Carter running back
Q: What do you do for a living?
A: I've been a DISD security officer for five years. I was a detention officer for six years.
Q: Some guys have talked about having a reunion/celebration. Do you think that would have happened by now if the title had not been stripped?
A: I think we would be more recognized if it stayed in the record books. But all in the sense, everyone knows what they witnessed, and that was Carter High School winning the state 5A championship in 1988. You can't take that away.
Q: Is it an irritation?
A: It's never an inconvenience or it's never a negative thing toward that. Like I said, deep down in my heart and everybody's eyes and their heart, we know who won the state championship that year. Folks recognized that. A lot of people I hear talk about it, they always congratulate us and say you guys had one of the best teams that ever came through DISD.
Q: Do you have a family? How do they feel about your Carter legacy?
A: I have a daughter, Alexis Allen. She's 10.
I have a yearbook, still got my medal, still got my ring, I've told her the history of it. When Friday Night Lights came out, we went and saw that movie. I really told her the facts of it, what really happened instead of the Hollywood version.
Q: Do you think Friday Night Lights hurt the public perception of the team?
A: No, I would say that they put out the wrong points because the things they had in the movie were not true. They had their own version. Like I said, I call it Hollywood. Nothing was true in there. We didn't play them in the state finals.
Before the movie even came out, I always talked to my baby about the history. She's a big fan of football. We sit up on Saturdays and Sundays and watch football.
She even corrects people. 'No, it didn't happen like that. I've got kids calling me that are doing book reports in other districts. I have a cousin who goes to Cedar Hill. He called me and got the real facts. He let everyone know in Cedar Hill.
Q: What else do you remember about that season?
A: We all grew up together since we were kids. Like Gary Edwards. I've been knowing Gary Edwards since I was 5 years old, when we first enrolled in kindergarten. I think we did it as a group effort. All of us who hung together had a certain role. If somebody was thinking about something negative, somebody in the group would correct them and say, 'No, we're not going to do it that way.'
Q: Gary did describe you as his best friend. Did you know he had a grade issue before it came out?
A: No one knew. Everybody was in shock. This was a last minute thing that popped up, right as we're going into the playoffs.
"Week to week, we were in shambles every week. You're going to play, you're not going to play, you're going to play. Are you going to play, or are you not going to play? But as a group, kept everyone together. We said, 'Can't let that distract us.'
We never lowered his standards. I believe that he didn't know. All these years, he said he didn't know. He was my best friend. If he said he didn't know, we believed him.
I was very surprised because Gary was very good in his books. Even our parents made sure that we were about business in the classroom. It was very shocking to me to hear that his grade was even in question. Big shock for me."
Q: Coach James mentioned the Samuell game as being particularly crazy, with all the pregame uncertainty.
A: We were all sitting around. The word was that we were not going to play. We were at the school, coach James was back and forth, the majority kept us at school. He said, 'Y'all kind of wander around, get your mind off of it, but we're going to play.'
We were getting ready to get on the bus, they told us not to get on
Q: When kids started getting in trouble, did you know what was going?
A: No. Me and Gary were best friends. At that time, I was taking college courses at Cedar Valley because I was about to go play at North Texas.
I didn't really hang too much. My time was spent on my books.
When I found out, me and Jessie Armstead and Cedric Buckley, we had just come from working out. We got a call on the phone. My dad was telling me that this was on the news, that Gary and Derric had been arrested for robbery. It was real shocking, left my mouth open. I just couldn't believe that he made that choice.
Everybody makes bad choices, but it's how you bounce back. I think he bounced back very well. I'm happy for how he's living now. I'm very happy for all of them.
