Midland Legacy running back Damien Johnson bulled his way through the middle of the line for his fourth touchdown of the game. That pulled the Rebels into a 55–55 tie with Euless Trinity last November, on Trinity’s home field, during the second possession of the second overtime of a second-round playoff game—with the mandatory 2-point attempt to follow, Trinity having failed to convert its 2-point possession.
Legacy coach Clint Hartman pulled off his headset, handed it to a student helper, and announced he would race down the sideline toward the end zone and high-five his players after they scored and won the game.
Which is exactly what happened. Quarterback Marcos Davila rifled a pass toward the right sideline to Jordan Williams, who eased in for the winning points.
The Rebels advanced to the third round of the class 6A Division I playoffs. They became the only West Texas team in the University Interscholastic League’s largest enrollment classification to advance halfway toward a state football championship during the past four years; the Rebels lost to Allen High School the following week.
It has been fifteen years since a “big school” program in West Texas—meaning a school in one of the two largest classifications—has won a state football championship. The last was the Abilene Eagles, who defeated Katy in 2009 to win in class 5A Division I.
The region’s most recent state football champion in the largest classification was Legacy, back when it was Midland Lee. The Rebels ran off three consecutive titles from 1998 through 2000, with a roster featuring future NFL players Cedric Benson and Eric Winston. (The school, which was named after Robert E. Lee, changed its name in 2020 to remove its association with the Confederate general.)
The majority of state titles at the two largest levels since 2010 have been won by high schools in the Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin areas. (In 2014 the UIL renamed its classifications, the largest in football changing from 5A to 6A and what was called Six-Man becoming 1A.)
Casual sports fans can’t be faulted for wondering how such a drought could occur. Much of the nation was introduced to our state’s zeal for high school football through the 1988 Odessa Permian team made famous through Friday Night Lights—the nonfiction classic by Buzz Bissinger and its subsequent film and television adaptations.
Long before many of us were introduced to Boobie Miles, Coach Gary Gaines, and “mojo,” the quality of football was so excellent in the UIL district for West Texas’s largest schools that the group of teams was nicknamed the Little Southwest Conference.
(For the sake of this article, West Texas includes Abilene, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, and Odessa-Permian, per the Texas Department of Transportation map. It doesn’t include Brownwood, Stephenville, or Wichita Falls, which might rankle some. Although the map also considers El Paso to be in West Texas, current and former West Texas football coaches interviewed for this story said they don’t consider the twenty El Paso–area high schools in 6A and 5A to be part of the group.)
During the past four postseasons, West Texas teams were a combined 46–43 in playoff games against “outside” competition. They went 32–11 against El Paso–area teams, which they often faced in the opening round, and Wichita Falls teams. That leaves a 14–32 record against the rest of the state.
Hartman, whose Legacy Rebels seek their seventh consecutive district championship this season, doesn’t believe West Texas’s big schools take a back seat to anyone. “We’re very competitive, and we’ve got to keep doing it until we punch through,” he said. “Other people look at it and say, ‘Oh, well, they haven’t had a champion in fifteen years.’ Well, let’s look at the other demographics. How many championships have come out of San Antonio in fifteen years?” Only one has—the Cibolo Steele Knights, in 2010, class 5A Division II. (Hartman went to high school in San Antonio.)
The coach’s mention of demographics is pertinent, given that other areas of Texas have been among the fastest growing in the country. Look at how many new schools have opened in recent decades to serve the expanding student populations in metro suburbs like Katy, Fort Bend, Frisco, and Mansfield. Frisco was a single–high school town in 2002; it now has twelve high schools, eleven of which compete in 5A.
Based on figures from Dave Campbell’s Texas Football yearbooks dating from the present to 1989, West Texas schools currently make up less than 3 percent of all schools in classes 6A and 5A (18 of 614). When Abilene won the 5A-I title in 2009, West Texas comprised about 4.5 percent of the two largest classes (22 of 483). When the Permian Panthers rebounded from the 1988 playoff disappointment described in the closing pages of Friday Night Lights and won the fifth of the school’s six state championships the following year, West Texas made up 12.5 percent of the two largest classifications (48 of 385).
