December 9, 2005

Friday Night Slights

Lawmaker Takes Aim at Texas High School Rules that put Signs on Stadiums Saying Access Denied

By Mike Hailey

State Rep. Dan Branch missed the game the last time the Highland Park Scots played for the state high school football championship. Branch had no choice at the time because he wasn't born until four months after Highland Park beat Port Arthur to win the 4A crown in 1957.

When Branch was a student at San Antonio MacArthur, the Brahmas made the playoffs once and were trounced by the Robert E. Lee Volunteers in the second round. Had Branch lived on the other side of San Pedro Avenue, he would've gone to Churchill, which won state in football the year after he graduated.

So the Dallas Republican who represents Highland Park in the Texas House can relate when constituents in his district talk about how long they've waited to see the team play for a chance to win the state crown in a state where several movies have been made about high school football and the passion that so many Texans have for the sport. On Saturday in Tyler, about 14,000 people will get to see Highland Park mix it up against the Marshall Mavericks in the Class 4A Division one state title game. The bad news is that about 7,000 or 8,000 Highland Park students, parents and other fans won't be able to get into the game because Trinity Mother Frances Rose Stadium isn't big enough to hold them all.

Branch the former Brahma thinks that's a lot of bull - and he's dead right about that. You're messing with Texas when you tell high school football fans that they can't go see their team in the state finals in football at a time of the year when we all should be joining hands and singing Joy to the World. So Branch decided Friday to do something to try to fix this situation for the state champs of the future instead of simply complaining about the current mess.

Branch announced that he planned to initiate an investigation into the site selection process used by the University Interscholastic League to determine where public high school football playoff games are going to be played. He has the ability to do that as a House Public Education Committee member who was named recently as chairman of a Subcommittee on Resource Allocation and Budgeting. Branch plans to hold hearings and have his panel make recommendations on legislation to the full committee.

“In a state that's famous for its 'Friday Night Lights,' has an abundance of large college and professional sports venues and is desperately seeking more revenues for education, it’s outrageous that a state final game is being played in a stadium so small that it denies access to thousands of fans, families and friends,” the second-term Republican lawmaker said.

In the movie Friday Night Lights with Billy Bob Thornton as the Odessa Permian football coach and Tim McGraw as the football-obsessed parent, the Mojo played for all the marbles against Dallas Carter in the Astrodome. That was in about 1989 - and neither team or the fans seemed to mind going all the way to Houston for the biggest game of their lives. You could dismiss that as typical Hollywood feel-good screenwriter, but the team that most people watching the movie were pulling for lost the big game at the end of the film.

As recently as last week the Division 3 state championship for the Texas Private and Parochial Schools league (TAPPS) was settled in a game in Waco between Plano Prestonwood and Houston Northland Christian at Baylor University's Floyd Casey Stadium, which can hold crowds of 50,000 or so. Those teams play for schools that are the same size as public schools in the UIL's 2A division. Highland Park, a school that's three times bigger in terms of student population, is playing for state this weekend in a stadium that's four times smaller than the host site of the TAPPS game last week. The fans from Highland Park say they could easily fill up all 14,000 seats at the Tyler stadium if no one showed up to root for Marshall.

The Southlake Carroll Dragons are in the same situation this weekend with their 5A Division 2 semi-finals game against Lufkin scheduled to be played at the Homer Bryce Stadium on at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Southlake Carroll played before 35,000 at their game against Plano last week in Texas Stadium. The place they play Saturday has less than 15,000 seats. Some Dragons fans will drive clear out to East Texas and be lucky to get a place in the standing-room only section to see their team play for its third state championship in the past four years. That's the kind of penalty that Southlake Carroll and Highland Park fans face for losing coin flips.

The UIL's rules allow superintendents to throw a coin in the air and call heads or tails when they can't agree on a neutral location for their playoff games. Needless to say, Lufkin and Marshall won that phase of their respective state finals games already.

Branch doesn't have a beef with Marshall school officials for wanting to play somewhere within a reasonable distance from their own home area. He might not be about to investigate if the Highland Park fans were having to go all the way to the AlamoDome in San Antonio or Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans of the National Football League, or any venue where his constituents could go and yell and scream and try to cheer their team to victory. The problem Branch has is with a UIL process that's ripe for problems such as this.

Coin flips are fine to see which teams will kick off first, but Branch and others think there has to be a better way when thousands of Texans are barred from enjoying a rare and exciting moment that they would have always remembered - win or lose on the field.

The Dallas high school teams that will play for state in East Texas this weekend have so many fans because they're so good. Southlake Carroll is ranked as the number one team in the nation by MaxPreps, which has Highland Park rated as the 12th best team in America going into the game against the Mavs. Euless Trinity, Plano and Smithson Valley are the other Texas teams ranked in the top 10.

The state's top coaches association has opposed abandoning the coin flip because that's giving up control. But now the fans have Branch on their side - and it will be tough to argue with his position on the issue when his committees goes on offense.

Mike Hailey's column appears regularly in Capitol Inside.