In 1998, Robert Edwards was on top of the world. He had just finished rushing for 1,115 yards in his first professional season for the Patriots, emerging as a top-flight back with significant room to grow into an NFL superstar. Then, out of nowhere, the one-time University of Georgia star suffered one of the worst, most bizarre ACL injuries in history in an NFL rookie flag football game during the league's All-Pro weekend in Hawaii. He nearly lost his leg, couldn't return to professional football for more than three years and, after a cup of coffee with the Miami Dolphins, he landed in the CFL, putting in three years with the Montreal Alouettes and a season with the Toronto Argonauts.

Former Patriots running back Robert Edwards

All that ended in 2008, when Edwards was released by the Argonauts. A year passed, and the former star decided it was time to work with people who had a chance to reach the NFL, like him; he became a high school football coach.

Edwards took the reins at Fairburn (Ga.) Arlington Christian School in 2009, racking up 6-5 records in both of his first two seasons at the helm. Now, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he's expanding his reach, starting what is, in essence, a combined football training and teen inspiration program he's dubbed "STAR Training Academy." The effort focuses on a two-day camp coached by Edwards and a crew of other former collegiate and NFL stars.

The traveling series of camps offer up football instruction to middle and high school athletes throughout Georgia, though Edwards made it clear that they aren't a traditional combine.

"This camp is strictly to teach the proper fundamentals and techniques to help players get ahead," Edwards told the Journal-Constitution. "There are combines out there to test numbers. Our camp is just about making kids better and I think the coaches we will have at our camp are the best around."

The two-day camps aren't free, but the minimal $35 price tag they carry is a small one compared to other combines or football camps. And the list of co-coaches that Edwards has lined up -- including former All-Pro linebacker Randall Godfrey, Super Bowl-winning defensive back Jermaine Phillips and Georgia (and, for a brief time, NFL) quarterbacks David Greene and D.J. Shockley -- is nothing to snicker at.

Tupelo (Miss.) High and South Panola (Miss.) High have a steady rivalry across a handful of different sports, with the 2010 football matchup between the two even serving as a RivalsHigh Game of the Week in October. Now the rivalry has a newly minted luster, thanks to what might be the baseball play of the year, courtesy of Tupelo star Caleb Walker.

Walker's moment of magic -- which you can see above thanks to Mississippi NBC affiliate WTVA -- came in the bottom of the sixth inning of the latest baseball meeting between Tupelo and South Panola on April 11. Trailing by a run, Tupelo needed a big play with Walker standing on second base.

That's when slugger J.D. Roberts came through, stroking a drive to left field. Walker took off on the crack of the bat, rounded third and headed home despite a clear shot at him from South Panola's left fielder.

The ball beat the runner to the plate, but Walker came up with a way to get around a seemingly certain out. With a tag waiting for him at home, Walker first slid, stopped short of the plate and then went up-and-over the South Panola catcher, landing safely at home.

"Jackie Chan might teach that somewhere," Walker's teammate Connor Carothers told NBC affiliate WTVA. "I don't know.

"[The slide was] Beyond amazing."

What Carothers and the rest of the Tupelo team does know is that Walker's acrobatic play completely changed their game against South Panola. Tupelo went on to rack up five more runs in the bottom of the sixth before shutting down South Panola in the seventh to escape with a surprising, 7-2 victory.

The play at the plate was also incredibly similar to a miracle run scored a year ago in collegiate baseball, when Fordham runner Brian Kownacki scored by leaping directly over an opposing catcher, as you can see in the video below.

Yet, if you compare both slides, it's not a stretch to say that Walker's score is at least as impressive as its collegiate counterpart. The high school star not only leaped over his opponent, he did so after first trying to score on a traditional slide.

Nashville's Montgomery Bell (Tenn.) Academy is one of its state's most well-known schools. The highly regarded private institution has both an impressive academic reputation and legacy of competitive teams in a variety of sports, including some well-earned football platitudes.

Montgomery Bell Academy football coach Daniel McGugin

However, some of the luster of the MBA football program's recent accomplishments were brought under scrutiny in recent days, after the Nashville Tennessean discovered that the school had self-reported itself for failing to follow established guidelines for handing out financial aid.

While the series of articles the Tennessean has produced about the possible MBA violations has failed to specify precisely what the violation was, the school felt it was significant enough to preemptively dismiss four-year head coach Daniel McGugin, whose 41-10 record at the prestigious school included a 13-0 perfect season that finished with a state title.

