This week, two Texas high school football games will be shown on national television on Saturday: Euless Trinity at Odessa Permian and Miami Northwestern against Southlake Carroll in Dallas.
Those games, to be televised live on FSN Southwest and ESPNU, respectively, are the latest signs that high school sports has become big business.
As advertisers and media outlets continue to find a national audience with an appetite for high school sports, game coverage has multiplied from local newspapers to national magazines and Web sites.
The Northwestern-Carroll game, which will be played at Southern Methodist’s 32,000-seat Ford Stadium, has drawn unusual attention. It features the nation’s top two teams as picked by several publications, including Sports Illustrated and USA Today.
“I think it’s probably the most-talked-about interstate high school game that a team from Texas has played - ever,” said Bobby Burton, editor at Rivals.com.
The game between the top high school teams from Florida and Texas, billed “Clash of Champions” by its Dallas-based promoter, did not come together by accident. It’s yet another game organized, produced and sold by sports marketing companies finding lucrative paydays in high school sports.
Enter TITUS Sports Marketing of Dallas, which finds businesses eager to associate themselves with high school sports in football-crazy Texas.
In 2004, it sold the naming rights to Tyler’s Rose Stadium to a health care company, a deal worth $1.2 million for 12 years, TITUS president Dave Stephenson said. It also sold the naming rights to the indoor practice facility at Carroll, which has won four Class 5A state titles in the last five years and 80 of its last 81 games.
For the “Clash of Champions,” Stephenson said his company is paying Northwestern’s travel costs, including airfare, charter buses and hotel bills.
The game fulfills a two-year contract with Carroll, which included a home game last season against Louisiana powerhouse Shreveport Evangel Christian. For that game, Carroll kept all the revenue from ticket sales, parking and concessions.
For this game, Carroll will keep 10 percent of every ticket sold at the school before game da. Walk-up ticket sales, concessions, parking and advertising will go to the marketing firm.
Similar games exist elsewhere. This month in Ohio, Burger King sponsored a series of 11 games called the Kirk Herbstreit Ohio vs. USA Challenge. At least 13 of USA Today’s preseason top 25 teams will play in similar national events this season, with title sponsors including Nike, Dodge and State Farm.
TV networks have signed on. The ESPN family of networks will televise 16 high school football games this season. That’s up from 13 in 2006, three in 2005 and one each in 2004 and 2003.
Magazines and Web sites have profited from the realization that high school sports sells. Burton, the Rivals.com editor, has made a career out of identifying and serving an audience that craves high school sports news.
Sports Illustrated, which launched a high school football column this year, struck readership gold with a 2005 project where it ranked the nation’s top 25 high school athletic programs. It was the third-most-read story in the magazine since 1991, said senior editor B.J. Schecter.
In Texas, where big-school state championship games have been televised since 1990, all this interest translates to national exposure. Maybe 20 to 25 teams might appear on TV, said Charles Breithaupt, athletic director for the University Interscholastic League.
The UIL protects schools with its Friday night ban on TV and Web casts. The hope is a TV blackout ensures fans keep coming out, protecting revenues for the roughly 1,200 schools that ESPN would never visit.
“No matter what someone does on a national level,” Burton said, “the real passion will always exist in a local stadium on a Friday night."
