by Nick Eatman
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to every raised eyebrow, every optimistic grin, and for anyone and everyone who told me this book “was a great idea” or something they “couldn’t wait to read.” There were many long nights, bumps in the road from start to finish, but those encouraging words along the way from colleagues, friends, and certainly my family helped me push through to the end.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Introduction
Prologue: Expecting the Best
1. Prep Work
2. Clouds Rolling In
3. Full of Suspense
4. Broken Dreams
5. Going, Going … Gone
6. Threading the Needle
7. Mismatched
8. Bring It Home
9. More Pain Than Rain
10. Coming Up Short
11. Hello & Goodbye
12. Two Kinds of Turnovers
13. Road Warriors
14. When It Rains, It Storms
15. Surprise, Surprise
16. Winter Wonderland
17. Bowl of Fun
18. Changing Colors
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Photo Section
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
In football, at any level, you never know what is going to happen. It doesn’t matter if it’s high school, college, or the NFL, that’s the beauty of the game, the frustration of it, and sometimes both at the same time.
Unpredictability is why we watch football; why we, as fans, stick around even when all signs point to the game being over. It’s what happens just when you think you know the end of the story. It’s what happens even when you think the end has already been written.
My unpredictable journey writing this book began long before the 2015 football season. The idea first began in the fall of 2013. I had just published a biography of Art Briles called Looking Up and was working on a collection of Dallas Cowboys stories titled If These Walls Could Talk, when my thoughts shifted to a possible third book.
But time was limited, especially since I was traveling around to promote the Baylor book in Waco on Saturday; attending every Cowboys game on Sunday, home and away; and then trying to squeeze in some Friday night high school action with the Plano Wildcats, a team I had followed over the years thanks to a couple of friends on the coaching staff.
One night around 11 p.m., though, while flipping through the channels on television, I found some unexpected inspiration. The show Modern Family has been one of my favorites, and I have seen dozens of episodes. But on this night, as I watched the episode bounce back and forth between three different families and three different sets of issues, yet all seemingly wanting the same goal for each other … it hit me.
Right then and there is where this idea first popped into my head: I wanted to write a book on the three levels of football in Texas, showing just how different, yet similar, the sport can be when it’s played for the most passionate football fans in the country. Whether it’s the high schooler preparing for his SAT test, the college kid studying for his next trigonometry exam, or a rookie linebacker for the Cowboys digging into his playbook for an upcoming game against the Washington Redskins, there are parallels, problems, and plays that speak to every level of the game.
Obviously, the interest in high school, college, and pro football is vastly different. Only a handful of high school games are ever televised during the regular season. Conversely, just a few games in big-time college football are played without TV exposure, and in the NFL, fans now have the ability to watch every game coast to coast.
Still, no matter the day, no matter the place, and no matter the amount of media attention, the goal, especially in Texas, remains the same: win. Once the shoulder pads come on, the helmets gets strapped tight, and the scoreboards light up, it doesn’t matter if it’s the Cowboys’ Tony Romo, the Bears’ Seth Russell, or even the Wildcats’ Matt Keys; they’re all just playing quarterback in a kid’s game that has now become America’s favorite sport.
And in Texas, it’s a way of life.
And so that became the goal for this book: chronicle an entire football season from the inside out, from start to finish.
As I settled in to write about the 2015 football season in Texas, I honestly had no idea what to expect from any of these three programs. I’ve been covering football for over 20 years and the thing that never ceases to amaze me is what the beginning of each season feels like—that blank slate when it seems almost anything can happen. You might think you know your team and what they’re capable of (or not capable of), but until that first snap, there’s still a part of you that thinks: anything is possible.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was hopeful about the stories I would get entering the 2015 season. Each of these teams had strong showings the previous year. Each seemed, at least on paper, to have the tools to do it again. Would teams make the playoffs? Would they go all the way? Would there be injuries? Would the coaches keep their jobs?
The thing about football stories is that, as unpredictable as they are, if you’re a fan who’s been around, you think you know all the different ways they can end. You’ve seen the seasons when success comes out of nowhere. The places when expectations override talent. The times when everything is there on paper, but for some reason it never translates to the actual game. Sure, things might be unpredictable, but watch football long enough, and even the unpredictability has a pattern to it.
Perhaps that’s where the 2015 season, or to be more specific, Baylor’s 2015 season, became a different story altogether. For a team hopeful of winning the school’s first-ever national title, losing three quarterbacks throughout the season should’ve been the biggest hurdle to overcome. But that was just a puddle of water compared to the deluge of problems the Bears would eventually face, problems that would shake not only Baylor’s football program but also the university and the world of college football as a whole. While this is a story that continues to unfold even as I write this, I’ve done my best to capture the story as it currently stands, even as much about the facts and the decisions that surround them remains shrouded in mystery.
