Mac Engel is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Since 1998, he has covered the Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars, and Dallas Cowboys as well as colleges, high schools, and the Olympics. His Big Mac Blog was named the best blog in Texas by the Associated Press in 2012.

Ron Jenkins specializes in sports, covering the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, and Dallas Mavericks as well as NCAA, high school, and everything in between. His photos have been published all over the world, including in French sports magazine L’Equipe, premier German magazine Stern, and the USA’s Sports Illustrated.

TEXAS SPORTS

Mac Engel, with photographs by Ron Jenkins  and foreword by Troy Aikman

Pigskin Rapture: Four Days in the Life of Texas Football

Lone Star Books

Hardcover, 978-1630762414, 240 pages

August 26, 2016

Reviewed by Carlton Stowers

For those non-fiction book authors who routinely endure the commitment of spending months, even years, researching their subject, the ambitious  plan of writer Mac Engel and photographer Ron Jenkins might have seemed high-wire folly. Over a four-day span — a 96 hour marathon of fact- and photo-gathering — they set out to explore the deep-seated devotion Texans have for the game of football.

Sparing you the O. Henry ending, be aware they pulled it off with their Pigskin Rapture: Four Days in the Life of Texas Football (Lone Star Books, $26).

In crisply written words and stunning color photos, the dedicated travelers began their hurry-up odyssey in Houston, where they chronicled the excitement of a Thursday night NFL game matching the Houston Texans and the Indianapolis Colts; hurried from the congested urban setting out to West Texas for a Friday night grudge match between high school rivals Midland Lee and Odessa Permian; quickly drove up Interstate 20 to be on hand for a 11 a.m. Saturday kickoff in the Cotton Bowl, where the annual Texas-Oklahoma game would be played; then wrapped things up Sunday in the gaudy Arlington home of the Dallas Cowboys, where the New England Patriots were visiting.

Pigskin Rapture is unique not only in its concept, but in the fact its words and pictures move it beyond being just another love song to the game. What Engel and Jenkins have teamed to do is invite the reader along on an adventure that is part travel tale and part examination of the people and places they visited along the way. In a sense, the results of the games take a backseat to the colorful people encountered (from a homeless, crack-addicted man who spends his lonely night sleeping on the edge of a high school practice field to a young Australian woman who traveled to Dallas and earned a place on the celebrated Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders squad without having ever seen an American football game.)

On each visit, the reader is offered a sampling of the region’s history, from the glory days of Houston’s now-deserted Astrodome and the stark contrast between its upper and lower class communities, the oil and gas ups-and-downs of Midland-Odessa economy, from the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, and the evolution of the Tom Landry Cowboys to the glitter of JerryWorld.

The book is a keen exploration of the psyche of the game and its ardent following, from bygone days to modern times.

Of the four stops chronicled, the most engaging focuses on the buildup to the Lee-Permian game, which provides Engel the opportunity to look at the changes in Odessa during the quarter century that has passed since Buzz Bissinger’s controversial Friday Night Lights, a book on Permian football, became a national bestseller and angered an entire community.

Engel, a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Dallas’ Jenkins, whose photos have been published worldwide, take the reader of a fun-filled journey that captures the heart and soul of Texas football. Just as they did it.

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