Plant to size up Texas football

They do everything bigger in Texas.

That includes high school football.

The crowds are bigger. The stadiums are bigger. The games are bigger.

Tonight, Plant High School plays at Abilene, Texas, in a game nationally televised on ESPNU.

Plant knows it has a lot of support back home, but the team will be outnumbered on the road. Florida is a football state that loves its football. But Texas is a larger football state that loves its football.

"I feel sorry for them," said Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive lineman Michael Bennett, who played high school football at Taylor High in Alief, Texas. "That Plant team is in store for very traditional, smash-mouth football. Some of the stadiums in Texas are like colleges. They're going to like it, though.

"Football's a real big deal in Texas."

The book "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and Dream," which documented the Odessa Permian Panthers' 1988 season, thrust Texas high school football into the national spotlight. It became a movie and later a television series, and the multimedia platforms showcased Texas' passion.

"It's serious to us," said Bucs defensive lineman Roy Miller, who played for Shoemaker High in Killeen, Texas. "It means everything to the town. Everyone prides themselves over the high school team. It's generations of playing football. It's everything a young man lives to be a part of."

Abilene head coach Steve Warren grew up the son of a high school football coach. He spent his childhood in stadiums and field houses, witnessing firsthand the fanaticism surrounding the sport.

The one constant, Warren said, from town to town in Texas, is the support of the local football team.

"It's crazy. Not just in Abilene, but everywhere in Texas. It's just what people do on a Friday night," Warren said. "It's a social event. If you have a really good team, then it turns into a crazy fan base like we have. They'll go wherever they need to go to watch their team play."

Abilene plays its home games at Shotwell Stadium, which seats more than 15,000 and features a video scoreboard and artificial turf. The Eagles sell reserved seating season tickets.

Early in the season, Warren says, the Eagles average about 9,000 a game, but when they begin playing the district part of their schedule, those crowds grow to about 15,000. In last year's state championship game at San Antonio's Alamodome, nearly 30,000 fans witnessed Abilene win its seventh state championship and its first since 1956. The 1956 Abilene team was voted the Texas high school team of the century.

The better the team, the bigger the crowd. Or the better the player, the bigger the crowd. When current Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young played for Houston's Madison High, some of the games were moved to the Astrodome to accommodate the crowds, which reached about 50,000.

Bennett remembers playing in front of about 40,000, slightly less than Sunday's turnout for the Bucs regular-season opener against Cleveland.

"It is a religion," Warren said. "People follow it, get behind it and get excited about it."

And they debate it.

In nearly every Texas town, there is a gathering spot where the armchair quarterbacks discuss that week's game.

"It consumes the town," Bennett said. "They just love football. So many people played it growing up, and there is just a pedigree of football in Texas."

Many football greats have roots in Texas. Earl Campbell, Hayden Fry, Tom Landry and Billy Sims are just a few of the inductees in the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco.

Kenneth Hall, who played for Sugar Land High from 1950-53, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1983. Regarded as the greatest high school football player of all time, Hall earned the nickname "Sugar Land Express" after establishing 17 national records during his high school career. His preps totals, including 11,232 rushing yards and 32.9 points a game, are still national records.

Texas also likes to lay claim to the greatest game ever played.

In 1994, Tyler defeated Plano East, 48-44, in front of 30,000 at old Texas Stadium. Ahead 41-17 with three minutes remaining in the game, Tyler appeared to have the game sealed.

Then Plano East staged a comeback, with three recovered onside kicks and four unanswered touchdowns in two minutes and 25 seconds, going up 44-41.

What made the game even more memorable, and later a YouTube sensation, was the commentators injecting their personality. When Plano East scored the go-ahead touchdown, one of the commentators burst out, "I done wet my britches."

Then when Tyler returned the ensuing kickoff for the game-winning touchdown, longtime Texas coach Mike Zoffuto summed up the sentiments of the Plano East fan base.

"God bless those kids," Zoffuto said. "I am sick. I am gonna throw up."

Texas likes its self-proclaimed title as the greatest. Lakeland's video scoreboard is an exception in the Bay area, but it's the norm in Texas. Plant and Jesuit's synthetic field surfaces are the only ones in Hillsborough County. In Texas, it's the preferred playing surface.

"As a Texas high school football team, you've got to compete with the next football district and not just on the field," Miller said. "We had a JumboTron, and other local teams had them. The whole town prides itself on those things."

And the whole town likes to take in that scenery in person.

"The stores shut down; the cities shut down," said Bucs defensive end and Tyler native Tim Crowder, who was 9 at the time and listened to the game on the radio. "You'll see signs 'we'll be open tomorrow' on the storefronts on game days."

Plant can expect a large crowd tonight, possibly the largest they've played in front of, and when the game is over, they'll likely come away with a greater appreciation of how much football means to Texas.

"It's a lifestyle," Abilene senior safety Jake Brooks said. "This is our life. We come to school, we play football, and there's little else besides that. It's football, football, football."