The goal for dismissing McGugin -- who still contested on Monday that he had not been released, contrary to the MBA headmaster's assertions -- was clearly to help the school avoid sanction from the Tennessee High School Athletic Association. While it's premature to say MBA will definitely accomplish that goal, it appears that the school is on track to pull of just that feat.

According to the Tennessean, THSAA Executive Director Bernard Childress said that he felt that the school's self-reporting of the incident would likely be sufficient to avoid further sanction.

"If they have asked their coach to step down … they've addressed it and addressed it in a way that shows they take it very seriously," Childress told the Tennessean. "There's nothing else for us to do.

"We're not into penalizing someone just because we can. That's not how we operate."

The THSAA may not be ready to penalize them following the school's self-disclosure, but that doesn't mean MBA escaping sanction is the correct -- or more equitable -- solution to the ongoing financial aid dilemma. As a private school, MBA holds a distinct advantage of public schools in its ability to mold its own team via self-selection of students. Is the simple and admittedly honest act of coming clean about a mistake enough to justify avoiding penalties for that mistake itself?

To say that the Cotton Bowl -- the stadium, not the game -- has seen its best days already is an understatement. The grand old concrete stadium in Dallas' Fair Park neighborhood received the ultimate insult in 2010, when, for the first time, the Cotton Bowl Classic (that's the annual football game) was played at the new Cowboys Stadium, not the Cotton Bowl itself.

Cotton Bowl

While the stadium still hosts the annual Red River Rivalry game between Texas and Oklahoma and now is home to the TicketCity Bowl, it can hardly be considered a Titanic site of the college game, as it once was.

Yet, the Cotton Bowl can still be culturally relevant in Texas football if it expands what has already begun as an optimistic slate of high school football games. The stadium has hosted Dallas ISD-sited games for the Texas high school football playoffs since the mid-1970s, but it's now expanding its football offerings, helping get the high school season rolling in August with a face-off between Dallas (Texas) Jesuit Prep and Flower Mound (Texas) High in a game called the North Texas Classic.

Landing the North Texas Classic is a big step in the right direction for the Cotton Bowl, which could easily slide into a role as a neutral stadium for face-offs between some of the Dallas-Fort Worth area's top teams and other traveling national titans. The 2010 North Texas Classic was played at Pizza Hut Park, the home of MLS' FC Dallas, between Colleyville (Texas) Heritage High and Duncanville (Texas) High.

While Pizza Hut Park might provide a slightly more appropriate stadium size for a North Texas Classic face-off, the Cotton Bowl can use the event to help position itself for future hosting of flagship games for program's like Euless (Texas) Trinity and even Arkansas titan Shiloh Christian School. Given the history and size of the venue, it's not a stretch to think that almost any high profile program would be excited to play there, particular if a game against Trinity, or Allen (Texas) High, or Southlake (Texas) Carroll -- to name just a few -- is in the offing.

Earlier this year, Canadian AAU star Jamar Ergas flew into the international spotlight when he threw down an incredible 360 dunk in a game. Now, the player being widely hyped as the best eighth-grader in North America may have one-upped himself, throwing down 10 dunks in a single game at a highly publicized tourney ... and hosting an impromptu one-man dunk showcase while using his teammates as props during another workout.

As you can see above, plenty of Ergas' slams in his 40-point, single-game explosion came on one-man breakaways. Yet even those dunks often showcased Ergas' incredible leaping ability.

Then there is Ergas' backwards dunk at No. 2 on this ScoutsFocus list, showcasing not only Ergas' phenomenal athleticism but also his ability to intuitively adjust to the defense closing on him. It's fairly incredible that Ergas, at the tender age of 14, has the athleticism to throw down an impeccable reverse dunk with the ease of a layup. To do it out of necessity when facing defensive pressure is another impressive matter entirely.

"Canada keeps producing big-time players," Canada Grassroots AAU program headman Ro Russell told one Canadian scout. "If [Ergas] keeps developing his game, [he is] going to be one of the best ever."

Most high school teams have had the same head coach over the past 12 months. Not Mount Rainier (Wash.) High's softball team. It's gone through four … at least.

