Those bright and oh so shiny friday lights
... matter; the teacher would provide the needed grade to stay on the team. It wasn't uncommon for players to receive answer keys for a test or simply to be exempt from taking the test at all. Some didn't know how they would cope without football after the season was over. They ate, drank, and slept it. On the whole, these 16 and 17-year-old boys' identity was wrapped up in a pigskin. The Odessa football players couldn't be objective about criticisms of football. Their total self-esteem depended on how they did on Friday night. This was the glorified culmination of their football career: wearing the black MoJo uniform in the stadium under the big lights. Football was more than just a game to them; it was a religion. It "made them seem like boys going off to fight a war for the benefit of someone else, unwitting sacrifices to a strange and powerful god" (Bissinger, p.11). Because football was so meaningful in their lives, to criticize it was to criticize everything they'd worked so hard for and lived for. The stranglehold of the sport over the school is best seen in the football budget. For a game that was to take place across the state, rather than drive ten to twelve hours to get there, the school payed for a plane for the team, as well as two others for the band and students who wished to go to the game. The cost of this was well over 20,000 dollars. It might also be argued that the football department was payed better and had much better technology. Teachers of english and math, were forced to buy much needed school supplies for their class rooms, out of their own salary, if they thought that what the school gave them was inadacite. There were very few computers in the school for learning, while the football office had some of the lastest recording and computer equipment to analyse the games and draw up stat sheets. All of this was somehow within the budget. I don't have much in common with the football players in the book. I'm not a wild party person who gets drunk on the week ends, and I care much more about my academics than the Odessa students. My identity is not so totally wrapped up in football. I haven't been dreaming about being on a field on Friday night since fourth grade the way they did. By the same token, I haven't wanted to be stereotyped as the "meathead" football player. I have other interests, hobbies, and sports that I...