TEXAS SPORTS
Jeff Fisher
High School Football in Texas: Amazing Football Stories from the Greatest Players of Texas
Sports Publishing
Hardcover, 978-1-6835-8181-9, (also available as an e-book), 256 pgs., $19.99
September 4, 2018
Reviewed by Si Dunn
If you’re new to Texas, it won’t take you long to understand that high school football games are a statewide religion, as well as a billion-dollar-plus industry.
On fall Friday nights, stadium lights snap on across the Lone Star State. Bleachers fill, often to overflowing. And opposing teams charge onto the fields with much more at stake than winning their game or getting dates with cheerleaders.
As Jeff Fisher’s enjoyable new book, High School Football in Texas: Amazing Football Stories from the Greatest Players of Texas, makes clear, many high-school players suit up also for the slim chance that they will get recruited by top-rated university teams and later drafted to play for professional teams in the National Football League.
Meanwhile, having a winning high-school football team is considered vital to the reputation and “bragging rights” of many Texas cities and towns, Fisher points out. Individual schools in the big metropolitan areas now build multimillion-dollar football stadiums that can seat tens of thousands of fans. In small, rural county seats, the home team’s ups and downs are the subject of countless conversations on the town square or in local cafes and barbershops, and even at church.
“Bottom line, the numbers don’t lie: high school football in Texas is a BIG deal,” Fisher emphasizes. “Underneath the numbers are hundreds of thousands of stories that Texas football fans love to tell and re-tell about their homegrown players who have gone on to play Sundays on the big stage.”
He writes that “[b]ecause of the giant media microscope that NFLers play under, fans generally know the professional side of Texas’ native sons.” They likely also know a bit about their college playing days. But fans may not know the stories of how the Texans first began playing high school football and how they grew from underwhelming bench-sitters to on-the-field standouts.
For his new book, Fisher has conducted firsthand interviews with several of the biggest Texas names in the world of professional football, including Drew Brees, “Mean” Joe Greene, Bob Lilly, Earl Campbell, the still-controversial “Johnny Football,” Johnny Manziel, and others. They reflect on their high school coaches, teammates, and games, and discuss choices that helped them achieve early stardom. Players who became well-respected high school coaches, such as Todd Dodge, also are interviewed.
Fisher points out that “high school football is played in every state, plus the District of Columbia….” And Texas, he contends, “is the center of the universe for the sport.”
Gridiron fans both in the Lone Star State and outside the state’s borders should find much to enjoy in High School Football in Texas.
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