TXHSFB 303: The toughest schedules in Texas high school football

[caption id="attachment_28266" align="aligncenter" width="700"]Photo by Thomas Hays Photo by Thomas Hays[/caption] Over the course of January, TexasFootball.com presents The TXHSFB 303, a deep dive into the hidden storylines in the 2016 Texas high school football season. Have an idea for an angle? E-mail DCTF managing editor Greg Tepper.Today: The toughest schedules in Texas high school football There are no easy roads to walk in Texas high school football. You may have a cupcake here or there on your schedule, but eventually, you’ll run into some fearsome competition. The quality depth that the Lone Star State boasts makes sure of that. But not all roads are created equal — some teams face a tougher path than others. We can hem and haw all we want in the preseason (and we do!), but the proof is in the pudding; that is to say, we can find out after the season who actually played the toughest schedule. So let’s do that. I dug up the opponent win-loss records for every Texas high school football team in 2016. We could just compare those, and figure out which teams played the teams that won the most games, but there’s another element to it — we need to tease out the team in question’s record from the opponents’ combined record, since including them would punish good teams and benefit bad teams. Let me explain with an example: El Paso Socorro had a tough year, going 0-10. Now, you could point to the fact that their opponents were a combined 66-44 (.600) on the year, and say “Hey! They played a pretty tough schedule!” But that 66-44 mark includes ten games against Socorro — all wins, obviously — and isn’t indicative of the opponents’ true strength. So, Socorro’s actual opponent’s record is 56-44 (.560) — still tough, but not as tough as first glance. All of that is to say: I adjusted the opponents’ win-loss records to reflect each team’s strength of schedule independent of the team in question. I’m also separating 11-man from 6-man for the sake of this study; because of the way districts are set up differently, they’re similar but perhaps not apples-to-apples, thus the separation. (OK, one more caveat and then I promise I'll get to the data: this only includes in-state teams. So, for example, Bishop Gorman [NV] is not included in Cedar Hill's opponents, since it is disingenuous to credit Cedar Hill for playing a team that went and beat a bunch of Nevada teams.) Now that all of that is out of the way, here’s the 20 toughest schedules in Texas high school football (11-man) in 2016.