I’ve made an effort to live up the motto of my alma mater, Highland Park High School: enter to learn, go forth to serve. As such, when asked if I could come and teach two classes of juniors and seniors at the school, I volunteered. In the end, they taught me.

Thanks to the generosity of the Moody family, HPHS offers courses for professional skills. The Moody Advanced Professional Studies (MAPS) program is open to upperclassmen by competitive application (everything at HP is competitive). The programs enhance professional skills and prepare students for college and life after it. These are some smart, articulate young people who have good critical thinking skills.

One of the course offerings is Sports Analytics. It sounds like a scheme to get students to do more math, but it’s working because 55 Scots showed up to discuss the two articles I had written recently about the Dallas Cowboys and Mavericks.

They had opinions. We discussed in detail what role sports owners had in the social compact. They are currently studying the topic of how to fund stadiums. I’ll tell you there’s not much sympathy for the public paying for billionaires’ stadium investments among these young people. They also feel pretty burned by local ownership. One student said, “I don’t trust Jerry Jones or the new Maverick owners. Why should I?”

Carson Wiles, whose father, Worthy, was a terrific basketball teammate of mine, told me: “It’s tough to say I can trust local owners after what’s happened lately. … Local owners owe us the right to know what’s going on.” He and his classmates firmly believe that’s not happening, and it impacts the trust and support young fans have for these teams.

I conducted a poll because I thought it would be interesting to see what these young people think about sports today. I asked about their favorite teams and leagues, as well as their least favorite and their level of trust.

Nearly 15% said they would not spend their money as adults on professional sports, and 30% called pro sports a bad value for the money. In one of the best comments of the day, a student said, “Teams need to worry people my age won’t pay for the privilege of being a fan in the future.”

I was interested in how they consume sports. They are not thinking about season tickets as I did as a kid, and even do now. One said, “I won’t go crazy buying tickets, probably no season tickets, but I’d go to a few games a season.”

Most surprising to me was that 93% of students said they preferred college sports over pro sports. College football is king. In our discussion it became obvious this has occurred in part because of how little confidence or pride they have in their hometown pro football team, the Cowboys. Many said they do not even watch Cowboys games, preferring Friday night lights with the always strong Scots team, and Saturday of college football on television or in person.

One student summed it up best: “I prefer college sports because it is typically more competitive and there is a culture behind each team as well as more rivalries. I also like all the tradition.”

I was somewhat surprised that the Dallas Stars were selected as their favorite local pro team, with the hockey team earning more than a third of the votes. One junior noted, “The Stars have been very consistent in my lifetime and they try to win every year.”

Another commented, “They are the only team to not do something incredibly stupid.”

The Texas Rangers finished second with 30% of the vote. The Cowboys edged out the Mavs for third place.

“As much as I hate to admit it,” one student complained. “I will always be invested in the Cowboys, no matter how dumb or terrible we are.”

I also loved that one student said his favorite professional sports team was SMU. With the rise of NIL money, he was not far from the truth.

The Mavericks won the least-trusted-team award by a wide margin. The team may have underestimated how popular Luka Doncic was with young people. That trade is going to impact the NBA team’s pocketbook for a long time.

More than one-third of the students thought that trading Luka was the beginning of a plot by ownership to move the team to Las Vegas. This level of distrust is going to be hard to overcome, even if the Mavs win games.

The Cowboys finished next with 42% of the least-trusted vote. The only other team receiving multiple votes was the Dallas Wings, a professional women’s basketball team, with 7%. One respondent noted, “I didn’t even know they existed before this poll,” and another maintained: “It’s a terrible product. I don’t know a single person who has ever gone.” Somehow the Dallas City Council is spending $19 million for a 15-year use agreement for the Wings to play in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas Memorial Arena, beginning in 2026. These young people said they’ll never attend any of their games downtown.

When asked about the most trusted franchise, the Rangers were a runaway winner with more than two-thirds of the vote. It doesn’t hurt that the team’s general manager, Chris Young, is a HPHS alumnus (and the best men’s basketball player in school history, in my opinion, as was his sister on the women’s side).

One student said, “The Rangers make the most sensible moves and care about their fans.” Another commented, “Mr. Young does a good job of keeping good people in the locker room.” Another agreed, “I trust Chris Young and he won us a ring.”

This was a small survey. I don’t know how closely these students’ opinions track with wider sentiment in North Texas. But this experiment showed me how much things had changed since I sat in those seats. Dallas used to be a pro sports town fueled by the Cowboys. Like so many other things since my high school days, all that has changed.

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