The Warriors’ supporters — from small children to old men— are vocal and decked out in all sorts of purple-and-gold gear that has variations of the school’s nickname spelled out in both cursive and blocked print. Many of them file past Rodney, exchanging hellos and offering well-wishes. Others stop to purchase $5 styrofoam containers packed to the brim with homemade jambalaya that steams in the brisk air.
“The culture of Amite has always been football,” Rodney says. “Everybody loves football, football, football.”
That includes his son, who towers over the competition. In his No. 91 jersey, Ishmael is easy to spot. He hovers close to 6-foot-4 and weighs more than 330 pounds, playing the same position his father did 30 years ago.
“You can’t miss him,” remarks Gordon.
It’s hard to hear him though. Ishmael is soft-spoken and reserved. Rodney says his son won’t initiate a conversation, and many times he also won’t finish it.
Around Amite High, Ishmael is often greeted with the same question about his college choice.
“They ask me, ‘Where I am going to go?’” he says with a stoic expression. “They talk it about it every day.”
The answer though remains a mystery, causing plenty of angst down the road in Baton Rouge, where Ishmael is scheduled to be this Saturday to watch the Tigers face the Crimson Tide. It’s the second time in a span of a month that Sopsher will attend an Alabama game after he traveled to Tuscaloosa to see the victory over Missouri on Oct. 13.
Two days after that trip, T-Bob Hebert — the former LSU offensive lineman-turned-radio talking head — sent out a fiery tweet.
“If Shopsher [sic] goes to Bama I will introduce legislation to remove Amite from Louisiana and annex them to Alabama,” Hebert wrote.
The message riled up his followers and Hebert later replied on the comments thread he was “just kidding man.”
But back in Amite, Sanders isn’t laughing.
With a young child in a crimson chair in front of him, he bristles.
Referring to the criticism directed toward Sopsher, Sanders exclaims, “Dude, this is a kid!"
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Vincent Sanders, seen cutting hair, has become a key figure in the battle for Amite's top recruits.
Inside Sanders’ barbershop, the decorations are kitschy and random. There are posters of Miami, Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher and Texas’ 2018 schedule. There is also an Atlanta Falcons license plate wedged between painted white brick and mirror, where nearby there is a Georgia Bulldogs logo and a postcard illustrating the sequence in which DeVonta Smith caught the game-winning pass from Jalen Hurts in Alabama’s taut victory over Mississippi State last year. A framed photo of Saban running out onto that field also takes up a section of wall space, where an apron with Crimson Tide logos hangs.
Noticeably absent is anything purple and gold, which is odd because those colors are everywhere else in this town. Yet Sanders is adamant he has nothing against LSU as he fights the perception he is influencing players in the Tangipahoa parish and parts beyond to sign with other programs — namely the enemy, Alabama.
Sanders is the subject of multiple LSU message board threads, emerging as a polarizing figure after two players he mentored — Shyheim Carter of nearby Kentwood and Smith — landed in Tuscaloosa in successive years. Around that time, Amite defensive back Josh Perry was also ticketed for Alabama, but he reneged on his commitment at the eleventh hour and signed with Memphis in February 2016. Since then Sanders has extended his network of aspiring football talents beyond Amite to places like Thomasville, Ga. and Williamston, S.C. — piggybacking on the exposure he received in an article published on the now-defunct website, SEC Country, that touted his connections.
“I don’t tell these kids where to go to school,” he says. “They’ll sit here and say, ‘Oh, he wants them to go to Alabama.’ Dude, where do I live? If that was the case, I would just move to Alabama. I live here. Man, it’s like with LSU — I would love my kids be in-state because that makes it easier on the family. But it’s your job to sell your school to these kids.”
Ed Orgeron, the Tigers’ head coach, had made that his mission as he’s tried to lure Louisiana’s best prospects to the flagship university. Last week, he made a pitstop in Amite and told reporters, “That’s an area we have to capture.”
Sanders though seems skeptical about the Tigers’ commitment to that pursuit. He wonders aloud if LSU is too late in making this town a priority, that it assumes loyalty based on the proximity of Baton Rouge to the fertile grounds around here. He claims LSU has ignored his recommendations in the past and notes the Tigers have yet to offer Branch, the 2020 defensive back who has benefited from the intense interest Sopsher and Lee have attracted. Back in the spring, representatives from schools in each Power Five conference lined the practice fields, according to Powell. They were there to find the next amazing athlete who could elevate their programs in the years to come.
“They’re asking, ‘Coach, who else do you have?’” Powell says.
Now that the word is out about Amite, the expectations are the town will continue to churn out top prospects and the remarkable cycle of football talent will continue to whirl.
Sanders, who has done his part to make Amite a destination on the windy recruiting trail, is confident it will. In this age of the Internet, the youth here have a firmer understanding of the world beyond and a wariness of the pitfalls that ensnared Carr so many years ago. But they are just as hungry as he was to make it.
“These kids — they want something,” he says. “They’re poor. They are trying to get out.”
But Sanders isn’t. He’s smack dab in the heart of Amite, inside that squat red building along Oak Street, where the pulse of a football town beats as loud as ever on a Friday night when the Warriors win again and the battle between Alabama and LSU continues to rage.
Rainer Sabin is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin