The Surprise of the Season

It’s amazing to think that there are places in this very country where men and women devote all of their time by high school football.  You see it in places like Chicago in some of the suburbs as well but it takes on a whole new level in some places like in Texas.  When you live in a big city like Chicago or New York or Detroit you have major league sports team to serve as a distraction.  You also have a lot of city with a lot of opportunities for kids to take advantage of.  In short, football isn’t the only way to actually get out of the town and into a big city. A few years back there was a book called “Friday Night Lights” about a town in
Texas where football was pretty much the very lifeblood of the town.  It was a kind of obsession that even the most ardent Bears or Packers fan would find strange.  It was the kind of obsession that made it seem as if people would live and die based upon what the local high school football team did.  Whereas you may wait until Sunday with anticipation for your NFL team or maybe Saturday to watch you favorite college team but these places waited for Friday night.  The games are carried on local television and news stations.  The local sports radio stations talked about the games and the players the way your local sports radio stations may talk about the NFL team. 

That book was turned into a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton.  It was a modest hit and pretty well received by critics.  It told the story of a man who came to the town of Odessa
Texas and was put in charge of a team called the Panthers.  It gave information about how life centered around high school football in that town.  It told the story of how economic depression had pinned everyone’s hopes on whether or not the high school team would make into the state finals every year. I never saw that movie.  A television show about football wasn’t one I was particularly interested in seeing.  I also had a problem that a television show called “Friday Night Lights” was not actually going to be on Friday nights which seemed logical.  However, I liked the actor Kyle Chandler who was going to be playing the lead and the previews seemed to be rather interesting and intense.  I decided I had nothing better to do and would tune in to the first episode. 

What I found was the surprise of the season. I found a show that was filmed in a documentary style.  I found a television show that was powerfully written with well-developed characters.  I found compelling storylines and interesting people plus amazingly filmed football game footage.  Finally, I found a show that was well-acted. It’s tough to find actors who are supposed to be high school students who can act.  This seems to be an issue that “Friday Night Lights” has solved.  There is the quarterback who ends up with the spinal injury.  His recovery has managed to become a story that is almost as compelling as whether or not the team is going to make it into the finals.  The story of the back-up quarterback trying to maintain leadership over the team resonates with me here in Chicago after going through last Bears season and watching back-up quarterback Kyle Orton hold the team together. 

Then there’s the player who is the quarterback’s best friend who is also an alcoholic and has a huge crush on the quarterback’s girlfriend.  He blames himself for his friend ended up in the hospital and uses that as an excuse to fall deeper into his addictions and self-destructive behavior. Meanwhile there is the quarterback who was illegally recruited to play on the team.  He was displaced due to Hurricane Katrina and was an all-star player on his Louisiana team.  Now the coach and the team may be in trouble due to the illegal recruitment. 

Holding all of this together is the story of the coach and his family.  How does a man manage to live day-to-day when the hopes and dreams of the town are placed squarely on his shoulders seconds after he wakes every day?  Everywhere he goes people give him advice on how he should coach the team and who he should play.  When he loses the townspeople seem to feel they have the right to threaten the man and his family.  There is a disturbing scene where the coach enters a fast-food restaurant with his daughter and his daughter is accosted by a man who at one time won a state championship with the football team.  The fact that he is now fat, still living in the town, and still obsessed with high school football doesn’t seem to matter with him. Some of the racism that was dealt with in the movie is absent in this television show, but it is there.  The black students are treated more like animals who are expected to perform on cue for the masses.  Meanwhile each of them holds out hope that a big college might recruit them and then they might get to the pros and provide money to their families. 

What is so compelling about this is that you know there are towns like this going through things like this right now.  There are towns right now gearing up for the Friday night game and there are kids who are putting the hopes and dreams of the entire town on their heads.  There are kids right now who think that football is the only hope they have to getting out of some small no-name town and into a life of untold riches.  All of them forget the toll that this game takes on their bodies or forget that the rich linebacker can now barely walk with his career over because his knees are shot forever. The head coach of the Chicago Bears, Lovie Smith, came from a town like that.  Part of the reason he may be so good at what he does is because he came from a place where everyone lived on a steady diet of football.  I would guess that he is the exception, however, and not the rule.  I am willing to bet that all of those kids out there in that town right now really have no more chance of turning pro than I do.   

It’s a sad fact that all of that pressure may not lead to more than a life in a small town, growing old, gaining weight and then sitting there at middle age looking at a tarnished state championship ring.  That is what the show “Friday Night Lights” is about.  That seems heavy, but the show is also compelling, well-written and exciting.  You care about these people.  It’s the surprise of the season and I am hoping the Dillon Panthers make it to the state championship. Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.