Texas HS Football

I grew up in Michigan and went to coach at a college in Texas after I graduated college. I was only there for a year, but met a lot of people who had been in Texas their whole lives and learned a lot about how it is down there.

The culture is definitely how it appears from a distance, but that has its pros and cons. The passion for football dwarfs anything you’ll see in Michigan which is fun and exciting, but the other side of that coin is the pressure to win which leads to transient lives for families and working hours in par with college programs.

I still feel a sense of nostalgia about Texas football and wish i had the opportunity to experience it for more than one year, but I was also a single 23 year old at the time. I don’t see how I could commit to that level of grind and still be the husband that my wife needs me to be, which is the same reason I left college ball in the first place.

I live in NC now, and while I still feel like I’m never home in the summer and fall, I’m not working the 100 hour weeks that I did before. I struggle sometimes knowing that I’m in a state that largely doesn’t care very much about football, but I’m at a point in my life now where I care more about being there for my wife and future kids than I do about chasing the grind. My wife is from here and I don’t see us ever leaving for anywhere other than maybe going back to Michigan some day.

I know I kinda derailed the topic, but I wanted to make sure I emphasized that the grass isn’t always greener.

born and raised in texas. played in hs and coached nearly all of my 34 year career in it, with 2 years after i retired in nm to double dip.
the following may not be true everywhere, but was true in my experience.

i don't really know what it's like in other states, although i can tell you that it's night and day different than nm.
schools in texas have a program from the bottom up. the jh does what the hs does. in districts with only one school, the little league teams run what the local hs runs. nearly every school has a s/c program that runs the entire school year, and the weight room is open in the summer with suggested workouts. the UIL, which governs hs fb, does not allow you to require kids to workout in the summer, but many kids do so anyway.

none of that was true in nm. i had to install a s/c program, with agility/running drills/speed work, because the kids there had no running form, did not know how to handle their bodies, change direction, etc.....
they had no weight program. in essence, they were slow, weak, and had no technique in running, playing their positions, and didn't really have an understanding of how to play. it was like coaching in jh.

in most places in texas, if you don't win enough to keep the locals happy, you wont be there long.
plus you have the normal local politics.
i was not a hc in texas, but was a varsity dc for 20-25 or so years (i forget exactly) of my 32 years in the state. i coached in 11 different schools - with 23 of those years in 3 different schools (8, 7, and 8 years; that's usually about as long as you can stay anywhere). the rest were mostly 1 year stops. some of that was my choice; the job isn't always what you think it will be when you accept.
there are occasionally schools that keep a head coach for most of their career, but they are few and far between.

if you really want to stay in one town, it's best to be a jh coach. they are usually left alone, although a new incoming head coach can get rid of them (but usually doesn't). as a hs asst, school boards may not fire you, but they may have a new head coach be the bad guy. sometimes that is a condition of taking the job. however, cleaning out most or all of the hs staff isn't that unusual. you can only get a 1 year contract; head coaches can get a 2-year contract.

i've heard of tenure, but it doesn't exist in texas. there's also no union, although there are teacher's associations that represent teacher's interests and push for things with the texas legislature.

you usually can't stay as a teacher if a new head coach doesn't want you, because that takes up a spot for a coach. so in most schools, that teaching job is tied to your coaching job.

the head fb coach is usually the athletic director, and doesn't have to teach classes. he is an administrator.
i should probably mention that coaches have to be school employees, so you have to teach. in nm (and some other states, i believe) you can work somewhere else and coach.

it is extremely competitive. when i retired, there were 5 classes of schools, A thru 5A, with approximately 300 schools per class. it takes 6 playoff games to win a state championship.
there is now a 6A class. class A is 6-man only schools, with AA and above being the 11-man schools.

there is a state base pay based on years experience. schools can pay more, but cannot pay less than. areas with large tax bases pay more to attract people. pay is generally higher in the large cities. east texas small schools usually pay state base or a little more unless they have a large industry of some sort in the district.
west texas oilfield schools generally pay a lot more than other schools; partially because the desert of west texas doesn't attract people, but mostly because the tax base is so much larger, they can afford it.
 
coaching fb in texas can be very tough on families. it was on mine.

not sure exactly what you wanted to know, but that's a brief overview.

the school i was raised in was a A or AA school at the time (late 60's; they changed the classification system somewhere around that time).
at that time (pretty successful program) they averaged crowds of about 1500-2000.
the population of the town was around that.

had one game - last game of the season, to determine the district champ. i forget exactly, but i believe we were ranked 2nd in the state, playing the 3rd ranked team in the state, they had to move bleachers in for that game. the crowd for that one was about 9000 people.