Oklahoma Quarterback Jackson Arnold Explains Why Texas Plays The Best High School Football

For the past many years, high school football supporters from all over the country have debated what is the best high school football state. States like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, and California have all been in the running to be the champion, but Texas has always been among the top.

High school football in Texas is almost a religion instead of a high school sport and it is the favorite pastime of the 1500+ communities in Texas that have a high school football team. Also, Texas high school football alumnus and Oklahoma Sooners quarterback, Jackson Arnold, mentioned that no state plays better high school football than Texas.

It is difficult to find a single word against Jackson Arnold’s thought in here. The previous year Texas had the biggest number of players in the NFL out of any other state with 187. They were soon after by Florida and then came California.

Furthermore, high school football in Texas is performed with such a level of seriousness and professionalism that it seems to me that it is played at the higher level. In the Texas public schools, the faculty of the high school sports coaches have to have their teaching licenses, which means that they are in the school with their student athletes. Most of the time, weight-lifting and even practice are the first or the last thing of the day in the school. Moreover, the facilities are excellent, with giant stadiums at the larger schools in the state that compete with the facilities of FCS colleges. I can still recall when I was watching Texas Longhorn quarterback Quinn Ewers play high school football at Southlake Carroll, a Dallas suburb of the time. The program was under the patronage of a big Mercedes dealership. It’s just different in Texas in general.

I think one thing that Texas does is that it is separate the public and private schools and it is really cool. The private schools in the state are not able to compete in the UIL State Championships that are held at AT&T Stadium, and the majority of the top high school football players in the state play at the public neighborhood schools with the transfer rules being very strict. That kind of connection is awesome.

Jackson Arnold has been through this himself so he knows all about it. Arnold got the chance to be a two-year starter at the Denton Guyer, a perennial power in suburban Dallas, since his second year at the high school. He was the Gatorade National Player of the Year in 2022 after he was the drive behind the 4497 total yards of a senior. 

Arnold will be the starter in Norman this season, as the Class of 2023 five-star’s presence was certainly the reason for Dillon Gabriel transferring to Oregon, which made him a Heisman candidate.