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Football season is just weeks away, and before Friday night lights return and college stadiums roar back to life, Texans can get an early kickoff with Game Film: Texas Football Culture in Motion, a new interactive online exhibit. The project from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image celebrates more than a century of the state's high school, college, and professional football history.

The free digital exhibit uses archival game film, home movies, television broadcasts, and local news coverage to explore how football is woven into the fabric of Texas life. Rather than presenting a collection of videos, the archive has curated an interactive experience that lets visitors discover the people, traditions, innovations, and defining moments behind the state's football culture.

Game Film encourages exploration through interactive features. Visitors can follow a timeline of football milestones spanning high school, college, and professional football, click through an interactive state map highlighting archival footage available from schools and programs across the state, or browse themed collections devoted to Friday night culture and fan traditions.

This project, unveiled July 31, was curated by Katharine Austin, a longtime curator at the Texas Archive, as part of the Texas Film Commission's Texas Moving Image Archive Program.

The interactive timeline traces the sport from its earliest days through the modern era, spotlighting milestones including:

• 1894: the beginning of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry
• 1900: the first Red River Rivalry
• 1914: the formation of the Southwest Conference
• 1921: the UIL's first state football championship
• 1938: TCU quarterback Davey O'Brien becoming the first player from a Texas college to win the Heisman Trophy
• 1959: the founding of the Houston Oilers
• 1960: the Dallas Cowboys joining the NFL
• 1987: SMU's NCAA "death penalty"
• 1996: Drew Brees leading Westlake High School to its first state football championship
• 1999: Houston being awarded the NFL expansion franchise that became the Texans

Many later entries include original television reports and archival footage from the events themselves.

An interactive state map offers another way to explore the collection, highlighting schools, colleges, and professional teams represented in the archive.

One click reveals a silent film of Austin High School's 20-7 victory over Sunset High in the 1942 UIL state championship, while another captures Timpson High School's homecoming celebration in East Texas, complete with parade floats, marching bands, and community festivities. Other sections spotlight Friday night traditions, Darrell Royal's wishbone offense, Bill Yeoman's Veer defense, behind-the-scenes stories from the Houston Oilers, and the invention of the quarterback flak jacket.

Game Film is the latest in a series of interactive exhibits from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, joining projects including Women on the Move, Journey to the Moon Through Texas, Meet Me in San Antonio, La Frontera Fluid, and Breaking News: Rescuing the First Draft of History.

The archive's broader collection and the nonprofit both accept public donations of historic films, videotapes, photographs, and other moving-image materials, helping preserve Texas stories for future generations.