It’s common knowledge that Texans are crazy about football, a passion that seeps into seemingly every pore of a community at the high school level. How this looked in at least one town – Permian – was famously chronicled in the bestselling book that was later turned into a movie, “Friday Night Lights.” Outside of Texas, many are curious about the fanaticism surrounding the game in the Lone Star State. Gray Levy, a retired Nevada schoolteacher who still coaches football in the fall, decided to take a close look at Texas high school football. His discoveries both confirm and debunk common assumptions.
Here’s an excerpt from Big and Bright:
“After the game, the teams gather and do something that I come to find is fairly common in Texas, but new to me. Both teams gather at the 50-yard line, kneel, and pray together. I’ve seen this with college teams and with groups of players in the NFL, but never in high school. I’ve been asked about the religiosity of the Texas game by coaches both within and outside of Texas. The best way I can describe the difference is that programs in Texas are more likely to have a religious aspect and are open about displaying it. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Texas is a very religious state, and several places I visited can rightly be described as the ‘buckle of the Bible Belt.’ Church attendance in this state is so much more a part of life than in most of the West.”
