A Tradition Unlike Any Other...Friday Night Lights

Last Friday night was the home opener for the Allen Eagles. Allen, TX is a mid-sized suburb north of Dallas, bordered by towns that you might be more familiar with like Plano and Frisco. But Allen is somewhat unique for a town of 100k, in that it only has one high school for the whole town. Compare that to Frisco with 177k residents and 11 high schools, with a 12th under construction.

Allen’s size gives it unique advantages and disadvantages. They have tremendous scale at almost 7,000 students, but it is also easy for a student to get lost.?To call it one high school is a bit of a misnomer because they have 3 campuses (Freshman, Main HS, STEM) and the school is subdivided into 10 “houses”, each with their own principal; essentially schools within a school.

With one high school you have one football team. That means that your best players, from all over town, end up in the same place. In fact, Kyler Murray, current quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals “moved” to Allen for high school, in order to play for the Eagles. (Technically you are not allowed to change districts purely to participate in sports, but this *is* Texas.)

In the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s Plano was a Texas football powerhouse.?And at 287k residents they have roughly the same number of high schools per capita as Allen, but they split their players among 3 high schools today, which means that the best QB and the best receiver might play against each other.

Plano won 7 state titles in 9 attempts ending in 1994, but they have not been back to the title game since. Allen has won the state title 5 out of 5 times since 2008. Kyler Murray did not lose a single high school football game as the Eagles won the state championship three years in a row while he was here. Allen also plays in a $60M, 18,000 seat stadium (21,000 with standing room), and their new head coach is Chad Morris, the former head coach at Arkansas, SMU and most recently the offensive coordinator at Auburn. This is high school football.

While Allen does concentrate their talent on one team, that is not what beats you. Allen beats you with endurance. It is not uncommon for Allen to dress 90 or more players for a game, while most other schools have 50 or 60. Allen can send in fresh receivers on every play and they have entire units devoted to special teams. After the first quarter Friday night the score was tied. Plano East scored once more to take the lead, but then Allen put up 5 unanswered touchdowns and the game was essentially over. Plano East scored two more times late in the 4th, but by that time Allen had the game well in hand.

That got me thinking about large companies with immense scale. You might think that with its size, Allen would win the state championship every year, but they have lost the last 3 years. In fact, they have not even made the finals since 2017. That is because innovation often trumps size and scale. Innovation allowed IBM to grow and dominate in the 60s and 70s, MSFT to dominate in the 80s and 90s, and Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to dominate now.

I wonder what new thing will come along to challenge big tech. Rest assured it will be something. What do you think will be the next wave?

Win or lose, most autumn Friday nights you can find me at Eagle Stadium, Section 203 Row Q, Seat 10. If you find yourself in Dallas on a Friday night between August and December, hit me up.