This site contains affiliate links to products. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

To read more and look inside an individual book just tap an image below

Found Inside: "At Eighty-Three Years old, Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Don Maynard still chuckles at the difference between the tiny Texas towns he lived in compared to his first trip to New York City... Donald Rogers Maynard was born on January 25, 1935, in the small town of Crosbyton, Texas... When it was time to go to high school, the Maynard's lived in a rural area about 50 miles west of Lubbock. Maynard attended the Three Way Independent School District in Maple Texas in Bailey County. The Three Way School was a six-man high school team when Maynard began playing varsity football. For his junior season in 1951, Maynard and his family moved to Colorado City which was a little bit bigger than Don was used to . . . " Read more Look inside  . . . for more like this please see Texas Football Heroes - County by County

by BJ Gonzales

Muleshoe High School, home of the Muleshoe Mules, has a football history that is rich in tradition, hard work, and a passion for the sport. If you have ever been to Muleshoe, you will know that we are famous for a few things. We are 18 miles from Earth.... Texas that is, we have some of the best Mexican food this side of the Rio Grande, and most importantly, you can find most of the community at Benny Douglas Stadium on Friday Nights . . . Read more Look inside

Born in I934 in Justiceburg, Texas, Norm Cash came to Sul Ross with a football scholarship in I953. He could have played professional football but turned it down. Starting with the Chicago Bears, followed by the Cleveland ... Read more Look inside

Jim Dent, author of the New York Times bestselling The Junction Boys, returns with his most powerful story of human courage and determination.

"But he was determined to play his senior season at Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas. The lanky end, in spite of being the only player on the field wearing glasses, surprised them all. He was selected to the all-conference team . . . " Read more Look inside

A cross between Friday Night Lights and The Atomic City Girls, When The Men Were Gone is a debut historical novel based on the true story of Tylene Wilson, a woman in 1940's Texas who, in spite of extreme opposition, became a female football coach in order to keep her students from heading off to war. Football is the heartbeat of Brownwood, Texas. Every Friday night for as long as assistant principal Tylene Wilson can remember, the entire town has gathered in the stands, cheering their boys on. ... Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "... best that we had.... I was a lot different player from Jim. Jim was a big guy. I was short and stocky.” Weatherall, 6'4", 230 pounds, lived on a ranch in West Texas and played football at White Deer High School after previously living in Norman ... " Read more Look inside

"He recalled his experience as a 12-year-old hitchhiking to Childress, Texas, to see FDR. His father didn't know that he was ducking out of school for the trip. He hitchhiked there, worked his way “between those legs right up to where I ..." Read more Look inside

From Junior High to the Sugar Bowl, an Inside Look at Football Through the Eyes of An Official

"If the Southwest Conference had called me when I was just starting out in Morton, Texas, and asked me to work SWC games without pay, I would have jumped at the chance. I'm sure 99 percent of the officials I've known would have taken that . . ." Read more Look inside

"Cotton was born in the 1930s on a cattle and goat ranch in Coryell County, Texas during a time of progressive, dramatic changes in social and economic conditions throughout the nation. His athletic career began at Gatesville High School and led to a scholarship to play football at Baylor University.  Enrolling at Baylor University was the first big step in a lifetime dedicated to the football profession..." Read more

"Charlie Johnston clearly has more wins as a football coach than any other football coach in the Panhandle/Plains region. Charlie grew up in Paducah, Texas, played high school football, basketball and baseball. He was an outstanding quarterback at Paducah..." Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "At Eighty-Three Years old, Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Don Maynard still chuckles at the difference between the tiny Texas towns he lived in compared to his first trip to New York City... Donald Rogers Maynard was born on January 25, 1935, in the small town of Crosbyton, Texas... When it was time to go to high school, the Maynard's lived in a rural area about 50 miles west of Lubbock. Maynard attended the Three Way Independent School District. The Three Way School was a six-man high school team when Maynard began playing varsity football. For his junior season in 1951, Maynard and his family moved to Colorado City which was a little bit bigger than Don was used to . . . " Read more Look inside

by Bill Laird

"Another congregation from Ralls, Texas also agreed to help support us. Having coached football and track at both Ralls and Wolfforth, and worshipping with those congregations during our time there, helped in influencing those brethren ..." Read more

by Aaron Latham

As romantic as The Bridges of Madison County, this moving, revealing, true story recounts the tale of an elderly couple, Clyde Latham and Gussie Lancaster, who find love in their eighties. "It  was about five years ago that Clyde Latham, a retired high school football coach in Spur, Texas, lost his wife of fifty years. He was alone and lonely until Gussie" . . Read more

