Texas High School Football: More Than The Game
Joe Nick Patoski, Thomas Jones, Max Thompson/photo by Janel Lee/KUTAudio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
We obviously love our Texas Longhorns here in KUT country. But it’s the High School game that really stirs passions here and across the Lone Star State.
KUT’s Views & Brews was lucky to get writer Joe Nick Patoski, Lake Travis View reporter Max Thompson and Westlake Picayune reporter Thomas Jones to join us to talk about what some consider the state’s official sport. Patoski spent the last two years traveling around the state watching high school football in preparation of a new exhibit he guest curated at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.
“This is one way of learning our story,” said Joe Nick Patoski. “If you look at this sport…you follow that story and you learn all about Texas. And how we’ve evolved from a rural to urban state, to one of the largest populations of any state in the United States. And really at the heart of it is why Texas and Texans continue to stand independent from everywhere else, and why we’re not part of gen-erica. We didn’t invent this sport…we just do it all better and we make it a point of pride.”
Thompson and Jones cover two of the most successful football programs in the state, the Lake Travis Cavaliers and the Westlake Chaparrals. And have seen first hand the way football transforms a place without a real sense of community.
“I got to see Wimberley play Liberty [Hill] in an overtime game in the rain 48-44 and both towns, it felt like, were there,” said Max Thompson. “It was crazy. It was so much fun. It was the most fun football game I’ve ever covered.”
The audience had some great questions coming from their own high school football memories. I think we all were ready to cheer on our favorite teams at the show’s end.
Join us for KUT’s next Views and Brews discussion: ESPN, the Longhorn Network, and UT–The Real Game. Tuesday August 30th at 6.
Podcast: Download (75.4MB)
