The Texas 20, No. 7: Aledo's chase for Texas HS football immortality

[caption id="attachment_17974" align="alignleft" width="300"]Photo by Charlton Gladden Photo by Charlton Gladden[/caption] This is the Texas 20, DCTF’s countdown of the 20 biggest storylines heading into the 2015 football season.No. 20: Is there a college sleeper in Texas?No. 19: Which Texas high school football records will be broken? No. 18: State title games headed to Houston No. 17: Will anyone play defense this season? No. 16: Can Allen keep dominating without Kyler Murray? No. 15: Cameron Yoe’s chase for a fourth straight title No. 14: New coaches at SMU and HoustonNo. 13: Can DeSoto finally get over the hump?No. 12: What will be the best region in the state? No. 11: Is anyone in Texas on the college coaching hot seat?No. 10: Are Rice or UTEP ready for the national spotlight?No. 9: Can anyone stop Canadian and Refugio? No. 8: Kliff Kingsbury's quest to turn flash into victoriesToday, we’ve reached No. 8: Aledo's chase for Texas high school football immortality. When Lake Travis won its fifth consecutive title in 2011, capping a 77-3 run, it held claim to the most impressive five-year stretch in state history. No one has won five titles in a row except the Cavaliers, and if Aledo wins another title this year, that’s six in seven years. The lone blip is a 42-30 area round loss to Denton Guyer in 2012. Guyer went on to win the state championship that year. If your standard for a dynasty is consecutive titles, well, we won’t argue and it’s probably not worth continuing to read. But if you like to think a little harder about these things, we’re happy to indulge. Lake Travis’s win percentage during that five year stretch was 96.25 percent. To date, during the six-year Aledo stretch we’re considering, the Bearcats are sitting at 93 percent. For argument’s sake, assume Aledo goes 16-0 this year, and that only brings that number up to 94 percent. So far, on consecutive titles and win percentages alone, Lake Travis still has the edge on Aledo. You can factor in district and playoff opponents, but anecdotally, we’ll argue that it evens out when you consider the district schedules and the regions that followed year to year. What that leaves you with is the consideration of consistency across many years in a single program. Lake Travis had that over those five years, but have struggled to find it in the three years since, with the greatest hurdle being a promotion to 6A. Aledo has had it over a much longer stretch, but hasn’t had to deal with the conference bump. This debate is one that seems like it’s easy to sort at the outset, and then you get to this point and realize it’s tough to settle. And anyway, we’re certainly putting the horse before the cart since Aledo’s got a long way to go to make the debate this interesting. No one other than Lake Travis has won five in a row. If Aledo wins, no one else will have pulled off six titles in seven years. Who you side with at that point is your call. If it happens, we’ll weigh in with a deeper dive in December.