An insightful documentary of how the Permian High School team of Odessa developed into perennial state champions in the super-competitive state of Texas.
"The Secret of Mojo" lays bare Permian's secrets in becoming the winningest 5A-football program in the Modern Era of Texas High School Football, garnering national recognition in the process . . . Read more

A "high porch picnic" is a Texas expression for "an exceptionally good time" During Hayden Fry's glorious career as one of college football's most unique coaches, that's a good way to describe his life. Ranked 10th on the all-time collegiate list for Division 1 victories, Fry successfully combined his football coaching savy with a down-home charm to make him one of the game's most colorful personalities. Hayden Fry tells of his childhood days in Odessa . . . Read more

Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa -- the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Socially and racially divided, Odessa isn't known to be a place big on dreams, but every Friday night from September to December, when the Panthers play football, dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Pulitzer Prize winner H. G. Bissinger unforgettably captures a season in the life of Odessa and shows . . . Read more Look inside

"High school football and mystery overlap as private detective Pete Hamilton is called upon to investigate the disappearance of a student at Permian High School. As Pete digs into the case, he delves deeper into Odessa's underbelly, eventually unearthing connections to the highest levels of Odessa's establishment--both in and out of football. . . . Read more Look inside

Stephenville Yellow Jacket Football

In Texas, high school football is king. If pigskin passion is no less intense among college and professional fans, enthusiasm for the schoolboy sport is more democratically spread throughout towns and communities, small and large. Almost any young man can play if he's willing to pay the price, work hard, and bring a bit of local, regional, or statewide glory to his hometown. Stephenville High School is one among an elite group of Texas football schools that has achieved at the highest level. The traditional rivalry games against Dublin . . . Read more Look inside

Dan Jenkins calls him "the greatest quarterback who ever lived, college or pro." Slingin' Sammy Baugh, who played for TCU and the Washington Redskins, single-handedly revolutionized the game of football. While the pros still wore leather helmets and played the game more like rugby, Baugh's ability to throw the ball with rifle-like accuracy made the forward pass a strategic weapon, not a desperation heave ...

Sammy Baugh spent the last 40 years of his life on the Double Mountain Ranch near Rotan Texas in Fisher County . . . Read more Look inside

School Days Around Pottsboro Texas 1850-1978

by Natalie Clountz Bauman

Tons of information and photographs of all of Northwestern Grayson County and especially the Pottsboro area's school from the 1850s to the 1970s. There are stories about the 1972 championship basketball team, the 1977-78 football team, many pages of the old Cardinal Courier newspaper from 1977 and 1978, it has the rare 1965 Georgetown school yearbook . . . Read more Look inside

Plainview, Texas, wasn't the biggest town in the Lone Star State in the '60s, with a little less than 20,000 residents. However, the Plainview Bulldogs football team put the West Texas town on the map by placing three former players in ... Read more Look inside

The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football

"... change of venue sent his brother, Howard Gossett, to nearby Memphis, Texas. Both trials were to set to begin the next month. When George H. Gossett's trial ended in a hung jury, Spurgeon Clark decided to take matters into his own hands ... Read more Look inside

"Kimbrough, a native of Haskell, Texas, was known locally as the “Haskell Hurricane.” He accepted a football scholarship to Tulane, but he was unhappy at the New Orleans school. Coaches there wanted him to play tackle. But Kimbrough liked to carry the ball. So he transferred to Texas A&M to play for the Aggies. It was 1938 and the fourth game of the season..." Read more

Since the first annual state football champion was crowned in 1920, Texas has never been the same. Today, millions of Texans gather in stadiums across the Lone Star State, eagerly awaiting that magical mid- to late-December moment when the season comes to its dramatic conclusion. "Stamford's small size notwithstanding, in an era prior to UIL supervision, the Bulldogs had beaten all comers for the 1916 West Texas championship. Wood's 1955 Stamford team..." Read more Look inside

"West Texas is full of small towns like Stamford. Texas is growing fast, but the small towns in West Texas are shrinking. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Texas added 1,000 new residents a day, but West Texas slowly ..." Read more Look inside

This landmark work explores the vibrant world of football from the 1920s through the 1950s, a period in which the game became deeply embedded in American life. "in 1939 and 1940, and in Stinnett, Texas, in 1947 Frankie Groves, a pretty 16-year-old girl succeeded in getting into Stinnett High's season ending game with archrival Groom and onto the nation's sports pages for doing so" . . . Read more Look Inside

