Fans of Texas High School Football should be very familiar with South Oak Cliff. The Golden Bears had made the state title game for three straight seasons, but started 2024 with a bad taste, as they fell to Port Neches-Groves last year at AT&T Stadium.
Head Coach Jason Todd’s ball club was on a mission to get back to the title game and continue dominance in 5A-DII.
South Oak Cliff started the season with the toughest non-district schedule in the entire state, facing off with the top two ranked 6A teams, as they fell to North Shore and Duncanville. In week three, the Golden Bears got a big 45-44 win over Longview, a team that ended up in the 6A-DII semifinals.
That would be South Oak Cliff’s last competitive game for the rest of the regular season. The Golden Bears had only lost to two 5A teams in the last four years, and that trend continued as they went 7-0 in district play, giving up only seven total points in those seven games. South Oak Cliff was district 5-5A-DII champions again and was firing on all cylinders heading into the playoffs.
South Oak Cliff started off the playoffs with a 52-14 romp over Terrell, setting up a matchup with a Huntsville team that had been state-ranked for multiple weeks throughout the season, but it was no problem for the Golden Bears, as they dominated in a 38-7 win. South Oak Cliff would then take down Marshall 35-7, setting up the matchup that everybody in the state was waiting for, a showdown with Port Neches-Groves.
In 2022, South Oak Cliff took down the Indians for the state title. In 2023, Port Neches-Groves took down the Golden Bears for the state title, but this time, this was for a trip to the state semifinals. South Oak Cliff left no doubt, as their physicality was too much for the Indians, running away with a 56-14 win. South Oak Cliff would then dismantle state-ranked Argyle in the state semifinal with a 37-3 win, setting up one of the most anticipated matchups of state championship weekend against a team on the rise in Richmond Randle.
In what was one of the best state championship games you will see, a back-and-forth affair gave South Oak Cliff the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead on the last possession of the game, but a missed field goal as time expired handed Richmond Randle the 38-35 win and the title.
Losing the state title game in last-second fashion for the second straight year will put a damper on South Oak Cliff’s season, but not many teams can say they have been to a state championship for four straight years and have two state titles. It has been one heck of a run for “The Mecca.”
