There are few things that scream “Texas” more than high school football, the Dallas Cowboys, and Whataburger. All of them converged over the weekend to determine who would make the playoffs for District 14-5A, as a three-way tie was settled in the most arbitrary way possible: a coin flip.
Mansfield Timberview, Waxahachie, and Mansfield Legacy all finished the season with a 3-4 record, leaving the district in a three-way tie. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the process for deciding tiebreakers only relies on point differential—which knocked Mansfield Legacy out. But even that couldn’t settle the issue between Waxahachie and Mansfield Timberview, which brought Timberview coach James Brown (not the godfather of soul, a different one) to a Midlothian Whataburger at 11:30 on a Friday night, where he’d compete with former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Jon Kitna—the head coach at Waxahachie—in a game of chance.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be for Kitna. His team had heads in the toss (the Star-Telegram says that the sides were pre-assigned), and lo, it was tails.
That’s probably frustrating for Kitna and the Waxahachie crew, who actually beat Mansfield Timberview in the regular season—but the quirky rules in District 14-5A don’t allow the teams to consider a head-to-head record, which left ’em flipping coins. (It’s unclear if division rules require the coin flip to take place at Whataburger, but we’d love for that to be instituted as a policy as soon as possible, if not.) Since Kitna’s team could have avoided the hassle altogether by just winning one more game, we won’t shed too many tears for Waxahachie—instead, let’s just celebrate a Texas football culture that settles who will compete in the Class 5A Division II playoffs in the most random way possible.