Ultimately, the events at Baylor highlight the reality of playing in football’s biggest state: whether it’s Plano, Baylor, or the Cowboys, football seasons rarely just end. Sure, the games finish around November and December, with a few more played in January, but football is a 365-day-a-year sport that never comes to a complete stop, particularly in the Lone Star State. Football doesn’t stop when the teams leave the field. It doesn’t stop when hope for the playoffs is lost. It doesn’t stop when players realize that their time wearing the team’s jersey is ending. And because it never stops, the problems that follow teams and players onto the field aren’t always easy to separate from the problems that follow them off.
In Texas, football truly is a way of life. While each level of the game has its fans, football is far greater than any one day of the week. Here, game day lives three days a week—Friday, Saturday, Sunday—which means the players, the coaches, and the fans have to be ready for whatever comes their way, all season long.
PROLOGUE: EXPECTING THE BEST
Friday
Starting in late August, Plano, Texas gets a bit quiet on Friday evenings. The family-owned diners, the antique shops, and even the popular Dairy Queen all have one t
hing in common: they flip their signs over to Closed, so that everyone can make it to the stadium to watch the game. And if their team is on the road, the town shuts down even earlier, so that the caravan of polished cars can make the trek to the nearby rival.
In truth, Plano isn’t that unique in that regard. High school football is a way of life for just about every town in Texas, although make no mistake, the population doesn’t have to be less than six digits to carry out this tradition. Plano, a northern suburb of Dallas that was once considered in the country, is now anything but rural. In fact, Plano’s population in 2014 was more than 275,000, making it the ninth-largest city in the state. And in terms of enrollment, three of the largest schools in Texas all reside in the Plano Independent School District. Even as late as 1970, Plano’s population was under 20,000, but by 1980, thanks to at least one hundred new businesses sprouting up in the area, Plano had exploded to more than 72,000 people.
More families mean more kids. More kids mean a bigger pool of players from which to choose and that typically results in better football teams. And while Plano Senior High did win two championships in the 1960s as a small 2A school, the Wildcats quickly became one of the biggest and best programs in Texas, winning seven state titles overall by 1994, including three at the 5A level.
Serving as a first-year assistant coach on that 1994 squad was an ultra-intense go-getter named Jaydon McCullough, who didn’t need to be sold on the school’s tradition. He had been a standout player for the Wildcats in 1979 and 1980 with hopes of coaching at Plano one day. And in his very first year on staff, he not only picked up one state championship ring in football; he earned another as an assistant on the boys’ soccer team, which also claimed a title that spring.
One school year, two state championship rings? This coaching thing wasn’t so bad, huh?
Fast-forward two decades and McCullough was still chasing that third ring. And the chase seemed to get more intense with every passing year, especially since 2008 when McCullough was promoted to head coach. On the surface, McCullough wasn’t just the shortest coach on the staff; his 5–7 stature probably had him under many of his varsity players. But McCullough more than made up for what he lacked in sheer height with extreme intensity. And he was a big believer in physical fitness, biding by his own rule that “working out every day helps me both mentally and physically.” At fifty-three years old, he filled out his shirt with a stronger upper body. Full of dark, curly hair, McCullough had an infectious smile, but it was rarely shown on the football fields, either in a game or practice.
For McCullough, winning was truly the only thing that matters. And his teams had still done well, making the playoffs six times through his first seven seasons as head coach for an overall record of 45–33. But what might be successful to some programs only whetted the appetite of the folks at Plano.
No one understood that more than McCullough, who not only felt the pressure to win, but seemed to welcome it. He had a photo hanging above the desk in his office of three former head coaches at Plano—John Clark, Tom Kimbrough, and Gerald Brence—who all earned at least one state title.
Plano’s main home stadium was aptly named John Clark Field for the legendary coach who won two state championships. With two other high schools in the Plano Independent School District, there was now a high demand for the facility. So the Wildcats occasionally also played home games at nearby Tom Kimbrough Stadium, which is named after the coach for whom McCullough played during his high school days and who won three state crowns. And the man who promoted McCullough to be Plano’s varsity coach was Gerald Brence, winner of the 1994 title and now the district’s athletic director. All three still stayed visible in the program, despite Clark and Kimbrough officially being retired.
As McCullough entered his thirtieth season in coaching, this was exactly where he wanted to be—as it always had been. A few years into his career, McCullough had scribbled words down on a piece of paper that he still kept to this day:
My goal is to one day become the head coach of the Plano Wildcats.
