Six-man football was not invented by a league office or a television network. It was invented by a teacher in a small Nebraska town who had a simple problem: his school did not have enough boys to field an 11-man team, and he did not want them to stop playing football.
Stephen Epler’s experiment
Stephen Epler taught at Chester High School in southern Nebraska in the early 1930s. Like many rural schools during the Great Depression, Chester was small, and the cost and numbers needed for 11-man football were out of reach. Rather than drop the sport, Epler designed a version with fewer players, a smaller field and rules that rewarded speed and passing instead of size.
Epler later served in the U.S. Navy, earned a doctorate at Columbia University and helped found Portland State University in Oregon. But in football circles he is remembered for one idea.
The first game: a 19–19 tie under the lights
The first six-man game was played on September 26, 1934, at Hebron, Nebraska, under floodlights. Two combined teams took the field: Chester and Hardy (nicknamed the “Hard-Chests”) against Belvidere and Alexandria (“Bel-Alex”). Hebron College supplied the equipment. Roughly a thousand people watched, many of them coaches curious to see whether the game could work. It ended 19–19.
The demonstration worked. Rules were sent to coaches across the country, and within a few years schools from the Plains to the coasts were trying the new game.
Rapid growth
By the late 1940s more than 1,800 American high schools played six-man football, and the game had spread to Canada as well. On October 5, 1940, Windham High School of Ohio beat Stamford Collegiate of Niagara Falls, Ontario, 39–1, in what is recognized as the first international six-man game.
The peak came in 1951, when six-man was played at 2,463 schools in all 48 states. Plains states led the way: Nebraska had 167 schools, Texas 163, North Dakota 120, Montana 85 and South Dakota 83.
How Texas made it its own
The first six-man game in Texas was played on September 29, 1936, when Sylvester beat Dowell 14–0 in Rotan. In 1938 Prairie Lea and Martindale played a demonstration game to show the University Interscholastic League (UIL) what six-man could look like. The UIL adopted the sport, and by that spring dozens of Texas schools were playing it. The number roughly doubled by 1939, and at one point in the 1960s Texas had more than 160 six-man teams.
In many other states, school consolidation and the arrival of eight-man football pushed six-man aside. Texas went the other way. Today more than half of all six-man players in the country play in Texas, and the UIL crowns two six-man state champions every year. We explain that split in UIL Division I vs. Division II.
Back home in Nebraska
Six-man nearly disappeared in the state where it began. The Nebraska School Activities Association first sanctioned the sport in 1987 with 27 schools. By 1999 only seven schools were playing and the playoffs were dropped. The game came back, though: playoffs returned in 2018, and around 30 Nebraska high schools were fielding six-man teams by the game’s 90th anniversary in 2024.
Small game, big names
Six-man has sent players to the highest level. Jack Pardee grew up playing six-man in Christoval, Texas, went on to star at Texas A&M and in the NFL, and later coached in college football, the NFL, the USFL, the WFL and the CFL. Ed Sprinkle, who played six-man at Tuscola High School, spent twelve seasons with the Chicago Bears. Read more in From six-man to the NFL.
Why it lasted
Ninety years later, the reason six-man survives is the same reason Epler invented it. In a town with a few dozen high school students, it is the difference between having a Friday night team and not having one. And once people see how fast and open the game is, they tend to stay.
Sources
- Flatwater Free Press, “Epler’s experiment: 90 years later, six-man football still small-town king” (2024)
- Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, University of Nebraska–Lincoln: “Football, Six-Man”
- Six-man football history references compiled by the American Football Database