Friday Night Lights
Written by Nolan Thomas, Tuesday May 19 2009
As exciting as high school football can be, especially when you are in high school, there is a place in this great nation of ours that treats high school football as highly as other football fans around the country treat college or pro football.
That place is in
It is a way of life. People in
Considering
The centerpiece of these small-secluded towns is the high school, because many of the town's main businesses are oil, farming and ranching. In some cases, the high school is the cities largest employer, and everything revolves around the high school for any and all community happenings. Town meetings, dances, pancake breakfasts, and the most important, football.
Even in the larger cities, the local school districts goings-on will monopolize the news, and that has transpired over to the football team in those towns throughout the years.
"Oil may go up and down and cotton may go up and down, but the schools and football will always be there," said one of the schools head coaches. "More than anything else, it gives the community something to rally around."
Unlike the rest of the country, football is so important to the towns that head football coaches are usually the highest-paid public employees in the area. Head coaches in
The only city officials that make more money then the schools head football coach are the superintendent and high school principal. In addition, the football coach carries as much or sometimes even more power than the school executives do, particularly in the smaller towns.
That type of salary also shows just how much these small towns and cities are willing to pay in order to ensure that their football programs produce winners from year to year.
"Our job is not just to win football games, but to create young men that need to be good citizens," said one head coach. "But you're not going to be doing that very long if you don't win."
Those large salaries are only the tip of the iceberg, because many of the schools have football stadiums that seat from 1500 people up to 15,000 people. The stadiums have installed state-of-the-art artificial turf and have other special facilities such as weight rooms, along with training and specialized practice facilities.
For most of these small towns, if the budget is limited and the stadium needs to be updated or the school needs a new school bus or has some other expenses, the stadium update will win out.
On most Friday nights, these football stadiums are filled to the brink with not only high school students, but also parents, family and longtime fans that have lived their whole lives in the town and have followed the football teams for decades. It definitely has a college-like atmosphere, with active booster clubs and traditions that go back for years and years.
The team’s stars are interviewed on weekly newscasts, and the teams even have their own cable channels and web sites just like college and pro teams do.
Some of these athletes might get a scholarship to college, or even be drafted by an NFL team eventually, but most of them will not be and their whole football career and time in the spotlight solely exists under the Friday Night Lights in
Photo Credit: Eric S. Swist / Icon SMI
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I agree there's nothing quite like it. Being the radio play-by-play voice of the Allen Eagles, 2009 5A State Champions, I get a front row seat to the craziness. Odessa Permian, the school from Friday Night Lights, came to the Dallas area for a playoff game this year with about 10,000 fans, traveling 330 miles. In the northeast, you can hit 7 states in that distance. SMU can't get that many fans to its home games. HS football is to Texas what HS Basketball is to Indiana. Amazing