But while he was living his dream, he knew there was unfinished business ahead. At some schools, postseason appearances or playoff victories were the measure. At Plano, the goal was to win championships, a reality that McCullough and his coaching assistants were reminded of daily when they walked past the school’s trophy case. For many of the school’s fans, rooting for the team went beyond just watching the current crop of Wildcats, and instead it was an opportunity for them to relive some of the glory years when they themselves were either playing on the same field or cheering from the sidelines or even participating in the drill team or marching band. And that trophy case, like the fans themselves, was a direct link to the program’s past glory.
And because the goal never changed, the expectations never wavered either. Regardless if the crop of returning players appeared to be promising with several experienced seniors or if the cupboard looked bare, the ultimate objective was to win a ring. That pressure was both exciting and daunting. The same thing that kept McCullough up at night was the same thing that got him up in the morning.
Heading into the 2015 campaign, McCullough’s spirits were higher than ever, especially coming off a 7–4 season that saw the Wildcats return to the playoffs, albeit for another first-round exit. Just winning seven games was quite a feat in itself, though, considering Plano was placed in a nine-team district, the largest in Class 6A. Not only did it include neighboring Allen High School, which won its third straight state title in 2014, but always formidable teams such as Flower Mound Marcus, McKinney Boyd, Hebron, Lewisville, and, of course, the two crosstown rivals, Plano East and Plano West.
Eight district games on the schedule meant Plano had only two non-district contests to work out the kinks. In the past, teams would have as many as three, sometimes four or five, opportunities to fully get prepared for the games that really counted, the district play.
But with only two non-district games, including an opener against traditional power John Tyler High School out of Tyler, Texas, Plano put even more emphasis on a scrimmage with Mesquite High School, located in the east Dallas suburb of the same name.
These controlled scrimmages had no real scoreboard and were designed to give both teams a chance to evaluate themselves against comparable competition. The goal was to execute and stay healthy—and not necessarily in that order. A year ago, the Wildcats had lost their backup quarterback, Matt Keys, to a broken collarbone in this scrimmage with Mesquite. And it’s likely Keys would’ve played considerable time after starter Brooks Panhans broke his foot in the 2014 season opener, forcing Plano to call up a junior varsity quarterback to run the show for most of the 2014 season.
This time around, Plano entered its workout with Mesquite still unclear about the quarterback position. Keys, a senior who looked the part at 6–4, didn’t have the most accurate arm or the greatest athletic ability, but he offset both with toughness. He was competing in practice with junior Aaron Regas, a cornerback the last two years who provided more quickness but with a lesser arm.
After the scrimmage, neither of the two wowed the coaches with impressive plays, but each also really didn’t do anything to lose the job. For Plano, the decision came down to common sense more than anything. McCullough knew the defense lacked depth. Moving Regas to quarterback only thinned out the unit even more. It’s not like Keys was going to switch over to the other side of the ball. Starting Keys and keeping Regas on defense not only satisfied the defensive coaches; the move also seemed best for the offense as well. Quarterback, after all, would take a backseat to the running attack.
At the center of that attack was Brandon Stephens, a three-year letterman who had been a contributor since his freshman year. One of the nation’s top recruits, Stephens entered fall practices with a list of schools in the hunt for furthering his education, including Alabama, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Stanford. Stephens looked a bit t
all for a traditional running back, standing a little over six feet, but he’d proven he could get low and break tackles while also using long strides for breakaway runs. He was a first-team “Super Team” selection in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, a magazine that is the “bible” for everything football in Texas.
So how much was it worth to have one of the best running backs in the state? Plano, with its lack of experience at quarterback, lack of playmakers at wide receiver, lack of size on the offensive line, and lack of depth on defense, was about to find out.
Saturday
On a steamy Texas evening in mid-July 2009, Art Briles sat in a popular barbecue spot near Austin. He was supposed to be on vacation, as the football season was still about six weeks away.
After just one year as the new head coach at Baylor University, a season that ended with a 4–8 record but included more hard-fought games than the program had seen in some time, the arrow was pointing up for Briles and his team. So while the rest of his family was focused on the brisket and ribs, he had other thoughts on his mind.
“You know, I really think Robert can win the Heisman. He’s that good,” Briles said of his soon-to-be sophomore quarterback, Robert Griffin III. “If we can win some games, he’ll have a chance when he’s a junior or senior. If he does that, we’ll be in good shape and can get a lot of good kids in here. Man, what we need to do is get a new stadium someday and bring football back to the campus. That’s what I’m really trying to do.”
Fast-forward six years to another afternoon of sweltering heat in Waco. It’s mid-August and all of those dreams Briles had shared back in that restaurant had come to fruition.
He was 100 percent right about Griffin, who brought home the Heisman Trophy in 2011, a season in which he guided Baylor to a 10–3 record. And Briles was certainly spot-on about turning the program around, as the Bears went to five straight bowl games from 2010 to 2014, also winning the school’s first Big 12 title in 2013, which earned the team a BSC berth in the Fiesta Bowl.