For those of you who may think that the movie Friday Night Lights may be an exaggeration of life during Texas high school football season, let me assure you: it absolutely is not. In fact, if you look closely at the Home fan section of the movie when Odessa Permian is playing Abilene High, you may just see me there, rooting loudly with my two small children. (They actually filmed the movie during one of the seasons my husband coached in Abilene.) It is difficult to fully describe to you the fun, pressure, joys, and disappointments that come as a Texas high school football coach’s wife; and I never in a million years thought I would be in a position to be able to do that. And yet, here I am, a seasoned veteran of life from the sidelines.
After college graduation, my husband took a high school football coaching job in a town just south of Dallas. Like many of you, my only exposure to Texas high school football was having read the book Friday Night Lights. I was pregnant, we were poor, and I was just ecstatic that my husband had a job that would support our family-albeit with a very meager salary. We were incredibly lucky to be joining a coaching staff that had enjoyed a state championship the year before, and so we were riding high on the euphoria of the town… Little did we understand that with euphoria comes expectations. Nevertheless, I took my place next to my husband quite proudly as we joined the royalty of this small Texas town-we were HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL COACHES, a title that made us almost unapproachable in this small community. Upon arrival, the lawn at our small house was mowed, we had invitations to attend a number of churches, I had offers to work wherever I wanted, and all of the shops in town offered us immediate credit to furnish and decorate our home, no payments until we were ready. It seemed as if life was going to be forever enchanted as a member of this coaching staff. Especially after that first season when I lived through the coronation and became a legitimate football coach’s wife.
By the end of that first season, we had, incredibly, won the state title once again. My daughter was born during the middle of the playoffs (most conveniently, she arrived during a week when the competition was weak; my husband actually had two entire days off) and I was surrounded with caring coaches wives who had been through it all before. I saw my husband during waking hours only for a few short hours on Sunday during church and then for a free, catered dinner at the field house with the other coaches’ families. I nursed my baby in the bathroom at the Houston Astrodome during halftime of the state championship, and was never more proud of my husband than I was that day. He lifted our daughter up on his shoulders, and I felt that life could never get better. Honestly, I’m not being melodramatic here. You would not believe the emotions that curse through you when you win a Texas High School State Championship in football. It is incredible. Of course, it is unclear if the emotions come from the actual win or the realization that you will actually see your husband more than 4 hours at night after a 16 week football season. (We calculated his hourly wage that year. It averaged out to be about 50 cents an hour.) The town again showered us with appreciation: parties at the country club, free wine at dinner, pats on the back everywhere we went, special mentioning from the pulpit at church. It was a magical time…
Like all magical times, it had to come to an end. The following year we “only” made it to the state semi-finals, losing to a team that went on to win it all. How quickly I learned that the tides of a Texas football town can turn on the coaches. There were whispers of coaches’ incompetence and calls for changes in the coaching staff. I, meanwhile, was expecting our second child and hoping that we would not have to look for another job. My husband got a call from an old high school coach in Abilene asking him to come join his staff-the next year’s team looked promising, and they really needed his style to add that “missing element” in the coaching staff. He mentioned that there were hopes that the Abilene team would be the one to win the state championship, and that was all it took. We had packed our belongings and were heading west before the school year was even over.
While this is just a small perspective of life according to Texas high school football, I can tell you that it is very authentic. I have lived the “dream” of a state championship down here, and I can tell you it is a roller coaster of a ride, to say the least. When you win, a small Texas town can make your life feel like a fairy tale: you are honored with the choicest seats at the game, your children get their run of the field after the game as their daddies hold them on their victorious shoulders, and your husbands are looked at as demigods for drawing up that winning play. However, a losing season brings more derision than you would think possible from a group of such normally kind people. A football coaching job in Texas is probably one of the most volatile positions a college graduate can accept; some coaches move, on average, every two years. Job security is non-existent when your livelihood depends on adolescent boys.
I have to thank my husband every time I think back on the season when he finally realized it is not the kind of life we envisioned for our family and completely left the coaching profession. We now teach our children that although high school athletics is fun and teaches important lessons about life, it is an activity that must always be kept in perspective. That important truth is something we never could have taught them had he remained part of the royalty of a small town, Texas football coach.
