Ty Cashion
Sam Houston State University
Department of History
SHSU Box 2239
Huntsville, Texas 77341-2239
Phone: 936.294.3835
his_rtc@shsu.edu
Ty Cashion is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He is the author of four books, including Pigskin Pulpit: A Social History of Texas High School Football Coaches (2006), and co-editor of The Human Tradition in Texas. His research interests include the American West, Texas, social history, and the Spanish borderlands. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and of the editorial board of Sound Historian: The Oral History Journal of Texas.
Presentation
Evangelism and the Related Occupation of Coaching Football in Texas
To the extent that high school football symbolizes the state’s traditional values and character, it is also a reflection of the men who shaped the game—and generations of players—in their own image. Yet we think of coaches as caricatures, rather than in the complexities that truly define them. With wit and insight, this presentation tells how this schoolboy avocation wove itself so tightly into the fabric of Texas culture, producing an enduring stereotype of coaches that belies an evolving profession.