Two deaths in Texas

"He's the kind of kid who just goes out and causes wrecks …”

-- Darrell Royal, 1969, in Sports Illustrated

They all loved the way Steve Worster played football. He was as Texas as a blue norther and a belt buckle the size of a serving tray.

The point of the spear in the Texas Longhorns wishbone juggernaut in t he late '60s, he was the guy who ran through arm tackles like turnstiles and made defenses crowd the middle to stop him, which freed up Jim Bertelsen and Ted Koy and Chris Gilbert to run free on the flanks with James Street's pitches. Texas won a national title and 30 games with the 'bone from 1968-70, turning Worster into even more a Texas legend than he already was after running for 5,000 yards in high school.

Worster died Saturday at the age of 73.

So did Michael Hickmon, 43, in a Texas football narrative of a much darker sort.

Hickmon was shot and killed Saturday night in the Dallas suburb of Lancaster, yet another victim of America's gunslinger fetish. Police say they're looking at the brother of Aqib Talib, who won a Super Bowl with Denver and was a five-time All-Pro cornerback in a 12-year NFL career, as a suspect in the shooting.

Hickmon?

He was a youth football coach.

He was shot and killed because the coaches from two youth football teams got into it over a game official's call, and someone pulled out a gun. Because, you know, Texas, and also 'Murica.

Pulled a gun at a youth football game. Pulled a gun arguing a call at a youth football game. As if it were the Super Bowl and not just a bunch of kids chasing each other around, oversized helmets wobbling on their heads like bowling balls on pencils.

How many nightmares are those kids going to have now? 

How many of those kids will never be able to look at a football again?

Here's your answer to the latter: Probably not many. It is Texas, after all.

It's Texas, the home office for Friday Night Lights -- film, TV and actual versions. It's Texas, where a state's love affair with football made Steve Worster a legend before he ever left Bridge City High School.  

It's Texas: Where that obsession gets twisted into something unholy by people with no sense of proportion or reason, and where a bunch of kids chasing a ball becomes a literal matter of life and death.

We've all read the stories these days about the game official shortage cutting across all sports at all levels, and how it's happening largely because Dad and/or Mom have lost their damn minds. They think 8-year-old Johnny has the best arm or speed or jumpshot anyone's ever seen in an 8-year-old. They think he's destined for MLB or the NFL or the NBA. And they won't let some poor ref -- often a kid himself -- working for a couple of extra bucks get in their wunderkind's way.

Or some poor coach.

And so more and more youth and high school officials saying, "Forget this. Too many crazy people out there." And so youth coaches winding up dead because some of those crazy people decide to start gunning up like pretend Army Rangers, a gruesome collision between America the calibrated and America the land of warped priorities.

I mean, seriously: Who the hell takes a gun to a youth football game? What sort of alien creature does that?

And how far down a dark path have they come from the normal folks who simply loved the way Steve Worster went out and caused wrecks?