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When the Cordova Blue Devils show up under Friday Night Lights, Mike Harbison is there.

In 2025, the team will celebrate its 100th year of playing football. Harbison hasn’t missed a game for the past 62 of those seasons. And, despite suffering a stroke in May, rehab is going well and he plans to be there when the Devils host Oakman at Hudson-Kerby Field on Aug. 21.

“I was 6 years old the last time I didn’t go to a Cordova game, at Curry,” said the 68-year-old Harbison, who once kept his streak alive by watching a game from his car while nursing a case of COVID. “I came in and told my mother I had a fever. Daddy came home and got ready to go and said you don’t need to go. I can’t remember not going, really. I know Daddy always went and I always said, ‘Dad, can I go?’

“It was just a part of life.”

Harbison’s father, Charles, was a former CHS halfback and longtime youth football coach in the Walker County town. The high school coaches were always friends of the family, who came over to “eat with us, play badminton, whatever we were doing,” he said. As a youngster, Harbison would accompany his father to Quarterback Club meetings where the head coach would show game film – and answer to sometimes disappointed boosters.

When Harbison hit the eighth grade – he worked games handling the coaches’ headsets, which were wired to the press box in those days.

From 1972-74, Harbison was on the field as a player. After a state runner-up sophomore season in mostly backup duty as a defensive back, the 5-foot-6, 128-pounder went to coach Charlie Brown seeking a change so he could see more action. “As a 10th grader, I felt that I never did anything,” he said. “I just guarded anybody out there, but teams very seldom threw the ball back then. I went to Coach and told him I’d like to play linebacker. He said, ‘You ain’t going to be big enough.’ I told him to at least give me a shot in spring practice and if I couldn’t do it, I’d do something else. A couple days later, he said, ‘I’m going to give you a shot.’”

Harbison started at inside linebacker for his final two seasons. “One-twenty-eight was the most I ever weighed,” he said. “I’d lose 6-8 pounds every game. I knew how to protect myself by then, I think. I knew what football was and how to handle myself.”

After his playing days were over, Harbison continued to contribute to the team. For several years, he was a volunteer assistant coach – starting under Brian Maner in the 1990s, who is now in his third stint as Cordova’s head coach.

“It was a really fun time for me, especially that state championship season (1995),” said Harbison, who worked for 33 years in the concrete pipe business. “On Sundays, I’d go to church and go down there and stay from 12 until about 4:30, then go back to church and go back after that and we’d stay until, I guess, 10:30 or 11 breaking down film.”

The Harbison family is blueblood Blue Devil: His wife, Cathy, was a Cordova cheerleader. Oldest daughter, Kelley, was drum major for the band and youngest, Katie, was a cheerleader.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story first debuted in the Thursday high school sports newsletter. Some of these stories will be exclusives in the newsletter. To subscribe, go to al.com/newsletters.