Alright, let's talk about PN-G history. It has a funny way of repeating itself.
Most of y'all are probably aware by now that with the win over Brenham last week, PN-G is now engaged in the Indians' deepest playoff run since the 1999 state championship appearance. Some of y‘all may remember the fourth round game we played that year against LaMarque at the Astrodome. That year, LaMarque was sporting an offense most high school football aficionados of the day believed to be unstoppable, the ground game in particular. The Cougars were undefeated coming into that game, they were fast, they were big and they were talented. In short, PN-G was expected to get blown out that week.
The Indians won that game, 22-6. The vaunted LaMarque rush attack couldn't put the Cougars in the endzone until halfway through the fourth quarter, when PN-G was already up by three possessions. The Indian defense played lights out all game long. Chris Gohlke made several legendary tackles long-time PN-G fans still talk about today - the kind of tackles that would probably draw flags these days. And bolstering that defensive effort was a PN-G crowd numbering in the tens of thousands, chanting, yelling, singing and screaming at the top of their lungs every second of every down that a stunned, badly rattled LaMarque offense held the ball.
These were the PN-G crowds of legend: 49,953 fans at the original Texas Stadium in Dallas for the 1977 state championship against the Plano Wildcats; 39,102 fans at the 1999 state championship game against the Stephenville Yellowjackets, coached by none other than Art Briles with Kendal Briles under center, all at the Astrodome; 38,570 fans under the 'dome for the 1977 state quarterfinal against Houston Kashmere. Twenty to twenty-five thousand fans apiece at the 1999 state semi-final at Kyle Field where Dustin Long orchestrated a miracle drive to take the lead over the best defense in the state with two minutes left on the clock, vanquishing a heavily favored Schertz Clemens team; at the 1999 regional semi-final, where the Indians thumped Brazosport; at Rice Stadium for the 1976 state semifinal against San Antonio Churchill; at Texas Stadium for the 1975 PN-G state title win over Odessa Permian of Friday Night Lights fame, where PN-G fans shut down the infamous "mojo" chant with the response, "mojo gumbo"; and at the Astrodome yet again for the 1989 Indians' quarterfinal appearance against A&M Consolidated, featuring famed, hard-hitting PN-G runningback Ron McGill.
These were the crowds that set records for high school attendance at stadiums across the state, which still stand today. No other high school team has ever put as many fans as PN-G has in Kyle Field, the Alamodome, Texas Stadium, or Rice Stadium. PN-G packed so many fans into the Astrodome so many times over so many years that the building earned the informal nickname 'the big teepee' among local sports broadcasters.
These were the crowds that PN-G's opponents were, and still are, terrified of. Many veteran Indian fans will recall the noisemakers Stephenville put together for the 1999 state final - all those empty propane tanks their welding classes spent all week cutting open, filling with ball bearings and welding back together, all in a vain attempt to drown out our crowd, our band and our fight song. And these are still the crowds that come to mind when modern-day coaches and Texas sports aficionados talk about PN-G. When I'm at events around the state and I run into a state representative from Sugar Land who used to referee high school games, or a retired Galena Park coach, or a certain school board president from Mart, Texas, that I think has more state title rings than he does fingers, this is the PN-G that comes to mind when they find out I'm from Port Neches.
It's the PN-G that Todd Dodge grew up watching from across the field, and the PN-G that attracted Texas high school football royalty to its head coaching job earlier this year. It's the PN-G that John Buck Ford wrote his book, Down Trails of Victory, about in 1994. It's the PN-G the documentary Glory Trails was made about in 2003. It's the PN-G that was the literal centerpiece of the high school football exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin in 2011. It's the PN-G that was memorialized in a dedicated photography exhibit at the Galveston Arts Center in 2020. And yes, this is the PN-G that a certain chief of the Cherokee Nation originally endorsed way back in the pre-woke days of 1979.
More pertinent to our purposes this week, this is the PN-G that Fort Bend Marshall is scared will show up this Friday, and that's why they did everything they could to maneuver us into the 11,000 seat stadium at Galena Park for this week's playoff game. But here's the thing: these crowds didn't just materialize out of thin air. There's a reason you don't see crowds like the ones I've listed above come from very many other communities, and there's a reason even PN-G hasn't seen one in a while. They took work, commitment, a lot of spirit and maybe even a dose of fanaticism to make.
This was an era when PN-G fans would go above and beyond to turn out themselves and each other for these games. It was a time when local churches and civic organizations would rent literal fleets of charter buses to transport their members to and from playoff venues, hundreds at a time. Convoys of personal vehicles would line up and leave town by the dozens, covered in purple window paint and streamers, and packed to the brim with parents, students, cousins, grandparents, neighbors and you name it. In those days, there was even a custom horn made by local auto shops that drivers would have installed in their vehicles, which would play the opening riff of Cherokee. Those convoys would stretch on for miles on the roadways between Mid-County and Houston, or Mid-County and Dallas, or Mid-County and College Station, or Mid-County and wherever on God's green earth the Indians happened to be playing that particular Friday night. It was a time when the local Dairy Queens and Sonics would shut down the night of a playoff game because nobody was left in town to sell burgers and blizzards to.
