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WALLBURG - The road's a little wider now, and the little cafe's no longer on the corner at the top of the hill, but not much else has changed. The creeks still empty into bass ponds, and the seasons are still determined by the crops.

The corn grows tall here in rural Davidson County. The fields are tilled by hard-working men. This isn't a place for the meek and mild. This is fullback country.

This is where Brad Hoover of the Carolina Panthers played football. This is where Madison Hedgecock of the New York Giants played football.

Tonight, the two Ledford High School alums will play against each other in the biggest football game of the year in the NFL. Hoover, the bruising fullback out of Western Carolina, will be the lead blocker of what might be the best running offense in the league. Hedgecock, the battering-ram fullback out of North Carolina, will be the lead blocker of what might be the best running offense in the league.

Something has to give tonight, but it won't be either of the fullbacks. They've been texting each other the past couple of weeks, and both have been pointing to this game. But there's no trash talk. You don't talk trash in Wallburg.

"It's a big game," Hoover said this week. "We both know that."

So does everyone back in Davidson County where the two grew up and played football and return to when football season ends and the growing season begins. Hoover grew up over toward Thomasville, and Hedgecock over toward High Point, which is sort of how Wallburg is situated. The kids bus in from the tiny neighborhoods and farms scattered along Old 109 and converge at the school over off Jesse Green Road. Right smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

This is where they played and where their jerseys hang, Hoover's old No. 36 and Hedgecock's old No. 44.

"Imagine two NFL fullbacks from the same tiny high school," Hoover said.

They still tell the stories that go back to the days when Hoover played at Ledford and Hedgecock watched from the stands.

Hoover was older, so Hedgecock always looked up to him. Still does.

"I watched him my whole life," Hedgecock said the last time the two played each other.

They set school records that will likely not be touched, and they helped put this tiny place on the map. They give directions according to creeks and farms and backroads named for creeks and farmers. Away from the tiny crossroads, they're ambassadors of their high school and the surrounding countryside. Ask either one to describe the most famous sandwich in Wallburg, and neither hesitates.

"You mean the Panther Burger?" Hoover asked.

The little burger joint's gone now, but there was a time when every kid in the county knew where it was and what they served.

Hoover remembers it like it was yesterday.

"The biggest burger you'll ever see in your life," he said, holding his hands apart to describe the best burger in Wallburg. "I ate a million of 'em. I ate there for breakfast and lunch and after school."

As much as anything, the Panther Burger helped grow the two fullbacks who will play tonight in New York. They sprang from Dickie Cline's no-frills offense to become schoolboy legends. And they'll meet on a football field a long, long way from Wallburg tonight then talk about it the way they still talk about games against Central or Lexington or Union Pines, which decided to stop Hoover one night by designing the entire defense to defend the run. He still ran for more than 100 yards.

"I remember that game," he said in the Panthers' locker room this week. "I tell you what else I remember about that game. They had a guy who won Homecoming King, and he played in the marching band, and he played for the football team. Now that was a full night."

In small towns all over America, they have players like Hoover and Hedgecock. But they don't have both. Tonight, in a giant stadium in the shadow of the biggest and brightest town on earth, the two Ledford boys will play again on the same field with a nation of football fans watching. It will be a little bigger than the Union Pines game, but it will feel the same to the two fullbacks.

"People usually don't see what we do," Hedgecock said before playing in the Super Bowl last year. "They see the tailbacks run, but they don't realize the work put into to that, the blocking that made it happen."

Running teams are rare in the NFL these days, and blocking fullbacks opening 25 or 30 holes a game are even more rare. But it's just a day's work for two of the hardest working players in the NFL.

Just like back home.

This will be a full night for Wallburg, the home of Hoover and Hedgecock, the home of the Panther burger and the home of Ledford High School, right smack dab in the middle of fullback country.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com