1983 Dangerfield Tigers -- Paying Tribute [Archive]

District303aPastPlayer

05-28-2006, 07:29 PM

Taken from another site...

1983 Daingerfield Tigers

Record: 16-0 (Finished 3rd in National Poll)

Points for: 631 (39.4 avg)
Points against: 8 (0.5 avg)
Shutouts: 14 (National Record)

Notable information: First team in Texas to finish 16-0. Defense scored 76 points and held opponents on average to less than one foot per play. 8 points allowed entire season, 0 points yielded on defense (1 safety, 1 interception returned for TD). Outscored regular season opponents 385-8, playoff opponents 246-0 (5 playoff opponents with 10+ wins). Defensive backfield won 4x400m relay state championship.

1983 game-by-game results

Non-District
Daingerfield 35 Kilgore 2 (4-A Kilgore secured a safety against Daingerfield's offense)
Daingerfield 14 Gilmer 0 (6-4 3-A team)
Daingerfield 10 Carthage 6 (4-A State Semifinalist Carthage (11-3 record) intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown. Extra point no good)

District 14-3A
Daingerfield 27 Linden-Kildare 0 (Linden-Kildare 7-3-1 3-A playoff team)
Daingerfield 42 Omaha Paul Pewitt 0 (Paul Pewitt finished 3-7 in 3-A)
Daingerfield 32 Hughes Springs 0 (Hughes Springs 3-7 in 3-A)
Daingerfield 76 Queen City 0 (Queen City 0-10 in 3-A)
Daingerfield 48 DeKalb 0 (DeKalb 6-4 in 3-A)
Daingerfield 45 Hooks 0 (Hooks 5-5 in 3-A)
Daingerfield 56 New Boston 0 (New Boston 6-4 in 3-A)

Playoffs
Bi-District: Daingerfield 43 Clarksville 0 (Clarksville 4-7)
Area: Daingerfield 22 Robinson 0 (Robinson 11-1)
Regional: Daingerfield 46 Kaufman 0 (Kaufman 12-1)
Quarterfinal: Daingerfield 51 Gladewater 0 (Gladewater 12-2)
Semifinal: Daingerfield 42 Post 0 (Post 13-2)
State Championship: Daingerfield 42 Sweeny 0 (Sweeny 12-2-2)

It should be noted that the points allowed against Dangerfield were not scored on their Defense... so realistically... their defense didn't have a point scored on them THE ENTIRE YEAR. So yeah.. the greatest defense of all time :)

District303aPastPlayer

05-28-2006, 07:32 PM

Here is another interesting article about the '83 Daingerfield team:

Shutdown season
In 1983, a championship football team helped Daingerfield through lean times
By David Thomas
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

DAINGERFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
The 1983 Daingerfield football team posted 14 shutouts, including a 42-0 rout of Sweeny in the championship game, to capture the Class 3A title.

DAINGERFIELD - The 1983 Daingerfield state championship team might be the best-known team in Texas high school football history.

The Tigers were the state's first team with a 16-0 record. They were the first to go through the playoffs without allowing a point. They allowed eight points all season and shut out 14 opponents, including 13 consecutive, to set a modern-day national record. Their defense scored 76 points and limited opponents, on average, to less than one foot per play.

Those are the statistics best-known around the state.

The numbers that aren't in the record book are just as well recalled around Daingerfield. The 41.7 percent unemployment rate. The more than 3,000 employees of Lone Star Steel Co. who lost their jobs. And no one can even begin to estimate the number of people indirectly affected.

"I think avid sports people recognize the football team when it's mentioned," said 65-year-old Tigers fan Decker May, who has three scrapbooks filled with stories on the '83 team. "I'm not sure that everybody would have a realization of what else was going on."

Daingerfield residents will never forget the "what else" and the team that helped them through those difficult times. On Friday night, they had one more chance to say thanks, as 16 of the 35 players on that special team returned for a halftime ceremony at Tiger Stadium.

The story of the '83 Tigers begins a year earlier.

On Aug. 17, 1982, bad news hit. Lone Star Steel, the area's leading employer based about five miles from Daingerfield in nearby Lone Star, announced layoffs of nearly 2,500 workers. The previous January, the plant employed 4,370 workers. By January 1983, the total had dropped to 917. Unemployment in Morris County, which had been at 8 percent, peaked at 41.7 percent that month.

"The oil patches started drying up," said Jimmy Walker, a 1952 graduate of Daingerfield who worked 35 years at Lone Star Steel until being laid off in 1988. "Then production dropped way down."

May, then an elementary school principal in the Daingerfield-Lone Star school district, said it was devastating to watch so many of his students' parents struggle financially.

"We had people coming in, most of the time it would be the mother," he said, "and tell me, 'I've never asked for any help at school as far as lunches are concerned, but we need it right now.' "

Employment numbers grew gradually as some employees were hired back, but more lost their jobs in other areas of the plant. The steel industry remained temperamental, and Lone Star Steel, which now has about 1,300 employees, was having to change how it operated. That created a lengthy period of uncertainty around Daingerfield.

