Here it is still so hot that it takes two gallons of ice water and a half-gallon of Gatorade to replace all the sweat that rolls off you while mowing the lawn, and they're already playing football.

Serious football. National Football League teams are in training camp. In a week or two, Texas high schools will begin two-a-days and colleges won't be far behind.

If you've just moved to the Lone Star State, you need to understand that Texans take any football seriously but the high school game is considered royal. So, newcomers should take notes.

In some places, season reserved tickets have been in families for generations. The rights for those tickets are preserved in wills and are often a major bone of contention in divorce cases.

Many towns have been known to close most of the business district down on a Friday afternoon when there is an out-of-town game and the number is near 100 percent if it's a playoff game.

Rabid boosters have been known to drool when their team features a giant player who is agile, mobile and hostile. If that animalistic player's entire vocabulary consists, a la Dan Jenkins, of "!@#$, %&*+, ?^(> and more gravy," then boosters are ecstatic.

Larger Texas high schools may have several such "animals" and that tends to make a lot of men bet the farm on the season. The 5A and 4A teams in the playoffs always seem to have at least 22 such players. Smaller schools (3A, 2A and A) that have one gravy lover consider themselves lucky.

The example one such player might set, coupled with the close-knit feelings enjoyed in most little towns, has been known to launch these smaller schools to successful seasons.

Winners get respect. Some people contend that a winning football team attracts business to a community. Some of those people aren't even football coaches.

Unfortunately, there are towns and schools that almost never have that kind of success, always seeming to lose more often than win, drawing the lack of respect the late comedian Rodney Daingerfield characterized. Their teams are mixtures of tall, brittle, slow players and short, fat, slower players.

My hometown of Teague has been through long stretches of Daingerfieldlike lack of respect. It seems that in the 1930s, 40s and early 1950s, there was a considerable drought of victories, which brought no small amount of disdain from one Jinx Tucker, then the sports editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald, the only daily newspaper of any size near Teague.

Tucker bad-mouthed the Lion football team on a regular basis.

Finally, in the mid-50s, we came up with one of those guys whose vocabulary consisted of "Huh, uhhuh, uh-uh and more chitlins (chitterlings to non-Texans)."

Chitlin weighed in at 210 and ran the 100-yard dash in 10.1 seconds. He was an animal on a team before mandatory facemasks but they did wear helmets. In addition to this dream running back, there were a few slender guys who could run down jackrabbits and several big "more gravy" linemen.

There was one hitch. That year, Teague got moved to Class 2A (now 3A) because the high school had 10 more than the maximum number of students for Class A. The district included Mexia, Hillsboro, Ennis and Waxahachie. Two years later, Teague dropped back to Class A while Ennis and Waxahachie moved up to 3A, underscoring the great enrollment disparity.

In a pre-season 1954 round-up story, Ol' Jinx got in his licks. In reference to playing in a higher classification, Tucker wrote: "Lowly Teague will be lucky to win two games."

Such statements by Tucker over the years prompted diehard Teague fans to write letters on toilet paper to the sports editor.

Teague didn't win district in 1954 but did finish 6-3-1, beating a pair of Class A quarterfinalists and tying one 2A quarterfinalist.

In the years since, Teague's program has improved to the point to where the Lions are a frequent playoff participant. I suppose I can discard the typewriter and that roll of Charmin now.

But, I'm ready for some football.

Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor publisher. He can be reached by email at .