VALDOSTA — Players still bang their helmets against the corrugated metal roof of the walkway outside the locker room before rushing onto the field here, the collective rumble like a storm coming up from the Gulf. An end-zone billboard continues to welcome visitors to Death Valley, a bold declaration of trouble ahead.

Those are props from another era.

“When we walked onto the field, you could look at the other kids and see the fear,” said Berke Holtzclaw, the quarterback for Valdosta High School’s 1984 state championship team.

While traditions endure, fortunes have changed at Valdosta, home of 23 state championships. The team has been named a national champion six times by various organizations and, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, is the country’s all-time winningest high school football program with a record of 850-200-34.

But the Wildcats lost their third coach in seven years after the school decided not to renew his contract days after a 57-15 loss to neighboring Lowndes last month. Valdosta’s 11,000-seat stadium, once packed for nearly every kickoff, has been two-thirds empty some game nights, even after a $7 million facelift in 2004. Despite eight playoff appearances in this decade, including

this year, Valdosta has not won a championship since 1998.

That is unacceptable in this quaint town of 48,000 near the Florida border.

The scene here now unspools like “Friday Night Lights” at a crossroad. Politics, race, a shifting population, competing camps of influence, and boosters who raise $100,000 a year and dissect game film every Monday night with the coach all play a part.

“There’s a bad vibe going on,” said Buck Belue, an Atlanta sports radio host and former Wildcat, who quarterbacked the University of Georgia’s 1980 national championship team. “It’ll take a special guy to come in here and get into the politics: who’s sitting on the school board, whether there should be a black coach or a white coach. It’s become a lot more complicated.”

The biggest complication, many team supporters say, is that people have fled the city for the suburbs. Since 1990, Lowndes County has added almost 30,000 residents, swelling its population to 100,000.

That has left Valdosta High, which is about 75 percent black, with fewer than 1,800 students. This year enrollment fell below the cutoff for 5A football, Georgia’s highest classification, but the school plans to remain at that level.

Lowndes High, not far from the city limits, has 1,000 more students, is predominantly white and has won four state titles since 1999. A number of its current stars developed in Valdosta youth leagues, then moved out of the city.

“Most of our friends’ kids go to Lowndes even though we all went to Valdosta,” said Robert DeCesare, a restaurant owner whose youngest son plays for a Lowndes County middle school. “Valdosta went from all-white to almost all-black. It’s sad the way some people talk about it.”

Winning at Valdosta used to be automatic. The Boys Club and middle school teams ran the same plays as the high school team, so Valdosta freshmen arrived with virtually the whole playbook in their heads. The roster was so deep, the fight song had to be played twice while the players ran onto the field.

“Playing for Valdosta on Friday night was as big as the dream got,” Belue said.