"No one knew if they were going to lose their job in the next layoffs," Walker said. "We'd lose 15 to 20 jobs this week, then lose 15 to 20 jobs the next week."

Property wouldn't sell because there were no jobs to attract buyers. The two most common options were to live with family outside of the area until the economy improved, or stay and hope for something good.

Daingerfield needed a source of hope.

It came with the 1983 football team.

"Our football success couldn't have come at a better time," said John Settle, a junior offensive lineman on that team whose mother has worked at Lone Star Steel for almost 30 years. "A lot of people lived and died Daingerfield Tiger football because they didn't have anything else going on positive. That was what they did to get their mind off their problems."

Settle, now head coach at Brownsboro near Tyler, said people all around town would pat him on the back and want to talk football.

"It was a diversion from that toughness that they had to deal with," May said. "They didn't know what the future held. Our success drew the community together. It gave purpose at least once a week in support of everybody."

The support grew as the team's accomplishments grew.

In 1982, the Tigers had reached the postseason for the first time in 11 years. With 13 returning starters -- eight on defense -- and a top-5 in every preseason state poll, there was much anticipation of the '83 season. The seniors had predicted in the seventh grade that they would win a state title before leaving high school. But no one could have predicted how they would do so.

The season opened at Class 4A Kilgore. Daingerfield won 35-2, allowing the safety on a bad snap on a punt. After defeating Gilmer 14-0, the Tigers finished nondistrict with another road game against a 4A team, defeating Carthage 10-6. The Bulldogs, who would reach the 4A state semifinals that year, became the only team to reach the end zone against Daingerfield when a tipped pass turned into a long touchdown.

They were last points the Tigers would allow.

Daingerfield won its seven District 14-3A games by a combined 326-0. The shutout streak continued through the postseason. The Tigers won their six playoff games by a cumulative 246-0, including a 42-0 rout of Sweeny in the championship game.

And as then-coach Dennis Alexander said, those were the days when there was one state champion in each classification and two teams, not the current three, made the playoffs out of each district. Clarksville, which Daingerfield defeated 43-0 in the first round, was the Tigers' only playoff opponent that did not win at least 10 games that season.

"It was really good teams every week," Alexander said. "It wasn't somebody that slipped in there. Nowadays they might get in there -- just looking at the past couple of years -- there might be a great team in the other bracket. Crud, we were facing everybody, and they were all top teams."

That was the first of three consecutive state-finals appearances for the Tigers. They went 14-1-1 in 1984, losing to Medina Valley 21-13 in the final. The next year, they were 16-0 with another big victory in the title game, defeating Cuero 47-22. Those were the three big years of an eight-year run, from 1982-89, that saw the Tigers go 102-8-3.

Although Daingerfield had made the playoffs 11 times before the '80s, including winning the 1968 Class 2A state championship, those teams of two decades ago are the ones most people think of when they hear the name "Daingerfield."

"It's amazing," said Alexander, whose last season in Daingerfield was 1988. "I still hear about it and see so many people that the first thing they mention is those years or that '83 team."

There are plenty of reminders of that great Daingerfield tradition around Tiger Stadium. The scoreboard sports the years of the three state championship teams. A large sign behind the opposite end zone recounts all 26 playoff seasons. Markers on the press box boast of the school's nine state championship teams in all sports, plus two others that also reached state finals.

Every day in the locker room, players dress under a row of 13 signs that pays tribute to the football team's postseason success. Only teams that win a playoff game, not merely playoff teams, earn a coveted place on the wall. Daingerfield fans have high expectations.

"They expect you to win," said current coach Randy McFarlin, whose teams have made the playoffs each of his five seasons in Daingerfield. "The veterans, some of the old fans, they get mad when you lose a state semifinals game."

McFarlin knows that because that's what his Tigers did last year to end a 12-3 season. With Friday's 28-16 homecoming victory over Lindale, his fourth-ranked team is 5-0. McFarlin joked that Tigers fans believe there are 11 games left on the schedule.

But McFarlin embraces the expectations. He touts the tradition to his players.

One of his first moves when he became coach in 1998 was to bring back the style of home jerseys the 1983 team wore -- blue with red and white inserts on the sleeves. He considers the jersey one more link to the Tiger tradition.

"We talk about it all the time," he said. "Every time we go out on the field, we talk about how important it is."

He believes his players' turn to uphold the Daingerfield tradition is something they won't fully appreciate until after they have left the school.

"Even at this point, they don't understand it," he said. "It's more magical than they can comprehend right now because of all of the people who have been through here. Later on, they'll understand."

Perspective broadens with time.

"As kids," Settle said, "I think we didn't really understand just how important we were. I do now."