Page 6 - Texas

TPAA Reaches Texans at the Largest High School Football Championships
in the Nation
By Clint Wright Parker/Wright, LLC
Few things in Texas bring communities together like high school football. And there is certainly nothing so universally celebrated, from the smallest of hamlets to the biggest of cities like weekends in the fall in countless stadiums, big and small, across the state.
The lights of Friday night are about so much more than the two football teams.
In Texas, in December, at the conclusion of the season, a dozen games are played at one of the largest NFL stadiums in the country, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, to crown season champions, and a quarter of a million people come.
The Texas Pipeline Awareness Alliance (TPAA) could think of no better way
to support, enhance and communicate with a state as vast as Texas than partnering with the University Interscholastic League (UIL) for this four-day event.
As part of these annual proceedings, TPAA manned an in-stadium booth, was included in public address announcements and aired its core messages on the scoreboards. TPAA conveyed the need to call 811 before any digging project, how to recognize and respond in the event of a gas leak and how to identify a pipeline right-of-way between each game all four days.
TPAA ran the same three messages within the televised games about a dozen times during the last two days
of games when the largest schools from the higher divisions were playing. The schools playing those days are from the state’s larger cities, namely Dallas, Houston and Austin, thus generating the quantity of impressions for a regional sports television network accustomed to the significant audience sizes for their Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL games. In total, in excess of another hundred thousand impressions were delivered to those at home.
TPAA is a collection of Texas’ largest gas distribution and transmission pipeline companies with thousands of miles of pipelines scattered throughout most of the state’s 254 counties. TPAA continues to lead
the nation in collaborative efforts
to communicate pipeline safety and awareness messaging. Texas is vast, diverse and challenging when it comes time to convey a message but TPAA, by pooling resources, has proven time and again it is up to that significant challenge.
The Texas high school football championships played an integral
role in achieving a successful 2023 campaign. TPAA continues to promote pipeline safety and awareness throughout the year and particularly during Safe Digging Month (April) and in proximity to 811 Day in August. The group is constantly evolving and improving in order to reach Texans as frequently and efficiently as possible.
4 • Texas811 2024, Issue 4