{"id":636,"date":"2024-02-17T10:45:45","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T10:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=636"},"modified":"2024-02-17T10:45:45","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T10:45:45","slug":"lone-star-listens-chad-s-conine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Listens: Chad S. Conine"},"content":{"rendered":"
From The Republic of Football: Left, Brownwood coach Gordon Wood (right) and assistant Kenneth West (left) discuss strategy with quarterback Marvin Rathke (15) during the 1981 playoffs. Wood retired following the 1985 season, having won a Texas-record 396 games and nine state championships. Texas Sports Hall of Fame photo. Right: Temple coach Bob McQueen raises his arms in victory. McQueen led the Wildcats to two state championships as they claimed the 4A crown in 1979 and the 5A Division II title in 1992. Texas Sports Hall of Fame photo.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/div>\n

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In every corner of the Lone Star State, high school football legends are told from generation to generation, sometimes these stories are only memorialized in an oral tradition. Fortunately, a new book by sports journalist<\/span> Chad S. Conine<\/span> has now recorded for history some of the biggest Texas high school football games and the role their coaches and players had in them. Chad spoke with us this week about the art of sportswriting and his <\/span>The Republic of Football: Legends of the Texas High School Game<\/em><\/a><\/strong> (University of Texas Press, 2016).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Chad, where did you grow up and how did that inform your writing later in life?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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CHAD S. CONINE<\/strong>: I grew up in Waco. My family moved to Waco from Lubbock when I was three years old. All of my grandparents and a lot of my extended family still lived in Lubbock, so we made the six-hour drive a lot (the speed limit was only fifty-five then). I was always really close with my grandparents, so being on the road to see them was exciting for me. Maybe that\u2019s why I spend so much time driving now. It always seems like it\u2019s going to be worth it. Driving to towns all over Texas has become a big part of my career as a sportswriter and it was a huge part of The Republic of Football<\/em>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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When did you know that you wanted to be a writer?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Probably by middle school. I think I read Friday Night Lights<\/em> in the eighth grade and I wanted to write a book like that. I already wanted to be a sportswriter by then, but that book inspired me. Now, twenty-five years later, I guess I finally did that. I don\u2019t want to compare The Republic of Football<\/span><\/em> to Friday Night Lights<\/span><\/em> too much because they\u2019re different in concept. And I definitely didn\u2019t set out saying \u201ctime to write my Friday Night Lights<\/span><\/em>.\u201d But it was a big deal to me (and a big part of the reason why I didn\u2019t love the movie and can\u2019t watch the TV show).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the first professional break you ever received?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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I\u2019m thankful that I have a lot to pick from here. I\u2019m going to go all the way back to freshman year of high school when my journalism teacher, Kathi Couch, asked me to write a story on the high school\u2019s new boys\u2019 basketball coach. That was the first thing I ever wrote as a journalist. Mrs. Couch knew I wanted to be a sportswriter and gave me that opportunity. The next year, I was the sports editor for the school paper and I\u2019ve been doing it ever since. Kathi Couch died last fall, but I\u2019m friends with her daughter and she gave me a heads up that her mom\u2019s health wasn\u2019t good. I had the chance to go see her during the summer and tell her about my project and how much of an impact she had on me as a journalist.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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What made you decide to capture the legends of Texas High School Football with The Republic of Football<\/em>?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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That\u2019s something that really built on itself. After I interviewed Art Briles at Baylor for the first chapter that I wrote, I went to Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech and then Dat Nguyen and LaDainian Tomlinson. I set out to tell fifty high school football stories from fifty Texas towns (I only got to forty-one, for now). So the idea of legends wasn\u2019t necessarily the goal. But having started with prominent figures, that opened the door to continue speaking with people who had achieved big-time fame in football. The thing is, and I think I was lucky here, all of the football stars I spoke with had great, impactful stories to tell about their high school days. That\u2019s not a mutually inclusive deal. I think some of the guys that ended up turning me down did so because they didn\u2019t have as compelling of high school stories to tell.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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For our readers who haven\u2019t read The Republic of Football<\/em>, will you describe the book for them?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s forty-one chapters, each chapter on a different town in Texas. So it\u2019s an anthology. It\u2019s in chronological order, with a couple of tweaks in order to book-end the book the way I thought worked best. So the second chapter is about Hayden Fry\u2019s 1946 Odessa Bronchos team and the 39th chapter is about the great Aledo teams that featured Johnathan Gray from 2008 to 2011. Geographically, the book goes from White Deer in the Panhandle to Corpus Christi, and from Odessa out west to West Orange\u2013Stark near the Louisiana border.