LLion22

There are halftime shows I thoroughly enjoy, but these are typically with smaller schools or during the playoffs when band directors are past all of the competition gobble-dee-gook and can put on a halftime performance that is actually fun to watch. I grew up watching great band performances in northeast Texas, with a lot of military style marching bands. Now, I'm in the Austin area, and it seems all bands here are obsessed with some kind of weird looking showband stuff (I guess this is what some would call "pageantry") with flags or dancers that look like they've never had a lesson trying to do some ridiculous looking mix between dance and ballet moves. Almost all the bands in my area now have signs about the size of an I-35 billboard that I can only guess are an attempt to help them tell a story? With most of the bands I'm seeing, the main story that's coming across to me is, we must use this time to prepare ourselves for the real competition on Saturday, this is our dress rehearsal, and if you don't care to watch the 300lb dancer with a uniform that is 4 sizes too small, too bad.

Amen to that. A little off track for this thread, but I'm so sick of the entire band halftime "thing" with the schools that I typically follow during the regular season that I've stopped going to some games because I don't want to get stuck with a 35-40 minute halftime. It may be time to start breaking out some football scrimmages in the middle of some band competitions and see how the band directors and fanatical band parents appreciate having to wait until we decide we've played enough and are willing to let them back on the field to resume their band stuff. I would guess that about 3/4 of the ball games I go to, the bands go over the allocated 28 minutes. Ridiculous.

I generally prefer older stadiums with character and history. A few outside the area that folks have been talking about, a little more south and west: 1 - Rutledge Stadium in the Leander ISD is excellent. They used very large Austin white rock to line the perimeter and with no track, the stands are very close to the field. It has only been open for about 5 seasons, but has good character and with the stands close to the field, it makes the fans feel very more involved in the game. 2 - Alamo Stadium in just north of downtown San Antonio. Built in WWII (I think), it has been renovated recently, but they maintained a lot of the old character. It's a great setting with a view of downtown to the south for the fans sitting on the visitor's side. 3 - Lago Vista - They opened a new stadium last year and it's nice with the great hill country location, but their old stadium is the one that belongs on this list. It seemed that about half their seating was made up of fans sitting in their lawn chairs on the hillside between the home bleachers and field. Visitors better arrive early because once 150-200 were there, the rest were standing. One of the best things, the Lago booster club wasn't concerned about sticking it to the fans for every penny they can squeeze out of them. Seems like tickets were $5, hamburger about $2-3, hotdog $1, etc. Hopefully they're keeping it this way. I've encountered this at several small school stadiums, but seems the 4A and up have lost their minds. 4 - Rogers - Haven't been there in at least 4-5 years, but it was interesting, old, small, stands right on the field, fans very in touch with all that was going on. Just a great environment. 5 - House Park stadium in downtown Austin. Great setting, Great old school stadium. Hard to believe the Austin ISD hasn't come up with a great plan to sale this prime real estate for some serious cash and have another high rise residential tower built here. This is another that was likely built near the end of WWII or shortly after. It could be the best.

Might as well go with a proven winner... Jason Herring

Might as well get ready because it's coming soon to a team near you.

The numbers tell the whole story. A drop of 38% in a single year's attendance is terrible and can only be attributed to the location and the venue, both being significantly less attractive to the majority of Texas high school football fans. Get it back to Arlington ASAP and keep it there. As for the "Houston" posters that say Houston has bigger fish to fry, enjoy the fish and the rest of us will enjoy football at it's best in Arlington and guaranteed we won't think twice about the lackluster event that was this year's championships at Houston's NRG. The entire environment surrounding NRG, speaking of the surrounding area and the stadium, is so far below AT&T and the environment surrounding AT&T that this is an absolute no brainer. I have it on good authority that the UIL knows and thinks this too, they just can't come out and say it.

Is that their (Arp's) record? That's 70%. I guess that's an average that an overall "good" team would expect to win.

Where the heck is Arp? I figured they won at least 75 with all the great things I hear about them from JJ.

Don't think I've ever indicated I'm a fan of a particular team. Just interested in how so many on this site have such disdain for something (a team and coach) they know so little about. I understand people think they know because they've read a lot of "stuff" posted by others that also don't know what they're talking about. Might want to spend a little time in a community and around some of the people before casting your lot with a bunch of haters. Just think about a for a moment before discarding without a thought.

NRG was better than I expected, but cannot compare to AT&T. The part of town and overall environment is just not comparable to what I would prefer if given a choice. Take it back to AT&T and keep it there unless there's a legitimate conflict like there was this year with the Cowboys game Saturday night.

Well, it would seem the "big boys" (aka Waskom) already got their shot at Refugio 2 years ago when Waskom had about 100 more kids on the roll. Please do remind me what happened to the "big boys"??? Right, right, right... you haven't stopped crying about it since. Why not give Herring a call and get scheduled to play them in pre-district. He has a real hard time getting the "big boys" that aren't to chicken to play. There are occasionally a few programs that will do more than talk, like Yoe. What happened with that? They split wins, so between that and what they did to your "big boys" at Waskom, looks like Refugio has no trouble holding their own with your mighty "big boys." Yeah, Waskom doesn't want anymore of that getting schooled by a team with 1/3rd less kids to pull from.

Are you talking about the Refugio QB? Yes, he has all the physical tools in the world, but he acts like he thinks he's an "all world" QB, but then performs subpar and behaved extremely poorly once things weren't going so good.

What a great post! Not. One more classy east texan filled with hate. Where's the Henderson football team spending this weekend? Guess they'd rather be sitting at home that playing in a championship game.

Wow, 1WildCat just can't get over it. Imagine how this Canadian team would have destroyed Waskom. Guarantee you won't see any Refugio fans complaining about how much Canadian scored.... much less two years later. Hopefully last night's win will get you over the hump and get you where you can finally let go of the pain you're still feeling from that spankin' from two years ago. Canadian was outstanding. Their athletes looked as good as I've seen at that level. Definitely a step or two above where Cisco was a few years ago. Having watched them followed by the 3A games, I feel very safe putting up a year's pay that they could have taken both 3A crowns this year. They are that good. Refugio... an embarrassment. Not the score or even the performance, but the attitude, penalties, etc. They could have played a perfect game and I believe they would have still lost by 3 TDs. Instead of encouraging each other and keeping their heads up, there was a lot of complaining at each other and none more than their QB. No way he ever makes it on a D1 team. True character shows when things aren't going so good and Refugio once again failed the character test. I realize that's a blanket statement covering the whole team and the majority of players were not conducting themselves this way. Kudos to those that did maintain themselves and not give in to the despicable attitudes of a few.

Maybe Herring gave Waskom just the push they needed to come back last year and win it all. Had Refugio not bloodied Waskom's nose so bad in the beatdown of all beatdowns, Waskom might be sitting at home. I know some of my worst beatings in life have pushed me to get better than I thought I could be, better than I was before. Maybe instead of all the bitterness, or whatever it is, you ought to send Herring a Christmas card from all Waskom fans. Heck, you will likely walk away tomorrow with something Herring hasn't done, back-to-back state championships. Thanks Coach Herring.