Southlake Carroll Football

Texas Football Classic not planned this year

The high school football season will begin again in 36 days, but it will be without one tradition from the past decade.

Since 1999, the Alamodome has kicked off the season with the Texas Football Classic, an opening-weekend series of five games featuring schools from around the state.

But fans eager to see local and out-of-town teams — and in the comfort of air conditioning — won't have that luxury this season. There is no Texas Football Classic this year, primarily because Dave Campbell 's Texas Football magazine is focusing its resources elsewhere: on a new television partnership with Fox Sports Net Southwest .

The new venture left the magazine, which organized the Classic, without proper resources for another weekend-long event, Texas Football executive director Adam Hochfelder said.

“If we had more resources, we could look at doing it,” he said. “This project is going to take every last guy we have to get going right.”

The project, to be formally unveiled at next week's Texas High School Coaches Convention , will be a four-hour show every Friday night showcasing games from around the state.

Hochfelder said that the magazine will consider reviving the Classic next year once the TV program is up and running.

That won't be easy. The Classic has faced growing competition for top teams from other showcase games such as the Kirk Herbstreit Classic, which draws out-of-state schools to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Tighter travel budgets statewide only complicate matters further.

“We had never had trouble getting our 10 teams, but we could see that coming and in some respects,” Hochfelder said. “You could see the challenge of getting teams to drive 400 miles with gas prices and budget cuts.”

He said that attendance had “flattened out” since 2007 with averages in the upper 30,000s for the weekend total.

Still, there are plenty who don't like to see the Classic scrapped. Numerous local teams participated in the event over the years, in addition to state powerhouses such as Southlake Carroll, Odessa Permian and Austin Lake Travis. Seguin and Uvalde were the area representatives at last year's Classic.

“We're going to miss it,” said Boerne Champion coach Danny Threadgill , whose team played in the 2009 event. “We always enjoyed to go and play in it, and to go watch other games.”

According to Hochfelder, the feeling is mutual.

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In 2006, the Southlake Carroll Dragons won their third consecutive state championship, their fourth in the last five years. It also marked the third time in the last four years that they have been named the national champions of high school football. If you are not from Texas, maybe you do not understand just how big high school football is in the state. If you cant fathom how a high school football game can garner more fans than a major league baseball game, then go rent Friday Night Lights and you will get a pretty accurate description of what high school football means in the state of Texas.

The Carroll dragons are 79-1 since the start of the 2002 season. I remember playing high school football, and I am only a few years removed. I remember thinking when they won their first 5A state title, that this was the same Dragon team that won the 4A state title the previous year. To actually bump up in classifications and win a state title in a bigger classification in your first year of that classification is a pretty remarkable feat in itself. It was when I noticed this that I became interesting in this team.

This is a team that will enter the 2007 season on a 48 game winning streak. This is a team that has played nationally televised games, and a team that played in front of 46,339 fans in Texas Stadium against Trinity, the second-largest crowd to ever witness a high school football game there.

What makes them so successful? Maybe it is the fact that they run a spread offense similar to the one that Texas Tech dominates countless offensive categories at the college level. The coaching staff, as well as the kids, have to be pretty intelligent to execute this type of offense at the high school level, where most teams try to pound you out with one key running back on the ground. It does not hurt that they have Tre Newton, the son of famous Dallas Cowboy, Nate Newton, at tailback. They will also have starting QB, Riley Dodge back. Dodge is the son of former head coach Todd Dodge.

NEW COACH

Todd Dodge was 98-11 in seven seasons as the Carroll head coach, but will leave to take over as the head coach of North Texas.

Assuming the pressure filled role of new head coach is Hal Wasson, a former Carroll staff member. Wasson will be paid $88,720, which is a LOT of money to coach high school football. Familiarity with the program was a big selling point for Wasson. The Carroll athletic director Ronnie Tipps did not want a new coach coming in a changing the scheme of what has worked so well over the past few years.

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