‘Walking encyclopedias’ of Arlington high school football enjoy lifetime labor of love

There are those who say they have devoted their lives to football, and then there are the Costlow brothers.

If you’ve ever read a game story about one of the Arlington high school football teams, odds are you were reading stats that largely came from Keven and Ken. The brothers, ages 58 and 61, have spent more than half of their lives researching and compiling stats of each team and each game that’s ever been played in the history of the Arlington school district programs.

Each week during football season — regular season and until the last Arlington team has been eliminated from the playoffs — they provide a preview of each week’s games. This includes current season highlights, district standings, all-time records between opponents and more.

Both were born and raised in Arlington, are Sam Houston High School graduates, and each has a bachelor’s degree from UT Arlington.

In short, they know and love Arlington. Their work is a labor of love from which the only payment they get is the gratitude of others, including many coaches and sportswriters.

“It’s especially satisfying to see out-of-town reporters and coaches seeing our previews and noting it was information that they didn’t even have,” Keven said.

Their hard work and attention to detail have drawn praise around the area, especially from coaches.

Arlington Sam Houston coach Anthony Criss said that when someone once told him a play “ought to be a record, I said, ‘let me contact the Costlows.’ They were right there on it, as always. They can even tell you what down it was, when it happened in the game. It’s incredible.

“It’s crazy the details they go into. They can tell you on what day, what stadium. You have to have a passion to do what they do. They’re walking encyclopedias. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

Said longtime AISD announcer John Nelson: “Their knowledge of stats and general history for all the schools is superb. I don’t know of any reporter, fan, or coach who wouldn’t benefit from what they offer.”

Doing their homework

The Costlows remember the exact date they started this venture that has lasted well over three decades. It was Sept. 5, 1986.

“It was opening night of high school football season, and my first night of covering football for DFW Suburban newspapers,” Keven recalled. “The big news of the night was the fact that Martin had upset South Grand Prairie. Our writer, the late Greg Goffinet, asked me if Martin had ever won its opener.

“We sheepishly said we didn’t know, even though this was only Martin’s fourth season of varsity ball. So being the low man on the totem pole, I volunteered to do some research. The rest is a combination of history, trivia and minutia.”

And good old-fashioned grunt work, especially before the internet came into being. Keven has done much of the research over the years, while compiling the results has been a team effort.

“We have pages and pages of notes and notebooks that Keven accumulated over the years,” Ken said, adding that even with the internet, much of what they compile requires work outside of their computers.

“It came from Microfiche in libraries and old school yearbooks. Plus, whatever numbers Keven could get from local coaches.”

Keven said that among the hardest part of their work was gathering all the history of each program. It required a lot of scrounging.

“We had to spend a lot of time in various libraries, looking for missing scores or stats,” Keven said, adding that some of the most challenging tasks involved “having to track down seemingly insignificant stats or scores. It’s part of my job, since I signed up for this.”

Now, though they are as thorough as ever, they have long since perfected a way to lighten their workload. Still, it’s a mind-boggling process to most.

“We built the system so we could just update last year’s score and update everything that needed to be updated,” Keven said. “The research we have does make it easier, but we still have to fill in the blanks.”

Rewarding experience

They admit that after 34 years, the process is starting to wear on them, but then they get a burst of inspiration from people recognizing the work they put in and how helpful it is.

“Frequently, I get messages from kids and their parents thanking us for publicizing their accomplishments. I had one coach tell me he would go to bed and read our record books for hours on end, completely fascinated by it,” Ken said. “Keven’s work is comparable only to NCAA record books.”

Ironically, neither played sports in school.

“Just around our neighborhood. Street football games with our friends and backyard baseball games,” Ken said.

They’ve been asked about and considered doing the same for other sports, such as basketball, volleyball and baseball, but football is the only sport that came to fruition.

“This takes up almost all of my time. I fooled around with some other sports stats, but had to abandon it,” Keven said.

“I was approached by some baseball and basketball coaches about compiling record books for their sports, but records were too few and far between to make a go of it,” Ken added.

As for how much longer they’ll continue, who knows. Keven admits with a chuckle that he doesn’t have the energy he had 34 years ago. But both still very much enjoy the project.

“I spent 40 years in sports communications in one form or another, including as a reporter for SportsTicker and a statistician for Time Warner Cable Sports Channel, and this is one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever been a part of,” Ken said.