How 10 Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Champion Team

The Junction Boys tells the story of Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's legendary training camp in the small town of Junction, Texas. In a move that many consider the salvation of the Texas A&M football program, Coach Bryant put 115 players through the most grueling practices ever imagined. Only a handful of players survived the entire 10 days, but they braved the intense heat of the Texas sun and the burning passion of their coach, and turned a floundering team into one of the nation's best. The Junction Boys is more than just a story of tough practices without water breaks. An extraordinary fellowship was forged from the mind-numbing pain. The thirty-five survivors bonded together like no other team in America. They profited from the Junction experience; the knowledge they took back . . . Read more

Found inside: "I told him no thanks, that if I were to coach it would have to be as a head coach somewhere. Robinson heard me. He go up and went to a nearby telephone and called a man who had called him from Benjamin, Texas, looking for a coach. Robinson motioned me over and I talked to the man on the other end of the line. It was D. V. Markham, superintendent of schools and a former football star at Hardin Simmons University. He offered me the job despite learning I didn't have a degree . . ." Read more Look inside

Gabriel “Gabe” Rivera was one of the greatest players in the history of Texas Tech football.... "Sports historian Jorge Iber’s newest book chronicles this Mexican American athlete’s rise to prominence and later life. Beginning with the Rivera family in Crystal City, Texas, a hotbed of Chicano activism in the late 1960s, Señor Sack seeks to understand how athletic success impacted the Rivera family’s most famous son on his route to stardom. Football provided this family with opportunities that were not often available to other Mexican Americans during the 1940s and 1950s ... Read more Look inside

by Spike Dykes

Tales from the Texas Tech Red Raiders Sideline will examine the games, stories, and players that have enriched the Red Raiders’ 79-year history. College football fans will get an inside look, as told by the school’s all-time most winningest coach, at one of the nation’s highest-scoring and most-dangerous dark-horse programs, along with a glance back at the players and coaches who helped build the Red Raiders’ successful tradition... read more

It has been eight years since Texas Tech University fired Mike Leach, its most successful football coach ever. Double T Double Cross released two years later, exposed the backroom deals behind his dismissal. Now Double Take reveals what has happened to the participants and events since with a new introduction and afterword to the 2017 edition. Even though life has moved on for the participants in the story, there remains a keen interest in Leach and what went on in Lubbock at the end of the 2009 football season. Leach, in his fifth year as head coach at Washington State University, remains innovative and forward-looking but he has not given up in seeking justice from Texas Tech... Read more Look inside

SWC Cartoon Book:

Over 25 Years of Cartoon History of Red Raider and SWC (Southwest Conference) Football. Plus a Nostalgic Look at Life in Raiderland By Cartoonist Dirk West Lubbock, Texas . . . Read more

Wahoo MckDaniel was raised in Midland  While he was in middle school, in Midland, one of his baseball coaches was George H. W. Bush. He was a Choctaw-Chickasaw Native American who achieved fame as a professional football player and later as a professional wrestler . . . read more about Wahoo

Found inside: "Opal Worthington was the oldest of three daughters and the closest thing to a boy in the family. She was her father's right hand. The Worthington's lived in a ramshackle house planted so deeply between the cotton and maize in West Texas that folks traveling Highway 208 between Colorado City and Snyder never dreamed it was there . . . "  Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "At Eighty-Three Years old, Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Don Maynard still chuckles at the difference between the tiny Texas towns he lived in compared to his first trip to New York City... Donald Rogers Maynard was born on January 25, 1935, in the small town of Crosbyton, Texas... When it was time to go to high school, the Maynard's lived in a rural area about 50 miles west of Lubbock. Maynard attended the Three Way Independent School District. The Three Way School was a six-man high school team when Maynard began playing varsity football. For his junior season in 1951, Maynard and his family moved to Colorado City which was a little bit bigger than Don was used to . . . " Read more Look inside

"Back in 1921, in Big Lake, Texas, two Catholic nuns invested in an oil well. This was allowed by their priest on one condition. He told them to baptize a rose, and sprinkle the petals in the oil well, and pray every day to Saint Rita for luck---to achieve the impossible and strike oil. During the down time from drilling, the workers built a baseball field near the rig. After seventeen months of digging and drilling..." Read more Look inside

