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I played for a smaller 3A team (Allen and The Dragons I think are 5A) in Texas in 69’ and 70’. Only one time did we play for a crowd smaller than 5000. Our ISD has revenue from oil wells. As a matter of fact, they ended up slant drilling a well right underneath the football field.

This is why high school football is so popular in Texas. It was one of the few forms of entertainment available in oilfield towns and camps in the early 20th century. Hundreds or thousands of people would appear overnight in some desolate, remote spot, a hundred miles from any form of civilization, for the purpose of working in the oilfields. There were no movies, television or video games. All the other forms of entertainment (drinking and carousing with shady ladies) were mostly off-limits for families, so the family men played football. There may have been 20 different languages spoken in the oilfield camp, but everybody seemed to like and understand football. It was often the only thing many of these workers had in common with each other, other than the fact that they were out in the middle of nowhere, doing a hot, dirty and hazardous job. Many of these oilfield camps would form teams, and they would compete with teams from other boom towns.

Of course, many of these oilfield towns would eventually die almost as quickly as they had arisen. But the towns that survived long enough to establish schools would set up a football program as soon as they had laid the cornerstone of the school building. Friday nights in the fall became the centerpiece of the local entertainment calendar because, as much as any other reason, the local high school team gave their town a sense of community. Football, being the one thing everybody in town agreed that they liked, brought the whole town together, just as football had fostered a sense of community back when the town was an oilfield camp. Johnny's dad may have been suing Mark's dad over a business deal gone bad, and the two adults may have actively sought to avoid any social interaction with each other lest they come to blows. Yet there would be Johnny's dad and Mark's dad sitting next to each other in the stadium on a cool autumn Friday night, cheering on their sons as they played the game.

So, the simple answer to the question, "Why is high school football king in Texas?" is that the sport has, since its inception, been a part of who we as Texans are. It is part of our culture, for better or worse.

And it all goes back to what our great-grandfathers did to pass the time when they weren't laboring in the oilpatch.