The 2023 Texas High School Football season came to a close Saturday at AT&T Stadium with repeat champions from the same district in Class 6A and an upset in Class 5A-Division II to open the day’s action. 

In the opener Saturday morning in front of a crowd of over 33,000 fans, Port Neches-Groves knocked off South Oak Cliff 20-17 to bring home their first state championship since 1975. The Indians were able to avenge their loss to South Oak Cliff from a year ago as Jeff Joseph’s squad used a suffocating defense that held the Golden Bears to just 162 yards of offense and some late heroics from their special teams to pull off the comeback win.  

Duncanville and Galena Park North Shore met for the fifth time in six years in the middle game of the tripleheader and for the second straight year Duncanville knocked off the Mustangs with a convincing 49-33 victory. The Panthers raced out to a 35-10 lead mid-way through the second quarter scoring five touchdowns on their first six possessions as Duncanville rolled up an impressive 538 yards of offense on the night in front of the largest crowd of the weekend at 40,673.  

The nightcap proved to be lopsided from the jump as DeSoto put together a record setting performance in a 74-14 rout of Humble Summer Creek to win their second straight 6A-Division II state championship. The Eagles set a Class 6A record for most points in a state title game, they tallied 553 yards of offense and finished the season unbeaten, including notching wins over 6A-Division I state champion Duncanville, 5A-Division II South Oak Cliff and 6A-Division I regional finalist Allen. 

The weekend capped off with a total attendance of the eleven-man games (ten games total) of 193,776, which is the lowest total combined eleven-man attendance at AT&T Stadium since the title games went to a single site model in 2011 (excluding 2011). The lower attendance will without a doubt re-ignite discussion of if the UIL should rotate the games to different venues or should the UIL look to engage AT&T Stadium in lowering the overall cost to attend games as ways to increase the in-person attendance at the state games. These will certainly be talking points heading into UIL Realignment and the off-season.