For the best high school football teams in America, such as Duncanville and DeSoto, lining up early-season games has become like using a dating app. But it’s a third party who is swiping through potential out-of-state opponents for a head coach to choose from.
Thirteen Dallas-area UIL and TAPPS schools are playing out-of-state opponents in the first four weeks this season, including DeSoto, Anna, Melissa and First Baptist in their season openers this week. Prep Gridiron Logistics sets up interstate matchups all over the country and lined up back-to-back Class 6A Division II state champion DeSoto to host Georgia 5A state runner-up Creekside on Saturday and for Duncanville to host St. Frances (Md.) in a battle of nationally ranked teams Sept. 14.
“I’m like Match.com for high school football. I put together hundreds of games each year,” said Joe Maimone, owner and operator of Prep Gridiron Logistics, a New Jersey-based company. “[Coaches] say I have this date open, this is the travel stipend, and I put it in a database and hit one button and then that opportunity goes out to over 400 high school football coaches around America.”
It doesn’t take long to find a match.
“What used to take weeks or months to do now takes hours and days with our technology,” Maimone said. “I wait a week for the inquiries to start coming back to me, see who is interested and then create a list and send that to the head coach. He approves which one, two or three he wants to pursue.”
A rising number of Dallas-area teams are playing out-of-state opponents, and many are out of necessity because no one will play them. That doesn’t sit well with the Texas High School Coaches Association.
“I don’t think you have to go outside of Texas to have competition, no matter who you are, but some of our schools and coaches refuse to play, so they get in a bind,” said Joe Martin, executive director of the THSCA. “I wish they didn’t have to do it and I wish they wouldn’t do it. I think the majority of the coaches in our state understand what our association’s stance is and that we would just like to promote playing each other and keeping Texas high school football as pure and as fresh as it can be.”
The THSCA is particularly opposed to its schools playing out-of-state private schools, Martin said, because it worries that Texas athletes will be recruited by their opponents.
Allen, DeSoto and Duncanville — schools that have combined to win 11 state titles — have played out-of-state teams frequently in recent years. Allen is 5-1 in those games since 2014, DeSoto is 8-2 since 2010, and Duncanville has gone 4-2 while playing an out-of-state team each of the last six seasons.
Last year, Duncanville went without a scrimmage because no one wanted to face a team that was No. 8 in the MaxPreps preseason national rankings. This year, coming off back-to-back 6A Division I state titles and ranked No. 7 nationally, Duncanville doesn’t have a Week 1 game.
“We couldn’t get a game,” Duncanville coach Reginald Samples said in July at the THSCA’s convention and coaching school. “Right now, I actually feel better this year. Last year, we didn’t have a scrimmage and we played the first game and then we didn’t have a second game. This year, we actually got a scrimmage, but we don’t have a Week 1, so we have St. Frances [from Maryland] as a Week 3 and we play South Oak Cliff Week 2.”
Anna is 35-5 in three seasons with Seth Parr as coach, it won the 4A Division I state title last year - and as it moves up to 5A this season - it suddenly struggles to find nondistrict opponents. Fort Worth Southwest dropped Anna from its 2024 schedule in May after two other schools backed out of facing Anna in 2023.
Unable to find a Texas school that wanted to play Week 1, Parr turned to Brian Hercules, a third party who sets up out-of-state matchups for Texas schools, including home games this season for Fort Worth All Saints against opponents from Missouri and California. Going off parameters provided by Parr, Hercules came up with a home date Friday for Anna against Oakland (Tenn.), which won Tennessee state titles in three of the last four years and was a state runner-up last season.
“I didn’t want a private school, I didn’t want IMG [in Florida] or anything like that,” Parr said. “I wanted a public school with some success, but the same amount of enrollment. It was kind of like matching us on a dating app, and they swiped right and they must have liked us.”
Melissa also ended up with a heavyweight opponent this week and will host back-to-back Arkansas 5A state champion Little Rock Parkview on Saturday in the Wipe Out Kids’ Cancer Classic. Melissa coach Matt Nally thinks matchups like these will become more commonplace for Texas schools, and he took on a game against an out-of-state team for the first time because it’s a chance to raise money for a good cause.
Coaches said that scouting an out-of-state opponent can be difficult beyond what information is available online and that the quality of game film that is exchanged isn’t always equal. In DeSoto’s case, it hasn’t played a regular-season game yet while Creekside has, and that caused problems because DeSoto coach Claude Mathis doesn’t exchange scrimmage film.
Rockwall-Heath had an area team back out of a Week 3 game, and the closest potential replacement that coach Rodney Webb could find in Texas was Del Rio, about seven hours away. So he instead used a third party to set up a game against defending Georgia 3A state champion Cedar Grove on Sept. 13, and like nine of the other 13 D-FW schools playing interstate games, Rockwall-Heath will be playing at home.
“The cost for us is just providing travel for the team to come in, and they are actually traveling here by bus. We are buying them a postgame meal, and I think we foot the bill for the hotel as well. We keep all of the gates,” Webb said. “Financially it’s not a bad deal when your alternative is to play somebody in Texas on the other side of the state and play a neutral-site game that is going to have a very low gate and it’s costing a lot to get all of your people there.”
Melissa’s game against Parkview was put together by Kris Cumnock, who has experience with out-of-state matchups after bringing in 13-time Alabama state champion Hoover and national powerhouse St. John Bosco from California to play at five-time state champion Allen and its $59.6 million home stadium in the Tom Landry Classic in 2016 and 2022, respectively. He sees more matchups like that on the horizon.
“There are a lot of coaches out there that don’t want to play somebody really tough in Week 1, so you wind up with Duncanville with no game and DeSoto and Melissa having to go out of state,” Cumnock said. “I don’t see it getting better. But teams are willing to come to Texas to play because that’s all they have heard about is Friday night lights in Texas.”
Texas vs. the Nation
A look at matchups this season involving Dallas-area UIL and TAPPS teams against out-of-state opponents the first four weeks of the season.
WEEK 1
Buckeye Union (Ariz.) at First Baptist, 7 p.m. Friday
Oakland (Tenn.) at Anna, 7:30 p.m. Friday
Creekside (Ga.) at DeSoto, 5 p.m. Saturday
Little Rock Parkview (Ark.) at Melissa, 7:30 p.m. Saturday
WEEK 2
Jesuit at New Orleans Jesuit (La.), 6 p.m. Sept. 6
Hillcrest at Elgin (Okla.), 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6
Kimball at Pine Bluff (Ark.), 11 a.m. Sept. 7
WEEK 3
Lift for Life (Mo.) at Fort Worth All Saints, 7 p.m. Sept. 12
Cedar Grove (Ga.) at Rockwall-Heath, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 13 at Wilkerson-Sanders Stadium
Little Rock Catholic (Ark.) at Fort Worth Nolan, 1:30 p.m. Sept. 14
Bishop McGuinness (Okla.) at Bishop Lynch, 4:30 p.m. Sept. 14
St. Frances (Md.) at Duncanville, 7 p.m. Sept. 14
WEEK 4
Cherry Creek (Colo.) at Highland Park, 7 p.m. Sept. 20
On Twitter: @DMNGregRiddle
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
