The EconomistDecember 14th 2019 United States 33A
n hour beforegame-time, the vast parking lot outside the
McKinney Independent School district stadium was almost
full. But there was no end to the cars and trucks queuing outside it.
They were backed up along the three-lane highway from Dallas—
with the green flag of the Southlake Carroll Dragons hanging limp-
ly from the windows of many of the bigger, plusher ones. A smaller
number displayed the purple of the Duncanville Panthers.
Representing one of the richest towns in the Dallas-Forth
Worth area, the Dragons were reckoned to be one of the best high-
school football teams in Texas. The Panthers, representing one of
the poorest towns, might be the best in America. Both had ended
the regular season unbeaten, 13-0. The quarter-final of the Texas
State Championship, a high-school contest followed as avidly as
almost any professional league, promised to be an epic encounter.
It was a pity, tailgaters in the parking lot agreed, that the game
had been shunted from the Dallas Cowboys’ 100,000-seat stadium.
Not that the McKinney facility was too shabby for schoolboys. A
spanking new 12,000-seater, with a verdant turf pitch and 55-foot
jumbotron, it had cost the local school board $70m. That was
slightly more than the 18,000-seat palace in neighbouring Allen
district had cost—which was no coincidence. Whereas the most
athletic Texan youths pour their competitive spirit into football,
Texan school administrators put theirs into building big stadiums.
Local media call this the “schools’ stadium arms race”. The McKin-
ney one, though bigger and more opulent than almost any high
school facility outside America, is the 32nd-biggest in Texas. To-
gether the state’s high-school stadiums can seat over 4.3m people.
Sure enough, when the game began there was standing room
only on the Dragons’ side of the stadium, and few empty seats on
the Panthers’ side. This promised match-day revenue of around
$130,000 (not counting advertising). It also made for a lot of noise.
As the Dragons’ 60-strong squad ran out in their jade green shirts
and black breeches, their half of the stadium erupted, egged on by
over 400 cavorting cheerleaders and marching bandsmen. What
the Panthers’ supporters lacked in numbers by comparison, they
made up for with raucous confidence. Their best players, such as
quarterback Ja’Quinden Jackson, are already household names in
Texas. Even fans with little connection to the school shouted their
names. Compared with the National Football League, said some
amid the clamour, a big high-school game like this “was so much
better”, “more enjoyable”, “more important”.
Nothing in American sport is quirkier than this fervour for
high-school football. Even an average Texan school team draws a
couple of thousand spectators, and the best—such as Permian
High School, subject of H.G. Bissinger’s bestselling “Friday Night
Lights”—are fabled. “It’s just a Texas thing, how it’s bred here,” said
a man wearing a green Santa hat from the Dragons’ online store.
Yet the occasion also offered clues to what sustains this tradi-
tion. Above all, a yearning for local communion and champions
that America’s hyper-commercialised franchises cannot satisfy.
The Dallas Cowboys, perhaps the most popular team in the coun-
try, are godlike in their remoteness. For a poor town like Duncan-
ville, by contrast, the school team is the main repository of youth-
ful hope, parental pride and a general fear of anonymity. “You gotta
support your neighbourhood, that’s what makes this better than
thenfl,” said a Panthers’ fan gripped by his team’s strong start, in-
cluding two touchdowns—one thrown, one run—for Jackson.
Such passions are matched by the quasi-professional intensity
of the Duncanville school’s football programme. Its 270 players
practise for a couple of hours a day, year-round. Weightlifting and
fitness work consume additional hours—and calories. The school
provides its footballers, almost half of whom are from poor fam-
ilies, with nutritious food, rides to school and extra tutoring.
(When Lexington asked Jackson how much of each day he spent on
football—to the young star’s surprise, as tvcrews and sports re-
porters crowded around him—he said: “Most of it, actually...”)
Such intensity encourages more dubious practices than out-
sized stadiums. Illicit recruitment of athletes from neighbouring
school districts is said to be rife. Yet the resulting excellence is as-
tonishing. Teams like the Dragons and Panthers rarely drop a rou-
tine pass. And to see players such as Jackson run with the ball is
alone worth the ticket money. One of the fastest athletes in Ameri-
ca, he completed a thrilling 49-35 victory for the Panthers with a to-
tal of 312 yards and five touchdowns. In all, around a quarter of the
Duncanville team can expect to win a college football scholarship.
That represents a potentially life-changing opportunity. “Their
future is really structured around how well they do in sport,” said
the Panthers’ revered coach, Reginald Samples. “We don’t shoot for
pro football, we shoot for careers—you know, being good people
who are able to get a professional job and look after their families.”The Friday-night plight
Among Panthers fans, an appreciation of how high the stakes are
for the players is part of the drama. “They’re trying to make it,” said
one, when asked to explain his enthusiasm. Inevitably, too, an
awareness that their opponents at the McKinney stadium had a
wider array of options was another element. The Panthers were
mostly black with a few Hispanics; the Dragons were whiter than a
Republican-rally crowd. Accentuating the contrast, they had also
dyed their hair blonde for the play-offs—they looked like a Viking
horde. Asked during the game whether such a stark racial division
added spice to the contest, one Panther nodded: “It surely does.”
How could it not? For all its great unifying power—the shared
hopes and sorrows that flow through it—popular sport always re-
flects a society’s frictions and imbalances. And the more engross-
ing the sporting spectacle, the more powerful is that sociopolitical
one. Top high-school football, a relentless quest for excellence
mottled by local circumstances, is in this sense sport at its best. 7Lexington In praise of high-school football
Best known for gargantuan stadiums and other excesses, high-school football in Texas is sport distilled