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the most memorable high school football game you ever attended?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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That\u2019s a loaded question. A couple of the most memorable games I\u2019ve covered as a sportswriter also include the memory of being screamed at by a coach after the game. So it\u2019s kind of difficult for me to succinctly describe those games. But that illustrates the passion involved. There\u2019s one game in the book, and only one, where I actually covered it for the newspaper and then later wrote about it for The Republic of Football.<\/em> It was pretty awesome, but I\u2019ll leave it for interested readers to get to that one themselves. I know that\u2019s kind of a non-answer. How about this: Waco Midway versus Highland Park in Corsicana, Thanksgiving weekend, 2008. Midway won, 41-36.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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How has sportswriting changed since you started in the business (even though you are only in your thirties, it\u2019s been a dynamic couple of decades)?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Well, I could write 5,000 words on this topic without breaking a sweat. I\u2019ll try to keep it simple. The media companies that own newspapers by the dozens have made it very difficult to be a sportswriter (and newspaper journalist in general). So most of my friends that I worked with at newspapers in the late \u201990s and early 2000s do something related, but no longer work for newspapers. My friends who still do it (and even the ones who have gone to work for other non-newspaper entities) do it (or did it) because they\u2019re passionate about the work. That\u2019s the only reason.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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And now that I\u2019ve written that, I realize it doesn\u2019t quite answer the question (but I can\u2019t bring myself to delete it and start over). So I\u2019ll add that blogs and social media have made it so sportswriters have to be more versatile and web-savvy. But they\u2019ve done that. I have a friend who used to type URLs into a Yahoo search window because that\u2019s how he knew how to use the Internet. And now he\u2019s an expert tweeter. So sportswriters have kept pace with new media, but that sports staffs at newspaper are still much smaller than they were when I started. [sic]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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You call Waco home. What made you choose Waco as a home base?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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There are some good logistical reasons. As a freelancer, it\u2019s good to be able to get to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, Bryan\u2013College Station, etc., pretty easily. I bought a house here in 2008 when I still worked for the Waco Tribune-Herald<\/span><\/em> and thanks to Fixer-Upper<\/span><\/em> that seems like a dang good investment. But mostly I just like it here. I\u2019ve long since learned how to be a Red Raider living amongst the dancing Bears.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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What advice do you have for aspiring sportswriters?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Start by covering high school sports. In Texas, that\u2019s easy because people care so much about not only football, but basketball, soccer, baseball, softball, you name it. The coaches are used to having reporters talk to them, so they\u2019re understanding. But the other side of it is that at high school games, you have to keep your own stats and fend for yourself in a lot of different ways. So when you go from that to college and pro games when they provide stats and hold postgame press conferences, it\u2019s so much easier. It\u2019s the opposite of riding a bike. It\u2019s as if you learned how to ride a bike and then put on the training wheels.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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In closing \u2014 my most important question for you! What\u2019s the best high school football stadium food in Texas?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Oh, man, the most important question and I\u2019m going to fail at it. You see, most of the time when I go to cover a game, they have food in the press box. So I can tell you that Gatesville wins the prize for best press box food on the planet. All I can offer for fans, and this is kind of obvious, is this: don\u2019t get a burger unless you can see the person grilling them. A sausage wrap is always your best bet.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Praise for Chad S. Conine\u2019s The Republic of Football:<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is a wonderful, well-written book, full of compelling details and stories. A \u2018must read\u2019 for any Texas football fan.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u2014Dave Campbell, Dave Campbell\u2019s Texas Football<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cAn incredible collection of accounts of legendary Texas high school football programs. If you like Texas high school football, you will love Chad Conine\u2019s book\u2014well written and full of great stories and memories.\u201d \u2014Graham Harrell, Texas High School Football Hall of Fame inductee and former Ennis High School and Texas Tech University quarterback<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cFor the devotee of Texas high school football, everything is here\u2014legendary coaches and celebrated players, colorful history, high Friday night drama, and solid, thoughtful insight into the role the game has played in Texas culture. In virtually every chapter the reader is introduced to a young player who, in later years, became a household name in sports.\u201d \u2014Carlton Stowers, author of Where Dreams Die Hard: A Small American Town and Its Six-Man Football Team and Staubach: Portrait of the Brightest Star<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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