Mount Rainier Softball team

That kind of coaching turnover would usually be associated with a program in disarray, which couldn't be further from the case with Mt. Rainier, which recently made the state semifinals in 2009 after a five-year absence, then made the state tournament again in 2010. The team had plenty of returning talent for any coach to work with.

Yet, according to the Seattle Times, the coach who began the season -- Larry Daly -- still resigned just five games into the 2011 campaign on April 1. He took over from Javid Shoemaker, the coach who led the Rams to the state tournament in 2009 and in 2010

With Daly's surprising midseason departure, Mt. Rainier was ensured to host at least a third coach. But as the search for an immediately replacement went on, someone had to coach the team in the meantime.

Members of the Mt. Rainier baseball coaching staff filled that void, leading both squads until another new coach was finally hired on April 13. While it's hard to determine who was really serving as head coach during that spell, the Times credited Mt. Rainier head baseball coach Darren Rawie, who is also the school's athletic director, as the team's guiding force when there was no official coach on hand.

That leads to the fourth coach in a 12-month span, the newly appointed Joleen Cross, who was hired on Wednesday. Cross played softball at Cal State Bakersfield and reportedly has spent six years coaching at lower levels. Additionally, Cross was already in the school district, working at Hilltop Elementary.

A year ago, Dave Cottle was a full-on lacrosse celebrity. The longtime University of Maryland head coach was in the middle of a stirring season for his team, with the Terps looking like prime contenders for another national title in the forthcoming NCAA tournament.

Maryland lacrosse coach Dave Cottle

The Terps made it to the tourney, but were stunned in the national quarterfinals by eventual NCAA runner-up Notre Dame, and Cottle resigned in late May after nine years leading one of the most powerful programs in college lacrosse. And that's why, when a high school coach from Maryland asked him for advice in fall 2010, he was happy to reach out, even offering to meet him over a steak.

According to the Washington Post, as a result of that meeting, Cottle -- who has since been named as the president of Major League Lacrosse's Chesapeake Bayhawks -- has served as a sort of unpaid consultant for St. John's (Md.) School's lacrosse program in 2011, watching and analyzing some of the team's game film of the sophomore and junior-stacked team's run to a surprising 8-3 record.

"Once we pushed the plates aside, it was all lacrosse," St. John's coach Danny Phillips told the Post. "We were drawing things on napkins and just going from there.

"Some of the stuff he was telling us at times was way over our heads, but he's a really good guy, and it's great to tap into some of his experience to help us."

After watching film of a St. John's fall scrimmage, Cottle was able to provide more specific feedback, all while emphasizing a zen-like long-run approach for the program.

"Lacrosse is a little bit like golf," Cottle told the Post. "Off that first tee you can slice it, hook it or hit it straight, but there's a lot of ways to end up where you want to be."

Suspensions in baseball are nothing new. They happen at every level, from the upper Little League realms to the big leagues. They also happen for almost every reason imaginable, from throwing at a batter, to using an illegal bat to -- occasionally -- a tense collision at the plate. Yet those suspensions rarely have the immediate consequences as the ones that were handed down to two South Carolina high school teams on April 13 and 14.

Dorman Boiling Springs baseball brawl

According to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Associated Press, a total of 23 players from Dorman (S.C.) High and Boiling Springs (S.C.) High were suspended for two games, with one Dorman player forced to sit out one game following a melee in the teams' faceoff on April 8. The fracas started with a collision at the plate, expanded when the benches cleared and eventually became a full-on brawl between the two teams.

After reviewing the incident from the game, the South Carolina High School League decided to ban 14 Boiling Springs players for two games, with eight Dorman players forced to sit out two games and one player suspended for a single game.

While those suspensions might not seem overly harsh, the timing of when they were handed down put a significant strain on the Boiling Springs program. By the time the Bulldogs received word of the SCHSL suspensions for 11 of its 14 affected players, they only had two games remaining in their season. With so many players forced to sit out the rest of the season, the program barely has enough remaining players to field a team for its final two matchups.

Amazingly, those suspensions might not be the end of the punishment facing the players involved in the brawl, either. Both schools' athletic directors told the Herald-Journal that the players could still face additional punishment from the league at a future date.

That statement has already proven prophetic once, with the SCHSL banning eight additional players a day after initial suspensions were handed to 14 athletes. The additional players were given bans after the SCHSL viewed a video of the collision at the plate and the mayhem that followed.