Having lived in Texas for my \”formative\” years, I know that it\’s really a county unto itself…so much so that a pretty large percentage of Texans want to secede from the Union. It\’s unique in many ways and high school football is no exception. Maybe it\’s the history of the State or the love of grandness within the people but everything in Texas is bigger than life and Friday Night Football might be the biggest. Let\’s take a look at Texas football and see what the United States of Texas thinks about prep football.

When I was really young, I remember going out to my great grand father\’s house for Christmas in Grand Saline. It was a few days of shooting bb guns, messing around his clothing store \”downtown\” (for a town of about 2000 people, and listening to my uncle\’s stories fo childhood mayhem. With 3 UT Austin alums as uncles, it wasn\’t long before my Christmas present was a full longhorn football uniform, helmet, pads, and everything. I must have been about 6 or 7. Thinking back, it\’s funny they even had a full college football uniform in that size. There\’s a gratifying sickness just in that fact. It was oversized and brand new but it quickly led to one of many sessions tossing the football around in the front yard while visiting with the uncles. I was being welcomed into a large and growing community of Texas football lovers in the traditional way…throwing the ball around the yard with the family.

Football in Texas may start innocently enough but it definitely ramps up into a fervor by the time you get to high school. At that point it\’s no longer a game and become almost tribal in terms of passion. There\’s lots of little town in Texas spread out across a huge open landscape. When we drove from California to Ft. Worth, hitting the Texas border was just half way there. It\’s big and peppered with lots of little town with funny games. If you go to any of those towns in the fall, there\’s one thing on everybody\’s mind besides the circus that is the Dallas Cowboys…high school football. Who\’s looking good this year, which Quarterback\’s name is ringing out. All the neighborhood kids and how they\’re feeling about the season or this Friday\’s big game. I still see swinging benches on big wooden porches in that incredible Texas heat as the back and forth patter of Texas high school football debates play out.

Texans get serious about their football. You can find schools that have astroturf for their football fields and the games are just short of the 4th of July in spectacle even for the away games. The whole community rallies around it\’s high school football team. Why Texas? Each state has it\’s own fervor and foment about high school football but why does Texas stand out alone. After all, I\’m not writing about Montana football or even California high school football although the latter is pretty impressive. That\’s a good question and I don\’t have an exact answer. There\’s something about the game that just speaks to Texans. Maybe it\’s a fierce sense of competition or a ruggedness that the game requires and the Texans respect. It might even be the sense of tradition that exists in the state. Either way, no State where\’s the banner of football bettar than the Lone Star.

Author Bio: Dennis Jarvis writes about the world of Prep Sports including high school sports such as high school football, basketball, and baseball.

Category: Sports
Keywords: texas high school football, texas football, texas prep football, texas high school sports