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2008 Examiner Football Guide
In Texas, high school football is serious business
By James Shannon, Staff writer
From Friday night lights to the glare of the national spotlight
H.G. Bissinger’s acclaimed non-fiction book “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream” chronicled the 1988 season of perennial Texas football powerhouse Odessa Permian. It spawned a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton and a weekly television series that alerted America to what we have known around here for a long, long time. Football is a big deal in Texas. A very big deal.
Texas football has been compared to a religion, but that is a little misleading. The Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and the Assembly of God folks may quibble over theological doctrine on Sunday morning, but by Friday night they’ll be united at the local high school stadium, making a lot of joyful noise in support of their beloved football team. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, indeed.
With all due respect to Iowa and Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Texas version of the field of dreams is an oblong grass rectangle 100 yards long and 50 yards wide, circumscribed by white lines and brilliantly illuminated by stadium lights. Football players, cheerleaders, marching bands and pep squads perform for proud parents and grandparents who reminisce about that championship season of long ago while little kids watch in wide-eyed wonder and wait for their turn on the paths of glory.
It doesn’t happen by accident. A lot of preparation and hard work goes into creating the spectacle that ultimately unfolds on game day, whether it’s high school, college or professional football. This boy’s game is serious business.
Down in Port Neches, Matt Burnett is putting his team through their paces with two-a-day workouts in the heat of August that will pay dividends on crisp October evenings as the Port Neches-Groves Indians make another run at the district title.
Head coach Burnett has been at the helm of his alma mater since 1994, the winningest coach in Port Neches-Groves history. A football coach is a leader of men, though on the high school level, they are boys who become men on the football field.
Down the road in Irving, some 300 miles away, another Port Neches-Groves alumnus is preparing his team for the upcoming season in much the same manner. Of course, as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Wade Phillips has a few wrinkles to iron out not likely to confront Coach Burnett unless the Indians trade for Terrell Owens and Tony Romo or Jessica Simpson enrolls at PN-G.
But there is a football continuum that runs from the practice fields and stadiums of Southeast Texas through high school, college and professional teams throughout the state and beyond. Phillips earned all-district honors as a linebacker in 1964 on a PN-G team coached by his father, the legendary Bum Phillips.
A coaching vagabond whose career path took him to many locales, Bum was a native of Orange who had graduated from Beaumont French. He played briefly at Lamar before joining the Marines in World War II. After the war, he played college football at Stephen F. Austin then bega his coaching career. By the time he landed at PN-G in 1963, he had coached high school ball in Jacksonville and Amarillo and on the college level at UTEP and Texas A&M, where he worked under another coach you may have heard of named Paul “Bear” Bryant.
By the time he got to PN-G, the elder Phillips has also been the head coach at arch-rival Nederland, so he had experience on both sidelines of that pitched annual slugfest. When Bum had a chance to utilize his skills in the pro ranks as a head coach in the NFL, he made a name for himself with some tough Houston Oilers teams featuring future Hall of Famer Earl Campbell that battled Terry Bradshaw and the Pittsburgh Steelers in a series of epic games including two AFC championships.
His unabashed cowboy style and down-home wit made Bum Phillips a household name, and he traded quips with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” But the true brilliance of the man was on the football field, where as he once said of Don Shula, “he could take his and beat yours, or take yours and beat his.”
The fruit didn’t fall far from the tree, and Wade Phillips obviously learned a lot about coaching from his dad. After PN-G, father and son departed for the University of Houston and Coach Bill Yeoman.
Wade started at linebacker for three years for the Cougars, a stretch that included a memorable game where the high-powered UH veer laid a 100-6 pasting on Tulsa. Two obscure players in that game included a reserve wide receiver named Larry Gatlin (yes, that Larry Gatlin) who caught the only touchdown pass of his college career for Houston, and a burly linebacker for Tulsa named Phil McGraw, who would later gain fame on television as “Dr. Phil.”