“It’s still a very good brand of football,” said Abilene Coach Mike Fullen, whose Eagles won three 5A Division I playoff games last year before losing to eventual champion Aledo (the school just west of Fort Worth that has won twelve titles since 1998). “The thing that gets us is depth. When we go into different places, we’re still going to be the smaller school.”
Darren Allman’s perspective on the topic might be unique. Allman played for Permian’s 1984 championship team and became the first alum to return as head coach, in 2005. He guided the Panthers to undefeated regular seasons in 2007 and ’08, but Permian couldn’t get past the third round of the playoffs. Following that level of success, Allman left for Austin Westlake. He then became a coach or administrator for football programs in Dallas–Fort Worth and East Texas before going into private business this year.
“That was a really hard decision to make,” Allman said of leaving Permian for Westlake. He cited factors such as a strong working relationship with the superintendent overseeing Westlake, what he called a “different level of expectations” in the elementary school his children would attend, and frustration with his teams hitting a playoff wall at Permian.
“The year before I got [to Permian], they had not won a district game,” Allman said. “We made a turnaround in that program fast, but people can forget that real quickly once you’ve gotten back on the winning track. All of a sudden, if you’re not careful, you’re the guy who can’t get past the third round.”
Veteran West Texas sportswriter Mike Lee recalled a conversation with Gaines during the coach’s second stint at Permian, after he followed Allman in 2009. Lee said Gaines, who died in 2022, told him recruiters from major colleges were no longer coming to see his players.
Allman said he believes the phenomenon of Friday Night Lights harmed Permian’s football program. “I think most would tell you that it kind of changed the focus and became a distraction,” he said. “From just the day in, day out grind that defined what Permian football really was. Permian became what it became and won championships year in, year out because of a work ethic and an attention to detail and things that were unmatched, really, at that time.”
This year’s Panthers are rolling, with a 7–0 record under Jeff Ellison heading into this Friday’s showdown with Legacy, which will help decide the district winner. Yet Permian is one of three unbeaten 6A teams not in this week’s top 25, as compiled by Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, even though 14 of the ranked teams have losses; some of those teams were beaten by teams above them on the list. The other unranked unbeatens are Cypress Woods and Tomball, both in the Houston area.
The lone West Texas school in DCTF’s class 5A ranking is Lubbock-Cooper, number eight in Division II, at 7–1. The Pirates are the most recent West Texas school to play in a class 5A or 6A state semifinal, in 2021.
Allman said West Texas schools have traditionally trailed in terms of facilities, but both he and Midland ISD executive athletic director Wes Torres said that gap is closing. In Midland, voters approved a bond issue last year to replace the current campuses of Legacy and Midland High with new locations that will include indoor practice facilities. “Kids nowadays want to be in the best facilities possible,” Torres said. “They want to be able to be proud of where they work out.” He credited superintendent Stephanie Howard, a former coach, for supporting athletics along with academics.
Torres also said coaching salaries at West Texas schools are generally competitive with those in the state’s metro areas. He, along with Legacy’s Hartman, expects enrollment at Midland’s two class 6A schools to increase after the moves to the new campuses. The larger student bodies would likely mean deeper pools of athletic talent for the schools’ sports programs.
The next biannual UIL reclassification, in 2026, should decrease West Texas’s footprint in 6A and increase it in 5A. Frenship ISD, just outside Lubbock, is scheduled to open Memorial High next fall. It’s likely that Frenship High, also a 6A District II title contender this season, and Memorial will play in class 5A.
“There’s only going to be five of us,” Hartman said of the Midland district. “We’ve made our decision” not to split into separate schools as enrollment grows.
“It’s different,” he added about the region’s still-fervent football culture. “It’s hard to explain. It’s still like Texas A&M–Texas when we play the Permian Panthers.”
