Dallas / Fort Worth Local News

DALLAS (AP) ― Although Friday nights remain sacred in Texas -- no live telecasts or Web casts of high school football games are permitted -- the state's best teams are finding national exposure by waiting a day.

This week, two Texas high school football games will be shown on national TV on Saturday: Euless Trinity at Odessa Permian and Miami Northwestern vs. Southlake Carroll.

Those games, to be televised live on FSN Southwest and ESPNU, respectively, are the latest signs that high school sports have become big business. As advertisers and media outlets continue to find a national audience with an appetite for high school sports, game coverage has multiplied from local newspapers to national magazines and Web sites.

The Northwestern-Carroll game, which will be played at SMU's 32,000-seat Ford Stadium, has drawn unusual attention. It features the nation's top two teams as picked by several publications, including Sports Illustrated and USA Today.

"I think it's probably the most talked about interstate high school game that a team from Texas has played -- ever," said Bobby Burton, editor at Rivals.com. "It's the subject of everything from national sports talk radio to USA Today."

The game between the top high school teams from Florida and Texas, billed as the "Clash of Champions" by its Dallas-based promoter, did not come together by accident. It's yet another game organized, produced and sold by sports marketing companies finding lucrative paydays in high school sports.

Enter TITUS Sports Marketing of Dallas, which finds businesses eager to associate themselves with high school sports in football-crazy Texas.

In 2004, it sold the naming rights to an East Texas high school football stadium to a health care company, a deal worth $1.2 million over 12 years, TITUS President Dave Stephenson said. It also sold the naming rights to the indoor practice facility at Southlake Carroll, which has won four state titles in the last five years and 80 of its last 81 games.

For the Clash of Champions, Stephenson said his company is paying the travel costs for Miami Northwestern, including airfare, charter buses, hotel bills -- even admission to The Sixth Floor Museum, the downtown Dallas attraction devoted to the JFK assassination.

The game fulfills a two-year contract with Southlake Carroll, which included a home game last season against Louisiana powerhouse Shreveport Evangel Christian. For that game, Carroll kept all the revenue from ticket sales, parking and concessions.

For this game, Carroll keeps 10 percent of every ticket sold at the school before game day, Stephenson said. Walk-up ticket sales, concessions, parking and advertising go to the marketing firm.

Similar games exist elsewhere. Earlier this month in Ohio, Burger King sponsored a series of 11 games called the Kirk Herbstreit Ohio vs. USA Challenge. At least 13 of USA Today's preseason top 25 teams will play in similar national events this season, with title sponsors including Nike, Dodge and State Farm.

"I think this will be very common in five years," Stephenson said.

TV networks have signed on. The ESPN family of networks will televise 16 high school football games this season. That's up from 13 in 2006, three in 2005 and one each in 2004 and 2003, said network spokeswoman Tilea S. Coleman.

The FSN regional networks will televise more than 100 games this season, including 10 nationally televised games, company officials said.

FSN televised high school football to fill a programming void created by the NHL lockout in 2004, said Jon Heidtke, a senior vice president at Fox Sports. The network televised its first game that year -- a showdown between Odessa Permian and Midland Lee -- in part as a tie-in to the release of the movie "Friday Night Lights."

The ratings outdraw NHL games in some markets, and FSN has looked to expand. This year, for the first time, FSN Southwest is televising weekly games in Texas along with the slate of national games.

"There's a market for marquee games," Heidtke said. "Everybody, certainly from a local standpoint, has been impressed by viewership numbers."

Magazines and Web sites have also profited from the realization that high school sports sells. Burton, the Rivals.com editor, has made a career out of identifying and serving an audience that craves high school sports news.

Sports Illustrated, which launched a high school football column in the magazine this year, struck readership gold with a 2005 project where it ranked the nation's top 25 high school athletic programs. It was the third-most read story in the magazine since 1991, said senior editor B.J. Schecter.

In Texas, where big-school state championship games have been televised since 1990, all this interest translates to national exposure for top teams. Maybe 20 to 25 teams might appear on TV, said Charles Breithaupt, athletic director the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for public high school sports in the state.

The UIL protects the little schools with its Friday night ban on TV and Web casts. The hope is a TV blackout ensures fans keep coming out, protecting revenues for the roughly 1,200 schools that ESPN would never visit.

Outside of that ban, the UIL welcomes televised games and high-stakes national matchups.

"Every parent wants their kid to be on TV, and every coach wants their kids on TV," Breithaupt said.

And TV will keep calling, so long as viewers continue to find appeal in high school football.

"No matter what someone does on a national level," Burton said, "the real passion will always exist in a local stadium on a Friday night."

(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)