The Amarillo High Sandies started their week sitting pretty at 7-2, comfortably positioned for the postseason, only to watch their entire season nearly collapse in a matter of hours. But thanks to a coin toss won under the bright gas station lights, they finally landed a spot in the playoffs. 

Taking to his X account, ESPN Senior Writer Dan Wetzel shared how it all actually happened. “Amarillo wins three way coin flip to land spot in Texas high school playoffs. Late night flip held at the Toot ’n Totum gas station in Plainview. Tie caused after Amarillo was forced to vacate six wins due to an ineligible player,” he wrote. 

The University Interscholastic League’s ruling hit Amarillo on Friday morning after what the district called a clerical error in player eligibility paperwork. One player had been on the field despite being technically ineligible, which meant the team had to forfeit six of its wins. That decision dropped Amarillo’s record from 7–2 to 1–8, and its district standing from 4–1 to 1–4. The only victory they were allowed to keep was their 45–10 win over Amarillo Caprock on October 9, the one game the ineligible player didn’t participate in. Every other victory, against Odessa, San Angelo Central, Midland, and district rivals Lubbock Monterey, Lubbock Coronado, and Lubbock High, was erased from the record book.
Even so, Amarillo still had a small chance to make the postseason.

Before the ruling, Amarillo’s only two on-field losses had come against Abilene and Palo Duro, which made Friday morning’s reversal even more shocking for the players and coaching staff. The UIL’s decision arrived just hours before Amarillo’s regular-season finale against rival Tascosa, a game that, under normal circumstances, would have decided the district’s No. 2 seed.  But now, the same game carried a different weight.

They still needed to defeat rival Amarillo Tascosa that same Friday night and also hope Lubbock High could pull off an upset over Lubbock Coronado. If both results went their way, it would leave Amarillo, Caprock, and Lubbock High tied at 2–4 in district play. And since head-to-head results and other tiebreakers couldn’t separate them, the final playoff spot would come down to a coin flip.

That night, Amarillo did its part, routing Tascosa 63–21 in a burst of emotion after a chaotic day. Probably unleashing all their pent-up frustration, Amarillo High’s offense exploded, with senior quarterback Jett Lopez and wide receiver Austin Sluder leading the charge. The duo torched Tascosa’s defense to have one of the most one-sided matchups in the long, six-decade history of the rivalry. Then they waited for the other score. 

When Lubbock High beat Coronado 42–35, the three-way tie was confirmed, thus setting up one of the most unusual playoff deciders imaginable: a late-night coin toss at a Toot’n Totum gas station in Plainview.

Representatives from all three schools gathered in the parking lot under fluorescent lights to watch fate decide the outcome. When the coin landed in Amarillo’s favor twelve hours later, the Sandies were suddenly back in the playoffs as the No. 4 seed from District 2-5A Division I.

For longtime Texas football fans, the entire scene gave them a deja vu of another famous moment from 1988. Back then, Midland Lee, Midland High, and Permian settled a district deadlock with a televised coin flip where only two could qualify (Midland Lee and Permian won the spot here).

Amarillo’s version may have taken place outside a gas station instead of a TV studio, but it also carried the same spirit of unpredictability and drama that defines college football in the Lone Star State. For head coach Chad Dunnam, the emotional whiplash from this whole ordeal was too much.

Coach’s emotional acceptance

The Amarillo head coach, who’d spent the week preparing his players for potential heartbreak, couldn’t hold it together when they won the coin toss. 

“We said, ‘If it’s God’s plan’ and it’s God’s plan,” Dunam said, his voice thick with emotion. “We’ve got a special group of kids. I hate this because I’m just crying all the time. I’m an emotional wreck. But it’s God’s plan and we trust it. I can’t wait. We’ve got a meeting at 10 AM in the morning, with parents and kids. There was gonna be a lot of hard conversations. There are still gonna be some hard conversations. But there’s also gonna be a celebration.”

“Peak West Texas,” Wetzel had written, sharing the news. And well, true enough, only in Texas would a playoff berth get decided at a gas station after a team went from a winning record to one win and back to the playoffs in a day.