performance that they do. We rent the tractors each week, the band paid for me to get my CDL and be one of the drivers. Every other school has at least 1 semi trailer, and then rent box trucks for the away games and competitions. Our band went to the Rose Parade in January and they paid for us to drive the Semi's out there and back, and paid for my room the whole trip. The only thing they did not pay for was my food while we were in CA.

The budget for the band is over 1 million per year, last year the fee's were 800 per kid, just basic fee's. That did not cover all the extra's you can do and the trip to CA. We have sponsors on the back of the trailers, a Facebook page, and everyone waves and honks when we are driving the semi's in town. Is every school like that no, but there are schools that the band is bigger than football, and at each HS band both bands perform, not like in Utah where the away band does not even travel.

Our director came up with a logo for the band, and no all the shirts, stickers, yard signs, Semi's have it on there. Everyone know's what it is and what it stands for. So yes Bands are big here in TX. I know that our band director makes over $100,000 a year doing that, and we have a color guard director that we recruited from Houston, and all he does is teach color guard at the school and I am sure he makes good money. We have I think 5 assistant directors, again all they teach is band every period.

I can see why you laugh at my comment about being as big as football, but when you talk to football parents or kids, they are amazed at how much practice the band puts in, they have 1/2 of the 1 of the huge parking lots shut off all marching season long. Last year our band was ranked 2nd in the nation.

The bands add things every week, so if you were to see the first show they do for the parents before football you only see part of the show with very little props. But each week they add to it and each week it changes. They all do this and build up to the final competitions.

2 years ago they announced at the end of year program that there were over 6 million dollars in scholarships for kids from the band.

They have amazing props which really helps with making it more interesting than just kids moving into different direction. Here is a link to our show last year in the state competition preliminaries. This is a state sponsored activity just like all other sports where you have competitions and then finals. They have so many bands that they have to break it up to do each classification every other year. So for us this year we won't do state finals, we will do other competitions but not finals. 2 years ago our band went to Indy for a Competition there, we do that every 4 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79dPiN1Le3U