Found inside: "Raul Flores, sheriff of Reeves County for sixteen years, was the stuff of legends---born in a dugout, shining boots in a cathouse at age seven, playing football for Bear Bryant at Texas A&M, and gunning down bandits as a young deputy. At least he said so. "Robin Hood or robbin' hood?" the Pecos Enterprise wondered . . . . . . Read more Look Inside

Fifty years ago Abilene High School, under legendary Coach Chuck Moser, became a football dynasty in Texas. Moser moved to Abilene in 1953 at age thirty-four. What followed were seven of the most amazing years in the rich history of Texas high school football. The 1954, 1955, and 1956 teams won state championships. From 1954 to 1957 the Eagles won an incredible forty-nine consecutive games. Abilene captured six district titles in a row in a rugged West Texas league . . . Read more Look inside

Game of My Life Texas A&M Aggies: Memorable Stories of Aggies Football

Game of My Life Texas A&M Aggies describes, in colorful detail, the single-favorite game of some of Texas A&M’s greatest football legends. Jack Pardee "The family then moved to San Antonio, San Angelo, and finally Christoval, Texas, habitat of precious mineral waters, in search of a little relief for Earl. “We'd lived on a farm up there in Iowa and Dad was so crippled that he couldn't do any work ... Read more Look inside

From Junior High to the Sugar Bowl, an Inside Look at Football Through the Eyes of An Official

President and CEO of a bank by day, Liner has been a Texas football official on Fridays and Saturdays for the past 35 years. Found inside: " During the game I looked down on at the sideline and happened to notice that my cousin, Danny Martin, was the head linesman on the officiating crew. At that time, he was a high school science teacher in nearby Shamrock, Texas. I had no idea he was going to officiate, and I was thinking how much I would love the opportunity to do that, too. Being a typical fan that day, I was watching my"  . . . Read more Look inside

"J. L. "Heavy" Slaughter was born April 1, 1921 to James and Dola Slaughter in Terrell, Texas. When he was in elementary school, his family moved to Kermit Texas. J. L. came by his nickname "Heavy" honestly due to his large size. Always big for his age, he made the varsity football team in the sixth grade! His coach said he had so many stripes on his sweater (for each year he played) that he looked like an escaped convict. After high school graduation in 1939, J. L. considered paying college football. However, the world was going to war..." Read more Look inside

"Wink, whose school football teams achieved near-legendary fame in the thirties, offers a good illustration of football's importance in the Permian Basin oil communities. Wink's high school football..." Read more

You watched him vie for the Heisman and national championship, and earn a third-round NFL draft spot. Now meet Colt McCoy up-close and personal!  "At any rate, you've already read how the wheels were greased for my departure from San Saba High School. From there we moved on to Kermit, Texas where I coached the Class 3A Kermit High football team ... which meant we were a good two hundred miles from family and our land interest outside of Abilene..." Read more Look inside

Legends of the Hall: 1950s captures a period of time when playing professional football was for tough, honest men who played solely for the love of the game.

Found Inside: "Turner stole 17 passes in his career, was AllNFL seven times, anchored four NFL championship teams, and intercepted four passes in five NFL title games. He retired from the Bears in 1952. He was born March 10, 1919, in Plains, Texas, and ... " Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "On March 10, 1919 Clyde Douglas Turner was born in a ranch shack on the high plains of far West Texas. The nearest mark of civilization was the tiny town of Plains, the county seat of Yoakum County. As someone who grew up in West Texas (Plains and Sweetwater), and played college ball at a school that was a long train ride or two-hop flight on a puddle jumper away from major cities, during an era when scouting was word of mouth, Turner was lucky to be discovered by the NFL at all ... Read more Look inside 

by Clyde Turner

A Sensation Star Tells How to Do It

Many black & white photos of 1940's football players and playing techniques.

Gabriel “Gabe” Rivera was one of the greatest players in the history of Texas Tech football.... "Sports historian Jorge Iber’s newest book chronicles this Mexican American athlete’s rise to prominence and later life. Beginning with the Rivera family in Crystal City, Texas, a hotbed of Chicano activism in the late 1960s, Señor Sack seeks to understand how athletic success impacted the Rivera family’s most famous son on his route to stardom. Football provided this family with opportunities that were not often available to other Mexican Americans during the 1940s and 1950s ... Read more Look inside

Resources:

West Texas History & Memories

Early Life in Texas County by County

Books about Texas People and Places

Amazing People from Texas County by County