Six-Man Football: How Small Texas Towns Hold on to the Game They Love

It was homecoming night in Marfa, a West Texas town of 2,000. The concession stand staff hawked a $5 burger-and-soda special. Cheerleaders, ranging in age from seven to 17, weaved through the bleachers. Tall teenage boys, arm-in-arm with their moms and dads, walked a cracked asphalt track as the announcer described their post-graduation plans. When the game started though, the Friday Night script took a turn—instead of 11 kids from each school on the field, there were only six.

The Marfa Shorthorns and the El Paso Christian Home School Panthers were playing a game of six-man football, a variant of the sport that, despite having different rules, retains the fundamental elements of 11-man. Invented in 1934, six-man gives small schools the opportunity to keep playing a sport they otherwise couldn't. Oil booms in recent decades have shrunk small West Texas towns as long-time residents have left to find jobs in nearby cities like Midland and Fort Stockton. Smaller towns mean smaller schools, which in turn mean smaller sports teams. At a certain point, a high school no longer has enough boys to field a full football team. That's not enough snuff out Texas football passion.

"Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if there were three- or four-man football. You get the idea they're determined to have a team no matter what it takes," said Chris Hillen, who called six-man games for a local radio station during the 2011-12 season.

More than 200 teams across the state have adopted the sport, and as small towns keep losing residents, that number is rising. Small public schools and private schools populate the leagues—the number floats from year to year, but usually a school must have fewer than 100 kids to qualify for six-man.

Marfa switched from 11-man to six-man just three years ago. The result was dramatic. Last year, Marfa made it to the playoffs, something that hasn't happened in "the neighborhood of 15-20 years," according to head coach William Jenkins. The town has a team they can cheer for, a team that can log more than a handful of one-off wins in a given season. "Even small towns like ours are football towns," Jenkins said. "Football is football."

Six-man football's different rules generate different strategies. The field is smaller (80 yards by 40); all six players are eligible quarterbacks and receivers; first downs are 15 yards, not 10; and the ball has to be tossed to another player before it can be run across the line of scrimmage. The sum of these adjustments is a football game that is faster, higher scoring, and in some ways more athletic. "You can't dog it," says Joe Nick Patoski, a Texas football historian.

The fluid nature of the positions means linemen might find themselves making deep runs. You don't see many bulky kids on top six-man teams. That said, according to Jenkins, who played at nearby Sul Ross University, it's tough for a top high schooler playing six man to make it to college or professional ball. "Football might help you get through high school, but high school is what is going to get you through everything else," said Jenkins.

Marfa's last regular-season game of the year pitted the Shorthorns against the Fort Davis Indians. Fort Davis has 1,200 residents; its single commercial street could be a facsimile of a Rockwell painting. The library, the Chamber of Commerce, and the hotel are all a stone's throw away from each other.

"On a Friday night, when six-man football is being played in a community, that town—that idealized small town—it comes back. And there's somethin' about it. Small town football is expressed through six man," said Patoski. At the Fort Davis game, moms and dads pulled their pickups all the way up to the track. It felt like the entire town had turned out, but empty pockets of seats still peeked out from the sea of Indian green.

Not everyone in Marfa is happy about the town's switch to six-man. "We've embraced it for the most part, but if the opportunity ever came again to play 11-man, I know we would do it," Fred Martinez said. Martinez played for the Shorthorns and so did his son. Still a loyal fan, he takes photos at every game and shares them with the school. Jeremy Guevara, whose son is on this year's team, also attends every game. He disagreed: "We go back to 11, it's going to be a lot harder competition—and a different game.

Six-man playoffs are underway statewide. Because of a few key league losses, the Shorthorns didn't make it, despite a 6-3 season. They stomped El Paso on homecoming, though, and topped Fort Davis, their biggest rival. For small towns like Marfa, which still live and breathe football, victories like those go a long way.