The SportsMonday Column

T. J. Berka Teeing Off

Pride, desire make prep football worth watching

The football is the greatest thing about Thanksgiving. You watch the Detroit Lions, eat a gargantuan meal, and then fall asleep on the couch while watching the Dallas Cowboys.

But football on Thanksgiving is not a one-day thing. Not even close. The whole weekend is chock full of pigskin fun, as college football teams war against each other for the right to eat leftover stuffing from the days before.

But colleges aren't the only schools that take part in the football fun during this holiday weekend. Thanksgiving weekend is huge for high school football as well, as the state playoffs are in full steam.

In Michigan, Thanksgiving is the time where high school football ends. Championships are played, winners are crowned, and memories are made before the cold winter winds hit the state with full force.

But in Texas, where I went to high school, Thanksgiving isn't the end of the season. In a state as gaga over football as Texas is, the season is never over. But while the playoffs end the weekend before Christmas, only the best teams are playing when Thanksgiving comes around.

The Woodlands High School, my alma mater, is usually sitting on the couch letting Thanksgiving dinner digest at this time. While The Woodlands usually makes the playoffs, the Highlanders tend to have things go wrong for them once they enter them.

Missed field goals. Fumbles. Controversial calls from the officials. It seems as if every year my alma mater finds a new way to lose a Texas high school playoff game.

But this year was different. For the first time in nine years, the Highlanders made it to Thanksgiving weekend. Thanks to this, the Highlanders got to leave the confines of Moorehead Stadium - a high school stadium that would put some Division I-A stadiums to shame - and traveled to Texas Stadium to play Plano East High School.

If high school football in Texas is a religion - and there is a lot of people who say that it is - then Texas Stadium is its mecca. Being the home of the Dallas Cowboys, the closest thing football has to a cultural icon, playing in Texas Stadium as a high schooler is a big deal.

I really didn't realize what a big deal it was until I sat in the fourth row at midfield of the stadium. Having been at Michigan for four seasons, I had been spoiled with the place where I saw football games six or seven times a year.

I assumed that every player knew what it was like to play in a big game at a big stadium. I looked down on games with less-than-sellout crowds and games that didn't have teams ranked in the top 25 were meaningless to me.

The game between The Woodlands and Plano East didn't come close to filling the 70,000 seats at Texas Stadium. Except for maybe a couple of teams in Division II and III, neither team could compete with a program at the college level.

But the intensity and enjoyment were there. I really never appreciated high school football when I was in high school.

Although I did write about it during that time, I can't say I ever really got emotionally involved in it.

Maybe it was because I knew most of the players personally. Maybe it was because some of the guys on the team had the athletic skills of a sportswriter. Maybe it was because they were dating the girls I wanted to date.

I don't know what it was, but I just didn't care about how my high school team did. I even got pleasure in ripping on classmates about their performances once in a while.

But Saturday at Texas Stadium - my first high school football game in four years - it was different. I was cheering with vigor, hoping to see The Woodlands progress to the regional finals, something it had never done before.

Plano East ripped the Highlanders 38-15, but it was still a great game. I got to see young kids, many of whom will never put shoulder pads on ever again, play on a field that many of their heroes had graced. That in itself was worth the four-hour drive my family and I made from our Houston suburb to the Dallas area.

Something has definitely changed during the past four years for myself. I'm pretty sure that high school football has stayed the same, so maybe it was something in me that has changed.

Or maybe it was The Woodlands changing their fight song. Instead of some random tune that I didn't even pay attention to when I was in school, the fight song was changed to mirror a famous college fight song.

Yes, The Woodlands High School's new fight song sounds exactly like "The Victors." While I was the only one pumping my right fist when it was played, I'm sure it will catch on.

Like high school football caught on with me.

- T.J. Berka can be reached via e-mail at berkat@umich.edu

11-29-99