South Oak Cliff’s state title is a trophy of inspiration for all Texas inner city schools

Dallas South Oak Cliff’s football state championship last December does not mean every inner city team in Texas is suddenly a contender.

Reality needs to be a part of this conversation.

So does hope.

What SOC did provides both for every single inner city school in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth.

SOC’s greatest achievement may not be that Class 5A Division II state title won last season, but that it made hope a potential reality for every school just like it.

This is still high school football, and the players are kids. No need to crush all of their dreams just yet.

In the last 30 years success in the largest classifications of Texas high school football has steadily flowed to the suburbs in all of the major metro areas all over the state.

Southlake. Aledo. Katy. Plano. Allen. Austin Westlake and Austin Lake Travis.

(Of course, there is always Highland Park, which is in Dallas but is its own self-sustaining island surrounded by Dallas ISD.)

For too long players, coaches and the students at all of the inner city schools didn’t think they had a shot of anything much more than making the playoffs, and maybe making a little run.

Anything else beyond this had not happened in their lifetimes.

The start of the 2022 Texas high school football is (thankfully) here, and every player, coach and student at these schools should look at South Oak Cliff.

It can happen.

“To me, it’s a step-by-step process, and I’m not going to say, when we haven’t won a playoff game in forever, that we’re going to win a state championship all of a sudden.’ It doesn’t work that say,” North Side coach Joseph Turner said in a phone interview.

“But there were tremendous benefits to South Oak Cliff winning that championship. It just helps with the buy in from the players.”

South Oak Cliff’s title last season was the first for a Dallas ISD school in football since 1958.

Dallas Washington won a Prairie View Interscholastic League title that season; the PVIL existed from 1920 to 1970, and was for Black high schools in Texas during segregation.

Dallas Carter won the UIL state title in 1988, but that championship was stripped by the UIL for the use of an ineligible player.

Specifically that Dallas Carter team is forever known for its win over Odessa Permian in the state semifinals that year, the season in which author Buzz Bissinger chronicled their every move for a book titled “Friday Night Lights.”

By the history book, the last time an inner city school won a Texas UIL high school football title before SOC last year was Houston Yates and its “Crush Groove” squad in 1985.

After that season, as Texas grew bigger, the championships started its trickle out to the ‘burbs all over the state.

If you are wondering about Fort Worth’s history of winning state championships in football, it’s the size of a Post It note. A small one.

In 1962 and ’63 Fort Worth Kirkpatrick won the PIVL titles. Arlington Heights won the UIL state title in 1948 by defeating Houston Lamar, 20-0.

The only other time a school from Fort Worth reached the state title was 1932, when Masonic Home lost to Corsicana by the final score of 0-0. Corsicana won on penetrations.

Masonic Home is the team made relevant to this generation by Jim Dent’s best-selling book, “12 Mighty Orphans,” which was made into a Hollywood movie starring Luke Wilson.

The last playoff win for a FWISD team to win a playoff game was Dunbar, in 2016.

There are a plethora of reasons that explain this development. Resources. Money. Facilities. Money. Money.

Inner city schools often do not have the luxury of growing their own from middle school. Statistically speaking, kids in these regions are more apt to change homes.

In places such as Aledo, Carroll, Allen, Katy or Argyle, a kid who wants to play football for the middle school and then high school is in the same “system” starting in the seventh grade.

“A lot of our kids have to work a job and we understand that because they are trying to provide for their families,” Turner said. “We want to make sure their academics are lined up. There are 1,000 different things.

“Our goal is to send kids to college and to prepare them for life after college and bigger picture success.”

A state title for Turner, and schools just like North Side, are a long shot because of 1,000 different things.

But what South Oak Cliff proved is that it can be done, and by doing so provided a little hope to every school just like it.