Friday Night Legends

[BanzaiCat]

Friday Night Legends is a board game by Lone Star Gridiron, which is a "statistically accurate game of high school football." (We're talking U.S. football here, where high school football comes close to being a religion in some parts of the country.)

Friday Night Legends allows you to play historic high school teams of the past with team results based on their actual stats.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/252694/friday-night-legends

https://www.fridaynightlegends.com/

A few things struck me about this game initially - for one, it's very high rating on BGG (9.4, with 11 ratings), as well as a few familiar Texas H.S. teams included in the game. I went ahead and grabbed a copy a few weeks ago.

There are 'only' ten teams included in the base box, and additional teams cost $9.95 each, which seems a bit steep. Though, I understand it probably took some work to compile stats and translate them into this game. There's options to buy 2 or 5 teams as well in a multi-pack, with a bit of a discount. In the box, there's also an offer for $4.95 a month to get one team each month, no repeats, and you can specify what kind of teams you want (e.g., Texas teams, small schools, etc.).

The teams in the box include:

1936 Massillon (Ohio)
1983 Daingerfield
1983 Berwick (Pennsylvania)
1985 East St. Louis (Illinois)
1985 Houston Yates
1989 Odessa Permian
2010 St. Thomas Aquinas
2012 John Curtis Christian (Louisiana)
2016 Bishop Gorman (Nevada)
2017 Mater Dei CA

My own high school team went to the Texas state quarterfinals in 1984 (division 5A), getting beat by Beaumont French. Beaumont French went on to the finals against Odessa Permian, tying 21-21. Odessa Permian is a fairly well-known West Texas school that fielded a good team back then, and was the subject of a great book called 'Friday Night Lights' (which covered their 1988 season, IIRC). The movie sucks IMO (with Billy Bob Thorton as the head coach), but the book was outstanding.

I saw several HS teams I remembered well from back in the day, offered for sale as play sheets for this game. I went to pretty much every high school football game for my school as a junior and senior, as part of JROTC to 'escort' the band/cheerleaders. (We'd just sit there at the ends of the bleachers to ostensibly keep people from sitting there when they were vacant, that kind of thing - nothing terribly taxing, plus free football game and drinks, so why not).

I've got to give the game a whirl a few times before I think about buying any more teams, but it would be interesting to get some of the powerhouse teams of the day out there.

[bayonetbrant]

just looked and there's 2 teams from my podunk pop-100k town where I graduated high school

'87 LHS Wolverines - the year before I got there, they won the state title, with 3 dudes that ended up in the NFL (one in the NFL HoF, another NFL dude moonlighted in track was an alt on the 4x100 team in '92), and another played 13 years in MLB

'90 Ike - undefeated, won the USA Today high school nat'l title, had about 8 dudes that were also on the state title winning track team both in '90 and '91.  One of the fastest high school teams you'd ever see.  They had 300-lb linemen running sub-5 40's.  But they didn't have the top-end star power that the earlier LHS team did.

[BanzaiCat]

That's pretty interesting - sounds like if they have a sheet for either of them, they'd be a good team to play.

If anyone thinks of any other 'legendary' high school teams, no matter the locale nor year, please post 'em here! 

[bayonetbrant]

That's pretty interesting - sounds like if they have a sheet for either of them, they'd be a good team to play.

They have both.  I did a search for "Lawton" on the site and those are the 2 that came back

[Metaldog]

High school football is completely under my radar, but, I live in a, "football as religion," state, so you can't ever go wrong with a H.S. team from Alabama.  Hoover has fielded some great teams.  They are a suburb or Birmingham.  Madison Academy is a prep school that takes in high ranked players to feed the college teams in state.  And Bob Jones H.S. in Huntsville has had a long run as a powerhouse.  Whether they make the cut for your game, I couldn't say.  And I am quite sure there are other areas of Alabama that I am not familiar with that produce some great teams around Auburn, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, and Mobile.  Good luck!

[BanzaiCat]

That's pretty interesting - sounds like if they have a sheet for either of them, they'd be a good team to play.

They have both.  I did a search for "Lawton" on the site and those are the 2 that came back

Duh. 

I looked for my HS team but nothing. Interesting. They weren't exactly a powerhouse but getting to the quarterfinals that one time...guess I hoped they would. Beaumont French is there (1984), lol.

I mean they have Judson in there (1983), and they were our rivals technically. Always beat us so when we won against them (as we did in those playoffs in '84), that was a big deal. Not big enough to get on their sheet list though. 

[BanzaiCat]

High school football is completely under my radar, but, I live in a, "football as religion," state, so you can't ever go wrong with a H.S. team from Alabama.  Hoover has fielded some great teams.  They are a suburb or Birmingham.  Madison Academy is a prep school that takes in high ranked players to feed the college teams in state.  And Bob Jones H.S. in Huntsville has had a long run as a powerhouse.  Whether they make the cut for your game, I couldn't say.  And I am quite sure there are other areas of Alabama that I am not familiar with that produce some great teams around Auburn, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, and Mobile.  Good luck!

Thanks! It gives me a place to start looking so I appreciate it.

[Metaldog]

Quite welcome!  Louisiana has a pretty stout high school history.  You really can't go wrong anywhere in the South.

[bayonetbrant]

Louisiana has a pretty stout high school history

I'm sure there's some John Curtis teams in there.

the '97 Baton Rouge Catholic squad had Travis Minor and Major Applewhite, plus Greg Brown (NFLE).  The 2015 team had both Derrius Guice and Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the backfield.