When his college playing days were done, Wade Phillips began his coaching career as a graduate assistant to Yeoman at UH. Unable to resist going into the family business, the younger Phillips also became a coaching vagabond. First as defensive coordinator at West Orange-Stark then on to college jobs at Oklahoma State and Kansas, Wade graduated to the NFL as a defensive line coach when Bum became head coach of the Oilers.
In 1979, the Oilers were looking for help in the middle of the defensive line where perennial Pro Bowl player Curly Culp was showing a little age. The team brought some defensive lineman to training camp including Matt Burnett, who had earned All-State honors during his playing days at PN-G and was named to the All-Southland Conference team when he starred at Lamar University.
“Walking into that locker room with all those guys I had watched play over the years was an experience,” recalled Burnett.
Asked if he ever had tackle Earl Campbell in practice, Burnett grimaced and said, “Oh, no. You couldn’t touch him. The last thing in the world they wanted was for some free agent nose tackle from Lamar to come in there and booger up Earl Campbell.”
Burnett said on his first day in the Oilers locker room, he didn’t get a chance to talk to Bum but looked up and saw his defensive line coach grinning at him.
“Wade comes up and says ‘Indians’ and started singing the Cherokee,” said Burnett, shaking his head and obviously still touched by the memory of hearing his high school fight song in an NFL locker room. He stuck with the team long enough to play in some preseason games, and a photo displayed in his PN-G office shows him signing autographs in his Oilers uniform.
Wade Phillips’ run in the NFL is not over by a long shot. After filling defensive coordinator positions with New Orleans and Philadelphia, he got a shot as a head coach with the Denver Broncos and Buffalo Bills. He returned to defensive coordinator gigs with Atlanta and San Diego before landing the top job with the Dallas Cowboys, where he promptly went 13-3 his first year.
His trademark is the swarming, gambling defense played with intensity and intelligence, a natural evolution of the philosophy formulated by his father and perfected by the son on playing fields and locker rooms in Texas and beyond.
So when you go to a high school football game this fall, pay attention. You just might learn something.
In Texas, high school football is serious business
By James Shannon, Staff writer
From Friday night lights to the glare of the national spotlight
H.G. Bissinger’s acclaimed non-fiction book “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream” chronicled the 1988 season of perennial Texas football powerhouse Odessa Permian. It spawned a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton and a weekly television series that alerted America to what we have known around here for a long, long time. Football is a big deal in Texas. A very big deal.
Texas football has been compared to a religion, but that is a little misleading. The Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and the Assembly of God folks may quibble over theological doctrine on Sunday morning, but by Friday night they’ll be united at the local high school stadium, making a lot of joyful noise in support of their beloved football team. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, indeed.
With all due respect to Iowa and Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Texas version of the field of dreams is an oblong grass rectangle 100 yards long and 50 yards wide, circumscribed by white lines and brilliantly illuminated by stadium lights. Football players, cheerleaders, marching bands and pep squads perform for proud parents and grandparents who reminisce about that championship season of long ago while little kids watch in wide-eyed wonder and wait for their turn on the paths of glory.
It doesn’t happen by accident. A lot of preparation and hard work goes into creating the spectacle that ultimately unfolds on game day, whether it’s high school, college or professional football. This boy’s game is serious business.
Down in Port Neches, Matt Burnett is putting his team through their paces with two-a-day workouts in the heat of August that will pay dividends on crisp October evenings as the Port Neches-Groves Indians make another run at the district title.
Head coach Burnett has been at the helm of his alma mater since 1994, the winningest coach in Port Neches-Groves history. A football coach is a leader of men, though on the high school level, they are boys who become men on the football field.
Down the road in Irving, some 300 miles away, another Port Neches-Groves alumnus is preparing his team for the upcoming season in much the same manner. Of course, as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Wade Phillips has a few wrinkles to iron out not likely to confront Coach Burnett unless the Indians trade for Terrell Owens and Tony Romo or Jessica Simpson enrolls at PN-G.
