The History of New Mexico High School Football: The First 100 Years (1892-1991)

Volume I - The first 100 years 1892-1991New Mexico is a vast but young state most noted for characters like Billy the Kid, events like the Manhattan Project and Spanish explorers from the 1600s. Not much has been written about the people and their sports. This book is the result of a 30-year project detailing the history of high school football in the Land of Enchantment. It begins in 1892 with the first schools in Albuquerque and concludes as those early private Indian schools played each other for the last time. Stories of every year and every community fill the 200 pages along with over 90 photographs and numerous tables showing records of interesting teams. Coaches like Poe Corn, Rock Staubus, Coot Pyle and others amplify football on the frontier. The book contains the controversies as well as the accomplishments of schools and the growth of the New Mexico Activities Association which has governed sports in New Mexico since its inception in 1921.

Dan Ford is a native New Mexican, born in Roswell to parents who were raised in the Pecos Valley. Ford graduated from Aztec in 1966. He attended and graduated from New Mexico Military Institute in 1968. Ford was a community banker for 44 years, retiring in 2014. His career took him to several Colorado towns, Albuquerque, and even to Alaska in the 1980s. He has lived in Bayfield, Colorado with his high school sweetheart since 1988. While working in Albuquerque he found his passion in researching historical information on education and high school football. He argues that his work is not simply a sports book filled with touchdowns and championships but rather is a story of rural America in the fall. Towns that put the football team on the front page of the local paper define an entire people and their passion. Ford continues to gather yearly scores and update his records. He is recognized as having the most complete collection of such information anywhere. He has received awards from the New Mexico Activities Association for his work and continues to work with sports authorities in New Mexico to keep that history alive. Ford has a companion book that he updates every year as an almanac, adding more scores at the end of each football season. Those volumes contain scores on every school back to l950. For more information on the author and his work, look at his website at www.danfordsports.net.