For those of you in the Phoenix East Valley, you may already know the story here, but for those who don't...tonight's game between American Leadership Academy - Queen Creek (where Max Hall is the OC and where Ty Detmer USED to coach) and American Leadership Academy - Gilbert (where Ty Detmer now is HC this year) will have some serious bad blood and intensity. Basically an historically brotherly rivalry has been turned into a full on feud after some serious drama unfolded last spring.

Both schools are campuses of the same charter school organization - ALA, and therefore share the same administration at the top. So last spring, Coach Detmer, who lives in Queen Creek, and had been pretty open about how he wanted to coach long term at ALA QC, shocked everyone when he announced to his team that he had been asked by the administration to transfer to ALA Gilbert to fill the HC vacancy there (more in a minute on how that vacancy happened). He told his team that he reluctantly agreed to do so. Players and parents were outraged. Why had the administration filled the ALA Gilbert vacancy by creating another vacancy at ALA QC, particularly when ALA QC under Detmer had been on a rapid ascension up the AZ state rankings, playing and winning in the top division despite ALA QC being only a 3A sized school? Why not hire a new coach for Gilbert? Why disrupt a good thing in Queen Creek?

ALA Gilbert people would probably argue "why does ALA QC get both Ty Detmer as HC AND Max Hall as OC? Not fair!" (And the game results in recent years have indicated that, as ALA QC has swept ALA Gilbert, expectedly, the last few years)

Well, this is where it gets juicy. The previous ALA Gilbert HC was fired after he did some things that seemed to be covering for one or more of his players who were involved in a gang called the Gilbert Goons (I'll pause for you to laugh at the sound of some wealthy suburban kids in a gang). Well this was no innocent gang. They were going around jumping other kids in random attacks and beating them to a pulp - just for kicks. One night, it went too far and they killed a 16 yr old kid in Queen Creek. This was a MASSIVE news story in the Phoenix area for months, and it cast a bright black eye on ALA Gilbert. So in the assessment of the jaded ALA QC football parents, ALA administration moved Ty Detmer to ALA Gilbert (against his preferences) to help salvage the schools reputation. Other rumors swirled that a large donation had been made by one or more ALA Gilbert parents to ALA, contingent upon Ty Detmer moving to ALA Gilbert to coach.

Amidst all of this back drop, the head guy over ALA called a parent meeting to explain their decision to take Coach Detmer to all of the ALA QC football parents. Well, this meeting went about as well as you would imagine. Despite a fairly high percentage of these parents (and coaches & administrators) being LDS, there was some religion lost and some heated moments, and didn't end well.

Since that day ALA QC, under a new head coach - their previous coach before Detmer has returned as HC - and continuing with offensive coordinator Max Hall, has been counting the days until this rivalry matchup. Meanwhile, Detmer has upgraded ALA Gilbert by hiring away the defending 6A state champs' head coach (Saguaro) to be an assistant coach under him, and with him came some very talented transfers from Saguaro.

Drama, scandal, animosity....long story short, it is ON tonight in Queen Creek, Arizona - with Ty Detmer and Max Hall on opposite sidelines. If you're interested in tuning in, I'm told they are livestreaming on this link (game starts at 7pm MST/PDT)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbirCBn3jbo