(The following is from ‘Pigskin Rapture: Four Days in the Life of Texas Football’ by Mac Engel. This excerpt is the introduction to last year’s high school rivalry between two neighboring towns, Midland and Odessa).
Midland-Odessa
Before the Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Texans, Houston Oilers, or Houston Texans, the roots of football in Texas are in the kids who play the game and support the system that makes it all possible. Because of the state’s population and single-minded focus on one sport, high school football in Texas is bigger than in any other state, including Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania.
Media outlets cover high school football in Texas like it’s the NFL or the Texas Longhorns. Communities spend millions of dollars to build palaces to watch high school games. Fall schedules are built entirely around a ten-game high school football regular season. Texas high school football is a lifestyle that affects legions of citizens, from the players to the band members and cheerleaders, from the trainers and coaches to the teachers, boosters, and fans.
There are 1,064 public high schools that play eleven-man football, and an addi- tional 138 that play six-man football. All of that adds up to more than 166,000 students playing high school football, and more than 121,000 in the marching band. These figures do not include the private schools or the growing number of charter schools that play football, either.
Basically, if you live in Texas, you’re either playing football or watching it.
Reprinted with permission of Lone Star Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. Copyright 2016 by Mac Engel. All rights reserved.
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