TEXAS SPORTS
Chad S. Conine
The Republic of Football: Legends of the Texas High School Game
University of Texas Press
Hardcover, 978-1477303719 (also available as an ebook), 288 pgs., $24.95
September 6, 2016
Reviewed by François Pointeau
A sportswriter since the late 1990s, Chad S. Conine has written a history of Texas high school football spanning seventy years, sharing stories of hard work, tough love, and Texas communities through interviews with famous coaches and players, as well as their families and fans. Walking us through each decisive winning and losing play, he recounts some of the most memorable games of the last few decades.
Conine tells the early stories of such football heroes as LaDainian Tomlinson, running back with the San Diego Chargers, who started his career at Waco University High School; Drew Brees, quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, who played at Westlake High School in Austin; and Dat Nyugen, linebacker with the Dallas Cowboys, who began his career at Rockport-Fulton High School.
These are just three of the many football superstars who have come out of the Texas high school system. However, high school football is much more than that. It’s about community building, communities coming together—sometimes in spite of themselves—to cheer their native sons. This point is driven home in the story of the first integrated high school to win the state championship in 1969.
“If it were a movie, we would swear we had seen the scene before,” Conine writes. “It begins with a panning shot of a 1960s-era gym, chock-full of white country boys . . . . In walks the coach, giving the grand tour to four black kids, and everyone freezes in place. . . . But it wasn’t a movie.” This scene was described to Conine by Bob McQueen and former players of the Mexia Blackcats. Ray Rhodes, one of those four black boys that historic day at Mexia High School, went on to play seven seasons in the NFL, and then coached in the NFL for more than thirty years.
This book might just become required reading in high school football programs. More important than detailing winning plays and strategies, The Republic of Footballdemonstrates that every winning team wins because they’re a team. The individual might be great, but he cannot win unless he’s part of a great team.
Conine writes so expertly, yet viscerally, it’s as if you’re sitting in the bleachers, screaming your lungs out for your team, experiencing the action firsthand. Conine knows his stuff, he knows the game, and he knows how to talk about it.
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