Video: The Allen high school football experience

From 20,000 fans to an 800-person band to color and pageantry, this Texas football experience is worth the trip.

The Allen Texas Football Experience 316,954 views 2:39

Video: The Allen High School Football Experience
An evening at a stadium where the atmosphere is more like college than high school.

ALLEN, Texas — We'd experienced Texas high school football before. We'd seen the pageantry and excellence in 2010 at the granddaddy stadium of them all: $1.2-billion AT&T Stadium in Arlington, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

But this was better. Way better.

That's because we witnessed an entire community — a couple of them, actually — coming together for a single cause, a single Texas high school football game.

This wasn't just any high school stadium, mind you, or team ... or community.

The Allen (Texas) Eagles are the three-time defending 6A state champions and they are fittingly housed in the Shangri-La of high school football venues, $60-million Eagle Stadium.

The view from outside Eagle Stadium before last Friday's season opener against Guyer.

Photo by Todd Shurtleff

On Friday, a trio of Californians from MaxPreps came to experience the re-opening of the stadium, which opened in 2012 but closed in Feb. of 2014 for 16 months due to cracking in the concrete. It opened for the school's 2015 graduation and for football for the first time last Friday.

More than 20,000 filled the pristine facility, but no one was cramped. The concourse is about 20 yards wide three-quarters of the way around, and the stadium-style seats are spacious and on the field. You could park several 18-wheelers on the sidelines and end zone. The latter is important because Allen's 800-person Escadrille — not merely "school band" — along with couple hundred spirit squad members has to march in, out and around.

What a treat. What a sound. What a sight.

In the above video piece, MaxPreps host Chris Stonebraker filmed the marching musicians and spirit kids as they entered the stadium. The lines of percussionists and brass and flag holders went on and on and on.

As did the endless images of Americana around the venue: tailgates, concessions, student bodies, flags and banners. There were back flips, front flips, soda sips, deep fried chips and big, magnificent bright, vibrant scoreboard clips,

It was all just very hip. And alive. And breath-taking all at once.

And then, there was the football game.

The full Allen Escadrille (band) and spirit squad at halftime of last Friday's game.

Photo by Mitch Stephens

The nation's No. 10 team and host Eagles, minus the graduated two-time MaxPreps National Player of the Year Kyler Murray, barely missed a beat with a thorough 48-16 win over a very good Guyer squad.

The new kid calling signals, Mitchell Jonke, a polite, bright-eyed, light brown-haired kid who had never played in front of more than 500 fans, accounted for 321 yards and six touchdowns. He'd been in Eagle Stadium for a game before, but never on the field in the middle of the fray.

He was even more blown away by the spectacle than us boys from California. Though his play sure didn't show it.

"When I walked out on the field, I looked around and just said, 'Wow. This is it,' " Jonke said.

He was right.

As the high school football experience goes, this was certainly "it."