"Smurf turf" is coming to Canutillo High.

West Texas's Canutillo Independent School District hasn't been bringing in much green of late, so they've decided to sing the $350,000 blues.

Last week, the CISD Board of Trustees approved the installation of a "smurf turf" field that will replace, for "student safety reasons," a green artificial playing surface.

Located approximately 15 miles northwest of El Paso, the town of Canutillo (with an estimated population of 5,500) and its Eagles, who compete in the large 4A division, will boast the only blue football field in West Texas. (Hidalgo High, located near McAllen, currently boasts a navy surface while New Braunfels's Canyon High competes on a neon red pitch.) Playing on a run-of-the-mill green field, last year's Canutillo team finished with a 7-4 record.

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If you're not a college football fan, you're unaware that today is National Signing Day, when high school seniors sign letters binding them to a college.

If you're a certain type of college football fan -- the type who obsesses over the decision-making process used by 18-year-old pampered jocks, for instance -- you know all too well what today is. It is the day that will make or break your favorite program. Until next year, that is.

Five things that make this day so damn silly for most of us:

5. The Hat Dance
People thought LeBron James overdid it with his self-loving televised declaration of where he'd play this season. They should see all the high schoolers teasing out -- on national TV -- where they will be going, using whatever props come in handy.

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High school football is usually the best provider of trick plays, because hey, it's high school and kids are easily distracted.

Pearland High won the 5A state crown in dramatic fashion over the weekend, knocking off favored Euless Trinity 28-24 in front of 43,000 fans at Cowboys Stadium.

Included in the Oilers' scoring was the trick play embedded above.

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Photo by Chasen Marshall

Yates High '85: the debate continues over whether it was the greatest Texas team ever.

Twenty-five years ago, Houston was home to, arguably, the greatest high school football team ever to take the field in Texas. During that season, Yates High was unstoppable on offense and impenetrable on defense. The team finished a perfect 16-0, racking up a still-record 659 points along the way. In the 5A state championship, in a game the media said Yates could not win, the team dominated the defending champs from Odessa Permian, 37-0.
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Let me preface this post by saying that I love my kids, all three of them. They are named James, Judy Anne, and Sammy and they are ages 12, 12, and 11.

They have all played sports since virtually the time they could walk and attending their sporting events -- whether it's soccer, football, baseball, whatever -- is one of my greatest thrills. As a parent, it's fun watching your kids compete. It never gets old.

That's the fun part. Unfortunately, the youth sports experience oftentimes also comes with a side of a douchebaggery, namely the small handful of parents whose scouting report on their kid is about three letter grades higher than it should be and who treats every single call like he has an eight-team parlay riding on the outcome of the game.

Every team seemingly has one, and the bigger the stakes (i.e. travel soccer, state cup) the louder he is. They're as woven into the fabric of youth sports as orange slices at halftime.

So were we really all that surprised when a bench-clearing brawl broke out between coaching staffs of a Pearland pee wee football game this week?

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Photo by Chasen Marshall

One of many Katy High TDs on opening night

​Click here for a slideshow from the Katy/North Shore game Friday night.

The east stands were alive and doused in red, with chants of "Ka-ty! Ka-ty! Ka-ty!" before the team had even taken the field. The number of dancers and cheerleaders rivaled that of the football team. Once the players broke through the massive banner, the roar of the crowd reached a new level. The first kickoff of the first Friday night of the 2010 high school football season was minutes away.

On the opposite sideline, eight members of the North Shore ROTC led the team onto the field, each bearing a flag with a single letter, reading "M-U-S-T-A-N-G-S". Above the packed North Shore stands, the press box was also full -- talk among the media was a close game. On the field, the end line was littered with photographers and their telephoto lenses.

The game between Katy and North Shore was the headline high school event in the region on Friday evening. All that was missing was the military fly-over.

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Sacred grounds

​This evening marks the start of another high school football season. Entire cities and towns will be shuttering their doors and congregating at the central holy ground: the football stadium. Well, that may not be the case in Houston, but certainly in Dillon and West Canaan. (Oh, those are fictional towns? Hollywood, you tricky minx, you!)

It's no secret that football is a big deal across the state of Texas. Some top college and professional talent was born and bred here, and the state continues to produce quality players year after year. By the rankings on MaxPreps.com, heading into the upcoming season, three of the top 25 programs in the nation are from the Lone Star State.

Hollywood really has done its best to capitalize on and bastardize football's place in the high school landscape, especially in Texas. True, there are those towns where football means more than the Virgin Mary, but that's not all of Texas.

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Clear eyes. Full heart. Can't lose...unless you got a name like this.

​When you live in Texas, you realize that certain things are sacred whether you like them or not. The Alamo, good barbeque and football are at the top of the list and when it comes to football, nothing is more sacred round these here parts than the high school variety.More »

​Up until about a week ago in football-crazed Katy, Nick Georgandis was kind of a big deal. The 36-year-old sportswriter covered Katy high school sports for over ten years at the Katy Times, and was described in a post on Ultimatekaty.com that has since apparently been taken down as "practically a household name." As of early last week, he served as both the sports editor and interim publisher for the Katy Times.

And now he has been abruptly fired.

Last Thursday, law enforcement officials in Katy seized his computers, searching for lewd pictures they say Georgandis received from young women who thought they were communicating with former Katy gridiron heroes Aundre Dean and Trent Hunter. (Dean is now at TCU; Hunter at Georgandis's alma mater Texas A&M)More »

Photo by Paul Knight

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Here at Hair Balls, we seem to talk a lot about Katy High School football, even though we try not to. When the high school playoffs started this year, we really wanted to cheer for Galveston Ball, and we thought The Woodlands and Hightower High School would surely go deep in the playoffs.

Those teams are gone.

Eight teams remain in 5A heading into the state semi-finals this weekend, and three are from the Houston area. Two, Cinco Ranch and Katy high schools, are from Katy.

In an ideal world, if both Katy teams continued to win, they would face each other in the final championship game, which would also probably be the biggest game in Katy history, which is saying a lot. But because of the playoff alignments, these two schools from the same town and same district have no shot at playing each other. (Katy High School and Klein, the other Houston area team, could possibly play for state, which would make plenty of high school fans happy.)

Katy and Cinco Ranch could both win state championships, but the debate of who is the best would not be settled.

"I'm for one state champion, and I'd love to see those guys play each other," Buddy Carlisle, a Texas rep for maxpreps.com and a former coach at Clear Creek High School, told Hair Balls. "They're both really good, so I'm sure there's a lot of people in the state that would like to see that game."


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