Three days before undefeated Waco Midway will use Allen’s 18,000-seat palace of a stadium as the neutral site of its Texas UIL 6A-2 state semifinal win over Longview, Midway head coach Jeff Hulme waits patiently behind his desk while a complete stranger sets up a camera across from him.

That stranger, of course, is me, and I’m making small talk with Hulme. “Congrats on making it this far,” I tell him. “Congrats on getting to 14-0.”

I explain that I spent the previous day in Round Rock with Cedar Ridge High School for the purpose of also telling him that one of the players I spoke with over at Cedar Ridge pointed to a 34-19 loss to Midway as the turning point in his team's season.

Hulme graciously humors me on the topic of that game for a moment but quickly caroms back to a current event that has nothing to do with his own team.

“Now they’ve got a tough one this week,” he says, alluding to Cedar Ridge’s 6A-1 semifinal against undefeated, nationally third-ranked Allen.

He was right. The Eagles cruised past the Raiders 28-7 to advance to the state title game — Allen's fifth such appearance in school history.

But it’s more than just Allen's talent on the field that makes them such a tough challenge for opponents. The day before, fascinated by the psychological difference between preparing for Allen versus preparing for anyone else, I quizzed Cedar Ridge head coach Sam Robinson on that very topic.

His strategy, which I wholeheartedly agreed with, was to keep it business as usual, presenting the Eagles’ personnel to his team in the same manner he’d done when the opponent was, say, Akins. The alternative is to go all-in on the whole “shock the world” narrative.

The problem is that neither strategy is very successful.

The war with Allen isn’t just physical on a Friday night — it’s mental all week long. Coaching against them is far more than X’s and O’s. It requires that a ball coach become a psychiatrist.

“For a long time, that was Odessa Permian,” Hulme says. “Now it’s Allen.”

Allen has the highest enrollment in the state, but Plano West checks in at No. 2 with 5,648 students and zero wins this season.

Success breeds indignation and Allen’s 21st century run to the forefront of Texas high school football is no exception.

Bring up all those wins and you’ll often just as quickly be met with a counter point about all those students. Allen has the highest enrollment in the state of Texas, but, unlike so many of its peers, the Allen Independent School District has resisted opening a second high school.

Doing so would split the talent pool, sure, but it would also split the town’s allegiance. Neither of those has ever been an acceptable side effect for a place that, despite massive growth over the past decade, clings to its small town roots. It’s not as if the Dallas-area suburb was caught off guard by a population surge. Its residents saw it coming, looked at their 27-square mile town, and made a calculated decision to invest in keeping a single high school.

So, yes, Allen has a bunch of kids — and, in turn, a bunch of players. But that in and of itself doesn’t explain 138 wins and four state championships over the course of the past decade. Allen has the highest enrollment in the state, but Plano West checks in at No. 2 with 5,648 students and zero wins this season.

New Orleans Saints running back Jonathan Williams was in attendance when the Eagles beat the Wolves 59-0 back in October. Williams rushed for more than 3,500 yards and 39 scores at Allen from 2010-11 before becoming a fan favorite at the University of Arkansas. But, as a kid, he didn’t dream of playing for the Razorbacks or the Saints.

“I grew up watching the varsity and that was my biggest dream, to play varsity at Allen, because of the standard they have,” he says. “Most people don’t know that the reason they’re so successful is because of the way that they work. They instill the work ethic in kids at a young age and it carries over. We do have a lot of kids, and that helps, but their kids don’t work like ours do.”

The city of Allen has captured the perfect recipe for sustained success.

While Williams was appearing in 11 games at Arkansas in 2012, a sophomore quarterback named Kyler Murray was leading Allen to the first of three consecutive state titles. Murray never lost a game as the starter at Allen, going 42-0 and piling up 10,386 passing yards, 4,139 rushing yards, and 186 total touchdowns. He’s forever the face of Allen football — and soon to be the new face of Oklahoma football.

Oh, and the 5-foot-10 successor to Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield isn’t buying the whole enrollment thing, either.

"Everybody always points at the amount of kids we have at the school, but I don’t think that's it,” Murray says. “The way we’re coached, the way everyone in the town approaches the program is different. The first day I stepped foot in Allen, I knew it was something special.” 

As it turns out, that “special” ingredient that both Williams and Murray point to is nothing mysterious. In fact, it’s the very thing that Allen’s decision-makers aimed to protect when they constructed a massive high school — and, later, the crown jewel of high school football stadiums. The city has captured the perfect recipe for sustained success: It is a thriving suburb of a major Texas city that has no divided allegiance. The Allen community absolutely and unequivocally supports Allen High School and, in turn, Eagles and future Eagles are committed to representing their home town.

“The kids want to work,” Murray says. “It’s not a grind to get the kids out to camps. Whatever sport they’re playing, the kids want to go all out for the city. We don’t just have a lot of kids, we have a lot of kids who are willing to work for what we’ve earned over the last few years. It didn’t come easy.”

Murray didn’t start for Allen on day one. He worked to obtain that position on the team and within the community. And, once he got it, he wasn’t alone.

“As soon as I did become the guy the whole city was behind me,” he says. “It goes a long way when you have 20,000 people at every high school game. I don’t think there’s another high school in the country that fills out a stadium that size. The city shuts down on Friday night. Wherever we go, they go. It helps to have a community that sticks together, stays as one, and supports their team.”

“We’re Allen for a reason,” says Murray. “We wear that ‘A' for a reason. No one should be able to play with us."

As Hulme mentioned, what once was Odessa Permian is now Allen. The Eagles are the gold standard — which means they also wear a target on their backs each week. But playing in every opponent’s biggest game of the year is a welcomed cross to bear.

“We embraced being the target, honestly,” Murray said. “Being the top school in the country, for us we looked at it as, I mean, I used to tell the guys all the time, ‘We haven’t done anything yet.’ It didn’t matter what game it was. We had to look at it as one game, one week at a time. We had to look at it as a job that hadn’t been done yet. We stay humble and hungry and embrace the drive — embrace the fact that everyone wants to beat us.”

Williams sees the benefit of success beyond the high school fields of Texas, as well.

“I would say that it’s a plus,” he says. “It helps the kids out nowadays because the recruiters know where the talent is. Recruiters are going to stop at Allen first.”

That means players like senior running back Brock Sturges have no trouble finding their way onto the radar. Sturges has rushed for 1,985 yards this season — just 93 yards shy of Williams’ single-season school record — and the three-star prospect has at least 25 FBS scholarship offers to choose from when it comes time to select his next school.

“I know Brock, he’s a good guy,” Williams says. “He moved into Allen a couple of years ago and immediately bought into the way that we work. That’s the difference. He’s getting close to my record and I hope he gets it. I challenged him this summer to see if he could do it and he’s stepped up.

“He has played in a couple more games than I did, though,” Williams adds with a laugh. “I want to note that. You’ve got to mention that.”

Of course, for all of the success that Sturges and his teammates have enjoyed, Allen hasn’t captured a state title since Murray graduated following the 2014 season. And while a two-year hiatus from hoisting the final gold football wouldn’t be noteworthy anywhere else, it is at Allen.

“We’re Allen for a reason,” Murray says. “We wear that ‘A' for a reason. No one should be able to play with us, no matter who it is. We work too hard for what we do. I’ve talked to a lot of those kids, I know a lot of those kids, and they’re ready to get it done. It hasn’t been done in two years since I left and they’re ready to get it done.”