Most of y'all are probably aware by now that with the win over Brenham last week, PN-G is now engaged in the Indians' deepest playoff run since the 1999 state championship appearance. Some of y‘all may remember the fourth round game we played that year against LaMarque at the Astrodome. That year, LaMarque was sporting an offense most high school football aficionados of the day believed to be unstoppable, the ground game in particular. The Cougars were undefeated coming into that game, they were fast, they were big and they were talented. In short, PN-G was expected to get blown out that week.
The Indians won that game, 22-6. The vaunted LaMarque rush attack couldn't put the Cougars in the endzone until halfway through the fourth quarter, when PN-G was already up by three possessions. The Indian defense played lights out all game long. Chris Gohlke made several legendary tackles long-time PN-G fans still talk about today - the kind of tackles that would probably draw flags these days. And bolstering that defensive effort was a PN-G crowd numbering in the tens of thousands, chanting, yelling, singing and screaming at the top of their lungs every second of every down that a stunned, badly rattled LaMarque offense held the ball.
These were the PN-G crowds of legend: 49,953 fans at the original Texas Stadium in Dallas for the 1977 state championship against the Plano Wildcats; 39,102 fans at the 1999 state championship game against the Stephenville Yellowjackets, coached by none other than Art Briles with Kendal Briles under center, all at the Astrodome; 38,570 fans under the 'dome for the 1977 state quarterfinal against Houston Kashmere. Twenty to twenty-five thousand fans apiece at the 1999 state semi-final at Kyle Field where Dustin Long orchestrated a miracle drive to take the lead over the best defense in the state with two minutes left on the clock, vanquishing a heavily favored Schertz Clemens team; at the 1999 regional semi-final, where the Indians thumped Brazosport; at Rice Stadium for the 1976 state semifinal against San Antonio Churchill; at Texas Stadium for the 1975 PN-G state title win over Odessa Permian of Friday Night Lights fame, where PN-G fans shut down the infamous "mojo" chant with the response, "mojo gumbo"; and at the Astrodome yet again for the 1989 Indians' quarterfinal appearance against A&M Consolidated, featuring famed, hard-hitting PN-G runningback Ron McGill.
These were the crowds that set records for high school attendance at stadiums across the state, which still stand today. No other high school team has ever put as many fans as PN-G has in Kyle Field, the Alamodome, Texas Stadium, or Rice Stadium. PN-G packed so many fans into the Astrodome so many times over so many years that the building earned the informal nickname 'the big teepee' among local sports broadcasters.
These were the crowds that PN-G's opponents were, and still are, terrified of. Many veteran Indian fans will recall the noisemakers Stephenville put together for the 1999 state final - all those empty propane tanks their welding classes spent all week cutting open, filling with ball bearings and welding back together, all in a vain attempt to drown out our crowd, our band and our fight song. And these are still the crowds that come to mind when modern-day coaches and Texas sports aficionados talk about PN-G. When I'm at events around the state and I run into a state representative from Sugar Land who used to referee high school games, or a retired Galena Park coach, or a certain school board president from Mart, Texas, that I think has more state title rings than he does fingers, this is the PN-G that comes to mind when they find out I'm from Port Neches.
It's the PN-G that Todd Dodge grew up watching from across the field, and the PN-G that attracted Texas high school football royalty to its head coaching job earlier this year. It's the PN-G that John Buck Ford wrote his book, Down Trails of Victory, about in 1994. It's the PN-G the documentary Glory Trails was made about in 2003. It's the PN-G that was the literal centerpiece of the high school football exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin in 2011. It's the PN-G that was memorialized in a dedicated photography exhibit at the Galveston Arts Center in 2020. And yes, this is the PN-G that a certain chief of the Cherokee Nation originally endorsed way back in the pre-woke days of 1979.
More pertinent to our purposes this week, this is the PN-G that Fort Bend Marshall is scared will show up this Friday, and that's why they did everything they could to maneuver us into the 11,000 seat stadium at Galena Park for this week's playoff game. But here's the thing: these crowds didn't just materialize out of thin air. There's a reason you don't see crowds like the ones I've listed above come from very many other communities, and there's a reason even PN-G hasn't seen one in a while. They took work, commitment, a lot of spirit and maybe even a dose of fanaticism to make.
This was an era when PN-G fans would go above and beyond to turn out themselves and each other for these games. It was a time when local churches and civic organizations would rent literal fleets of charter buses to transport their members to and from playoff venues, hundreds at a time. Convoys of personal vehicles would line up and leave town by the dozens, covered in purple window paint and streamers, and packed to the brim with parents, students, cousins, grandparents, neighbors and you name it. In those days, there was even a custom horn made by local auto shops that drivers would have installed in their vehicles, which would play the opening riff of Cherokee. Those convoys would stretch on for miles on the roadways between Mid-County and Houston, or Mid-County and Dallas, or Mid-County and College Station, or Mid-County and wherever on God's green earth the Indians happened to be playing that particular Friday night. It was a time when the local Dairy Queens and Sonics would shut down the night of a playoff game because nobody was left in town to sell burgers and blizzards to.
