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 known as the Little Southwest Conference. In Moser's seven years, Abilene won seventy-eight games and lost only seven.
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The longest field goal in the history of football was kicked in Texas. But did you know it was love that first led a Swedish soccer player to Texas, where he still lives more than thirty years after his record-setting 69-yard field goal? That story is just one of dozens of unusual and behind-the- scenes stories veteran sports writer and broadcaster Al Pickett has compiled in more than twenty years of covering sports in Texas. Did you know that a tragedy on that same day that Ove Johansson kicked his record field goal changed University of Houston coach Art Briles' life forever? Did you know...

Coach Emory Bellard spent a remarkable 43-year football coaching career at both the high school and college level, where he helped teams win 12 district championships, five regional titles, and three state championships in 21 seasons as a high school coach in Texas. He also won five Southwest Conference crowns and two national titles during his collegiate career as an assistant coach at the University of Texas and as a head coach at Texas A&M and Mississippi State. Bellard collaborated with veteran sports writer Al Pickett, to tell the remarkable story of his career for the first time,...

Strongly inviting comparisons with the movie Remember the Titans, this book by veteran sports journalist and author Al Pickett is an inspiring, insider account of the Lubbock Estacado Matadors, who came together for love of a sport to become Texas State AAA High School football champions in their first year of eligibility.

In the late 1960s, the Lubbock Independent School District was pressured by the courts to address its still-segregated system, and its response was the new, integrated Estacado High School. Estacado's first head football coach, Jimmie Keeling, formed and fielded...