Stephenville Yellow Jacket Football

In Texas, high school football is king. If pigskin passion is no less intense among college and professional fans, enthusiasm for the schoolboy sport is more democratically spread throughout towns and communities, small and large. Almost any young man can play if he's willing to pay the price, work hard, and bring a bit of local, regional, or statewide glory to his hometown. Stephenville High School is one among an elite group of Texas football schools that has achieved at the highest level. The traditional rivalry games against Dublin and Breckenridge in the 1920s through the 1940s have evolved into heavily attended matchups with seven-time state champion Brownwood and, most recently, three-time state champion Aledo. From Joe Brown and Jim Mobley's powerhouse teams of the 1930s to Mike Murphy's 1952 regional qualifying squad, the Yellow Jackets have contended with the best in Texas. With four state championships, Art Briles made the 1990s a "Decade of Dominance" for Stephenville High School. Yellow Jacket football fever remains alive and well, promising to remain so long into the indefinite future.

Since the first annual state football champion was crowned in 1920, Texas has never been the same. Today, millions of Texans gather in stadiums across the Lone Star State, eagerly awaiting that magical mid- to late-December moment when the season comes to its dramatic conclusion. Of the 391 high schools reaching the championship matchup, only a handful--26--have won the title four times or more, laying claim to the coveted moniker "dynasty." From Waco High School's fourth title win in 1927 to Stamford's fourth official win in 2012, writer and lifelong football enthusiast Rick Sherrod traces the "best of the best" in this pigskin empire across ninety-three action-packed seasons.

On July 4, 1855, on the fringe of the Texas Cross Timbers frontier, John M. Stephen and George B. Erath completed the survey of the Stephenville city square. Stephenville quickly became a prosperous settlement and a center for cattle raising, cotton production, and most recently dairy production. Styled today as the “City of Champions,” “Cowboy Capital of the World,” and the “Dairy Capital of Texas,” Stephenville has a colorful 155-year history. The evolution from cattle ranching to dairy farming finds delightful expression on the original town square where Moo-la—a life-size fiberglass Holstein milk cow—celebrates Stephenville’s agricultural achievements. “The ’Ville” has produced football heroes such as 1938 NFL Champion New York Giants fullback Hugh Wolfe and 2010 Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Kevin Kolb and rodeo champions Whit Keeney, Tuff Hedeman, and “King of the Cowboys” Ty Murray. Music celebrities Lee Roy Parnell, Johnny Duncan, Larry Joe Taylor, and Jewel have also called Stephenville home.

Anywhere football is played, Texas is the force to reckon with. Its powerhouse programs produce the best football players in America. In The Republic of Football, Chad S. Conine vividly captures Texas’s impact on the game with action-filled stories about legendary high school players, coaches, and teams from around the state and across seven decades. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Conine offers rare glimpses of the early days of some of football’s biggest stars. He reveals that some players took time to achieve greatness—LaDainian Tomlinson wasn’t even the featured running back on his high school team until a breakthrough game in his senior season vaulted him to the highest level of the sport—while others, like Colt McCoy, showed their first flashes of brilliance in middle school. In telling these and many other stories of players and coaches, including Hayden Fry, Spike Dykes, Bob McQueen, Lovie Smith, Art Briles, Lawrence Elkins, Warren McVea, Ray Rhodes, Dat Nguyen, Zach Thomas, Drew Brees, and Adrian Peterson, Conine spotlights the decisive moments when players caught fire and teams such as Celina, Southlake Carroll, and Converse Judson turned into Texas dynasties. Packed with never-before-told anecdotes, as well as fresh takes on the games everyone remembers, The Republic of Football is a must-read for all fans of Friday night lights.

Baylor head coach Art Briles is one of the most highly regarded coaches in college football, and this biography delves far beyond his football success and acumen. It explains how, at the age of 20, Briles lost his parents in a tragic car accident as they were en route to one of his college games. The book relates how Briles, devastated by the loss of his role models, used the catastrophe as motivation to propel him toward the destination of his dreams. As the book elucidates in detail, Coach Briles has made a career of turning failing football programs around in both the high school and collegiate ranks. His latest accomplishments at Baylor University are also chronicled in this account of overcoming tragedy and turning personal loss into overwhelming success.

An inside look at one of today’s most compelling athletes and his influence on college football—in Texas and across the nation. It’s no secret that Texas is the capital of legendary football players. From Sammy Baugh to Earl Campbell to Robert Griffin III and scores of others in between, the Lone Star State has produced a heavily decorated list of athletic phenoms—but none has put on a display as explosive and as sudden as that of the kid they call “Johnny Football.” In Johnny Football, Texas sportswriter Mike Shropshire recounts Johnny Manziel’s extraordinary freshman season with Texas A&M in 2012—during which his unparalleled breakout performance made him the first freshman to ever win the illustrious Heisman Trophy—and follows Manziel and the rest of the Aggie squad through the much-hyped 2013 gridiron campaign. In Shropshire’s signature witty, entertaining writing style, the book tells the complete story of an unlikely star who came out of rural obscurity to lead the Aggies to a top-ten ranking in the national polls in 2012 and a victory in the postseason Cotton Bowl. But make no mistake: the tale of “Johnny Football” is larger and deeper than that of one star player. It is the narrative of how a kid from nowhere, with his country-boy values, restored vigor and pride to the Spirit of Aggieland (Gig ’Em!), and this celebration of the A&M faithful and Texas’ gridiron fanaticism is sure to make Johnny Football a treasured tale for years to come.

High school football has been called Texas’s favorite pastime. If you follow the sport, you have heard of the Southlake Carroll Dragons. That is what happens when a district wins eight state football championships and three national high school championships. The Dragon tradition began in 1959 with the formation of the Carroll Independent School District. With the growth of the Dallas–Fort Worth area, families were attracted to Southlake and the school district’s high academic standards and competitive football program. Some of the most successful Texas high school football coaches have blown their whistles in Dragon Stadium—Bob Ledbetter, Todd Dodge, Hal Wasson, and others have kept the Dragons in the record books.