If there's one thing that seems to typify your average Texas June ... it's the heat. Luckily, DCTF is here to give you a reason to stay inside and cool off.
Dave Campbell's Texas Football has released its annual, much-anticipated summer magazine — 376 pages of facts, figures and fellows that you simply have to have to prepare for the upcoming 2011 season. From the cover — which features Texas A&M's Cyrus Gray and Aledo's Johnathan Gray — to our ever-expanding list of high school champions and records, the 2011 edition of DCTF's summer magazine is a chip off the old block.
But that doesn't mean we're not trying to find news ways to put all of our favorite sport in perspective. For the high schools fans, we've got the only complete list — anywhere — of each district's returning passer, rusher and receiver in the public 11-man ranks. We've also got class-wide returning stats leaders in the six-man ranks and preseason rankings for the private schools — also both firsts for DCTF. And for our college fans, enjoy an expanded national preview section that names the top five players in the country at each position and a comprehensive preview for each FBS conference in America. Just when we thought the magazine couldn't get any bigger or better, it did.
Look for DCTF's new magazine at magazine vendors near you — Barnes and Noble, CVS, HEB, Kroger, Wal-Mart and many more stores should have our magazine front and center to kick off the football season right. And looking right at you should be the two aforementioned Grays, Cyrus and Johnathan — two running backs with no blood relation but nearly everything else in common. From their on-field play to their off-field character, both typify what should be a scintillating season in the high school and college ranks.
To give you a sneak peak at this year's content, here's a few pieces worth looking over as you head to the stores to pick up your copy now.
Order the 2011 Summer Magazine | Order back issues | See the cover
The Main Feature: Amazing Grays
When it comes to the names of running backs echoing down the hallowed halls of Texas football lore, we’re not short on legend. There is Campbell and Crow and Ricky and Doak, a veritable Mount Rushmore of runners. Here you can still find Sugar Land’s Kenneth Hall out front on Friday nights. Big names from small towns. Billy Sims of Hooks and Adrian Peterson of Palestine and the Koys from Bellville.
Some names are forever linked, like Eric Dickerson and Craig James, and Warren McVea and Linus Baer. Some sound as if Dan Jenkins made ‘em up: Jarrin’ John Kimbrough and Woo Woo Worster and L.G. “Long Gone” Dupre.
LaDainian Tomlinson? So big, he doesn’t even need a name. The initials do just fine, thanks.
The roll call of great Texas running backs would take more space than we have available. But right now, it seems like a pretty good time to be a running back named Gray.
— Kevin Sherrington, The Dallas Morning News
Letter from the Editor
The time was the spring of 1960 and we were putting together the high school section for the very first issue of Texas Football. When we came to the information the coach at Bellville, Allen Boren, had sent us, I had to do a double-take. One of his top players was a back named Ernie Koy, “an elusive 6-2, 195-pounder who has 10.5 speed and can run, pass and punt.”
Ernie Koy. Or Ernie Koy Jr., to be specific. His coach had him nailed perfectly. In the 1960 Class 2A championship game that fall, Koy rushed for 189 yards and three touchdowns. Denver City won the game, but Ernie Jr. certainly lived up to his genes.
Later, he did so at Texas in a number of games, including his final one, when his two touchdowns, one of them a 79-yarder, helped UT upset Alabama’s top-ranked Crimson Tide, 21-17, in the Orange Bowl.
— Dave Campbell, Editor-in-chief
The Big 12 Preview: Numbers say Oklahoma, but watch for the Aggies
I'll be the first to confess that numbers are not my strong point. I’ve always been a dreadful math student, to be bluntly honest, and considering I hail from the lineage of a payroll director on one side and a software engineer on the other, I still wake up from time to time and wonder exactly how my brain came to be so powerfully slanted to the right.
Despite that, the best way I can see to approach this year’s Big 12 mess is through the confusing glory of integers — like a blind man with a sword, I realize I hold a weapon of mass instruction, but still don’t know exactly what I’m doing with it. We’d all be wise to take a step back.
Here’s my first swing — a nice whole number for you: 2003. Anyone catch the significance? That, folks, would be the last year any school not named Texas or Oklahoma hoisted the Big 12 title trophy.
— Travis Stewart, Dave Campbell's Texas Football