But there is a football continuum that runs from the practice fields and stadiums of Southeast Texas through high school, college and professional teams throughout the state and beyond. Phillips earned all-district honors as a linebacker in 1964 on a PN-G team coached by his father, the legendary Bum Phillips.
A coaching vagabond whose career path took him to many locales, Bum was a native of Orange who had graduated from Beaumont French. He played briefly at Lamar before joining the Marines in World War II. After the war, he played college football at Stephen F. Austin then bega his coaching career. By the time he landed at PN-G in 1963, he had coached high school ball in Jacksonville and Amarillo and on the college level at UTEP and Texas A&M, where he worked under another coach you may have heard of named Paul “Bear” Bryant.
By the time he got to PN-G, the elder Phillips has also been the head coach at arch-rival Nederland, so he had experience on both sidelines of that pitched annual slugfest. When Bum had a chance to utilize his skills in the pro ranks as a head coach in the NFL, he made a name for himself with some tough Houston Oilers teams featuring future Hall of Famer Earl Campbell that battled Terry Bradshaw and the Pittsburgh Steelers in a series of epic games including two AFC championships.
His unabashed cowboy style and down-home wit made Bum Phillips a household name, and he traded quips with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” But the true brilliance of the man was on the football field, where as he once said of Don Shula, “he could take his and beat yours, or take yours and beat his.”
The fruit didn’t fall far from the tree, and Wade Phillips obviously learned a lot about coaching from his dad. After PN-G, father and son departed for the University of Houston and Coach Bill Yeoman.
Wade started at linebacker for three years for the Cougars, a stretch that included a memorable game where the high-powered UH veer laid a 100-6 pasting on Tulsa. Two obscure players in that game included a reserve wide receiver named Larry Gatlin (yes, that Larry Gatlin) who caught the only touchdown pass of his college career for Houston, and a burly linebacker for Tulsa named Phil McGraw, who would later gain fame on television as “Dr. Phil.”
When his college playing days were done, Wade Phillips began his coaching career as a graduate assistant to Yeoman at UH. Unable to resist going into the family business, the younger Phillips also became a coaching vagabond. First as defensive coordinator at West Orange-Stark then on to college jobs at Oklahoma State and Kansas, Wade graduated to the NFL as a defensive line coach when Bum became head coach of the Oilers.
In 1979, the Oilers were looking for help in the middle of the defensive line where perennial Pro Bowl player Curly Culp was showing a little age. The team brought some defensive lineman to training camp including Matt Burnett, who had earned All-State honors during his playing days at PN-G and was named to the All-Southland Conference team when he starred at Lamar University.
“Walking into that locker room with all those guys I had watched play over the years was an experience,” recalled Burnett.
Asked if he ever had tackle Earl Campbell in practice, Burnett grimaced and said, “Oh, no. You couldn’t touch him. The last thing in the world they wanted was for some free agent nose tackle from Lamar to come in there and booger up Earl Campbell.”
Burnett said on his first day in the Oilers locker room, he didn’t get a chance to talk to Bum but looked up and saw his defensive line coach grinning at him.
“Wade comes up and says ‘Indians’ and started singing the Cherokee,” said Burnett, shaking his head and obviously still touched by the memory of hearing his high school fight song in an NFL locker room. He stuck with the team long enough to play in some preseason games, and a photo displayed in his PN-G office shows him signing autographs in his Oilers uniform.
Wade Phillips’ run in the NFL is not over by a long shot. After filling defensive coordinator positions with New Orleans and Philadelphia, he got a shot as a head coach with the Denver Broncos and Buffalo Bills. He returned to defensive coordinator gigs with Atlanta and San Diego before landing the top job with the Dallas Cowboys, where he promptly went 13-3 his first year.
His trademark is the swarming, gambling defense played with intensity and intelligence, a natural evolution of the philosophy formulated by his father and perfected by the son on playing fields and locker rooms in Texas and beyond.
So when you go to a high school football game this fall, pay attention. You just might learn something.
