33rd book of 2020. When Competition is Everything.
Reading through Friday Night Lights, I couldn’t help but marvel at twin formative experiences growing up:
First is my own experience with high school competition. In my last year at high school, I missed more than a third of school days, and slept through the remainder I attended. I remember flying to tournaments, scouting opponents in preparation for state competition, and even fearing the elite Texas schools who took competition to a whole new level.
Second was teaching SAT prep for a star high school football player: he tried hard, but by a large margin he struggled more than any of the hundreds of students I had taught. He was certainly not helped by the periodic spotty vision or even near blackouts, presumably from concussions while playing football, that would periodically interrupt lessons.
Looking back on it, I was lucky - I wasn’t great at sports and found myself enmeshed in a high school dynasty focused on debate rather than football. Had it been switched, I certainly would have loved to be out on that field. The rest is just happy dividends from getting swept up in competition that benefitted the players far more than the spectators.
Friday Night Lights reads like a silent critique of how Football brings short term glory and other transient benefits to spectators, but such competition leaves a string of wrecked players in its wake. The players are “young enough to dream, not old enough to know that most dreams do not come true”, and when the community wants to vicariously live through a group of players and a handful of wins, the repercussions can be immense.