Name: “Texas” Bob
Job: Owner of www.texasbob.com and High school football fan for Katy High School in Katy, TX
When I was a statistician and writer for high school football games, I often relied on his online database for high school football stadiums. The information he provided was always greatly helpful to me. In a book he published about the high school football stadiums, he featured some of my photos of the renovation of Alamo Stadium.
I did get the chance to finally meet him at Reliant Stadium in Houston for a high school football playoff game. He was cheering for the Katy Tigers and I must’ve been doing stats for either the Steele Knights or the Judson Rockets. It was a pleasure to meet his acquaintance in person. I will say that more than often, Katy has come out victorious!
Enough about me, let’s talk high school football with Texas Bob.
WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL, ESPECIALLY THE KATY TIGERS.
Other than a game of wiffle ball under the streetlight in front of my house and park
league baseball games at the nearby county park, I never played competitive sports.
In junior high I was in the band and in Odessa, Texas, the junior high band marched at
halftime of 9th grade football games. I was in the band in high school and marched in all of the Varsity games played by the Odessa Broncos.
During the 1968 season the Odessa High School Band traveled to New Orleans,
Louisiana, and marched in a New Orleans Saints and Dallas Cowboys game, in front the
largest regular season crowd of 83,000 fans in the old Sugar Bowl Stadium.
In the 1969 season, the Odessa High School band traveled to Dallas and marched the
halftime of a Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions Game in the Cotton Bowl.
I was transferred to Houston in the summer of 1992, and I knew I wanted to live in Katy. We had moved from McCamey, Texas with a total population of about 2,400. My daughter played High School girls’ basketball and my son played middle school
football. At that time, Katy ISD only had three high schools. I was moving my children from a 2A school to a then 6A school. I wanted to make the right choice about which high school
they would attend. My daughter would start her junior year and my son his 8th grade
year. I picked Katy High School because it was the most economically diverse and I thought
that would fit my children.
After moving in July of 1992, my daughterdrove by Katy high school and later asked me, “Why did you pick Katy High School?” I told her I picked it because it was the only High School with a Rodeo arena. That in itself says a lot!
At Katy High School, my daughter didn’t do any sports but sang in the acapella choir and in
the show choir. She is currently an elementary music teacher for Katy ISD.
My son played 8th grade football and at Katy High School, he played football all four years. At
this time Katy was only an average program but were on the road to success.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST FOOTBALL GAME AFTER YOU FINISHED HIGH SCHOOL?
I graduated from High School in May of 1970, and then I moved to Denton to North Texas
State University, as it was then called. I attended a few North Texas State home football games at Foust Field.
By the fall of 1971, I was back in Odessa, and attended some Odessa
High School football games. If I was dating someone, a high school football game would be
considered a date night for me. I never had any girl refuse to go to a football game with
me, of course these were West Texas women.
HOW MANY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAMES DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE SEEN? WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE TRAVELED?
I am estimating about 471 high school football games.
My son and I jumped on a Southwest Flight to El Paso and attended a game at R.R.
Jones Stadium. A truly unique experience.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAME?
All of it – the game, the fans, the band, the cheerleaders, the drill team and the
atmosphere.
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL STADIUM DATABASE?
I’ve always been techy. I took two years of electronics in High School. In my early years
I worked in control panel shops, then I was an electrical and pneumatic controls
technician. As a control technician I worked all over the Permian Basin (West Texas)
and it seemed that about once a month I would spend a week at a gas processing plant
in McCamey, Texas. Then Shell Oil Company offered me a job in 1977. I did a little
engine/compressor work and a lot of control work.
Then I went from an hourly employee to a staff employee. It was not long after that
when the IBM Desktop computers hit our desk. A lot of people resisted them, but I
embraced them and almost immediately, I began creating DOS based databases that
used a software called Professional File.
Fast forward several years and my job is in Houston. Now my databases are created in
Microsoft Access. …and then there is the Internet.
I wanted to create a website. Why? I didn’t know. At that time there were places where
you could create a free website and I did that. It was pretty lame so I looked ahead.
On August 13, 1999, I registered “TexasBob.com”. Now what? I need content. I like
Texas History a lot. So, I filled my site with Texas History. I soon found out that my
primary audience was 4th graders. All 4th graders study Texas History.
In the fall of 2004, I had the idea to publish stadium information. I started with the 5A
stadiums. The only way I knew to do it was to put the data into tables. It made for
some long pages.
I started this at the beginning of the season and each week I added more stadiums and
each week the traffic grew. I had hoped that at the end of the regular season, traffic
would drop so I could catch up. It did not. At the beginning of the playoffs, the traffic
peaked as coaches look for playoff sites and fans look to see how to find the stadium that
they don’t normally go to.
I have to find another way. I need a webpage that gets its data from a MySQL
Database. I created a database of about 20 stadiums in a MySQL table. Now I had to figure out
how to get the stadium page to retrieve the data. For several weeks I studied and tried
to get the data to display on my site.
One evening I was in a chat room trying to get some help when a grad student at Baylor
gave me four lines of code. Eureka! It worked.
Today, I have at least one stadium listed in all 50 states, and I have complete listings in
12 states including Texas for a total of 5,266 football stadiums.
I’m often asked if I’ve visited every stadium I have listed and the answer is no. I
depend on Google Maps, and football fans.
A lot of work went into it. When I decide to complete a state; it starts with my son doing the preliminary research and putting the data into a spreadsheet. I, then, enter the data in the database.
We also have a method to calculate stadium capacities. We find that our method is + or –
3% when compared to actual capacities.
TELL ME ABOUT SOME MEMORABLE GAMES AND ATHLETES?
Collin Wilder – Defensive back for Katy. While at Katy he started in 64 games and played in
4 state championship games. Katy beat Cedar Hill in 2012 and West Lake in 2015. In Katy, they call Collin, Mr. 64.
Here is a great article about Collin:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/06/29/former-badgers-safety-
collin-wilder-walks-away-football/7756074001/
My favorite game was when Katy beat South Lake Carroll in the Alamodome in 2003
WHAT DOES TEXAS BOB DO FOR FUN?
I have a Travel Trailer and my wife and I have a motto. “The most expensive RV you
can own is one you don’t use.” We usually take our Travel Trailer out every four or five
weeks. We are both retired but very busy. I am on the Friends of Stephen F. Austin
State Park Board, I am a volunteer at San Felipe de Austin State Historic site, where I do
schools tours, and I am active at my church.
IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE A JOB REVOLVING AROUND HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
I think that I would publish a website that has a database of football stadiums.