Lots of good points here, but a couple things ...
1. You point out that high school football in Texas is community driven, which in conjunction with a very powerful HS Football Coaches Association and strict rules enforcement by the UIL (the Texas equivalent of the FHSAA), transfers are very limited.
That, of course, is the opposite of the free-for-all we see in Florida high school football.
BUT ... my question is this: If kids aren't allowed to transfer, why AREN'T inner-city schools in Houston and Dallas doing well? They're not losing kids right, other than a handful getting pulled by the non-UIL elite private high schools in those areas.
Where are former powerhouses like Dallas Carter or Houston Yates? They — or any other "inner city" schools — are nowhere to be found among the elite teams of the last couple decades
Football is absolutely dead in Dallas ISD, Fort Worth ISD, and Houston ISD. The power moved out to the suburbs in the mid 90s and will never come back barring major changes. Parents with the means found that they could move out to the suburbs legally by buying property in those places and moving their families (these aren't usually many of the inner city high D1 type kids, they're the D2 type kids who are great high school players with involved football-loving parents that can afford to legitimately uproot their family and buy property in the correct ISD when the kids are in grade school) and beat the inner city schools with just way better coaching and facilities combined with huge parental involvement. I have a family member who coaches at Southlake Carroll and it's not unusual for 3 or 4 kids in every single grade to have their own private QB coach as soon as they're playing flag football.
This disparity in resources and ability to bunch up talent was compounded by the huge no-pass/no-play emphasis that leaves so many inner city kids ineligible and got highlighted by news outlets in the late 90s and early 00s. Grades scandals at some of the inner city powerhouses put a giant spotlight on grade fixing and it became impossible (sort of like Miami being unable to drop bags because the NCAA holds us to the flame). The Carter and Yates types found themselves less and less competitive as grades casualties and suburban schools took hold. That really cemented the die off of inner city football in DFW and Houston. It sounds lame, but the no-huddle really hurt the inner city schools as well. Back when Art Briles, Sam Harrell, Todd Dodge, Que Brittain, and other head coaches of primarily white or suburban schools started throwing the ball 50 times a game in the late 90s/early 00s with plays coming directly from the sideline up tempo, they just started beating the tar out of some traditional powers via Xs and Os when those schools' staffs were outcoached. That stuff really blew up around the same time as the suburban flight and the grades stuff, so it all just compounded really quickly and the shift of power was complete.
These schools are not even CLOSE to competitive these days - if you play a DISD, HISD, or FWISD school and you are decent, you're winning by 50. Back in the old days, good football players in Dallas would go to Carter or a few others and they would ball out. Without the ability to play the kids with marginal grades or bunch up the best kids on the same teams Central/BTW/Southridge style, they just aren't as good.
Coaches do NOT want to go coach anywhere near these inner city schools and it's avoided at all costs. Without the ability to recruit, you are just signing up for a lot of 2-8 seasons with kids who are half-hearted discipline problems and go into every significant game knowing they won't win. Inner city kids do not want to come out and play for loser programs. It has nothing to do with basketball emphasis. Texans don't give a **** about basketball, relatively speaking. There is no telling how much talent is just wasted in the Dallas and Houston ISDs every single year.
