Pressure In Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights

Football is obviously an integral part of our nation’s identity. It’s the one sport that absolutely dominates the weekend, whether it be college football on Saturday, or professional on Sunday. However in some places in this country, the game of football is all that a community has. Award winning journalist and author H.G. Bissinger described in great detail such a community in his 1990 non-fiction book “Friday Night Lights.” Throughout the entirety of the book, we learned about what life was life in Odessa, Texas during the 1980’s. Bissinger 's main focus in the book is on Permian High School, a school that was known for its monumental success in football in the state of Texas. Pride for the Permian Panthers reverberated throughout the community

In “Do Sports Build Character or Damage it?” Mark Edmundson explains the pros and cons of children who grow up playing football. Firstly, he believes the perseverance it takes to show up for hard practices is useful later in life. Especially when they get frustrated with something and don’t notice the little bits of progress they are making. Secondly, it increases a player’s self-confidence with every goal they achieve, no matter how small. Furthermore, he states that each player has a place on the team, this provides each player with self-affirmation. Edmundson then shows football as comparable to war play and the war heroes, Hector and Achilles in the Iliad. With this, he opens the door for the more unfavorable aspects of the game.

Football is a very popular sport not only in American high schools and colleges, but also in the entire country of the United States. Is playing high school football worth the risk and harm inflicted to high school football players? This is the main question raised by the author, Raymond Schroth, in the article “Abolish High School Football.” In this article, Schroth talked about the disadvantages and harms of playing high school football to the players. Schroth argued that high school football should be abolished because it had contributed more harmful effects than benefits to football players. Most of the high school football players are getting injured, some suffer from concussion, and the worst, some players die. In addition to the physical

College football, as an “amateur” sport, produces nearly $3.5 billion dollars a year, but the young men who play the game, primarily African American, don’t see a penny of revenue. Yes, student athletes get tuition, room and board, and lots of Nike, Adidas or Under Armour gear, but they’re really free labor. The world refers to them as “student athletes,”. There are three different levels of competition under the NCAA. Division I, Division II and Division III are the three levels associated with the NCAA. In this essay, I’ll focus solely on Black College Football and why it’s becoming a lost but rich history. Some of the greatest NFL football players came from HBCUs such as, Jerry Rice, Walter Payton and Steve McNair. Sadly, we’ve forgotten about the

Little kids always want to make it to the pros, as they get older they narrow it down into smaller goals. I will never know what it’s like to go to a small town school; I graduated with a class of over 500. In this school of approximately 2,000 students, I can only imagine the pressure that was put on our football team when their season started to become a winning one. Odessa is a small town located in western Texas, home of the Permian Panthers. The Permian Panthers are only a high school football team, but the way the town acts you would think they were all going to receive major scholarships.

In “Friday Night Lights” the progress to achieve goals are disrupted by the conflicts that character’s have to face. Boobie Miles is the top HS recruit in the country for his position, but his entire life was changed after a terrible career ending injury causes him to change his goals. In the text people would comment Boobie without football he’s nothing because he just didn’t have the intangibles to be a regular person without football “Boobie Miles without the ability to carry a football in his hand, might as well get a broom and start preparing for his other destiny in life- learning how to sweep the corners of storerooms.” Boobie would then have to sit out a couple of games due to the injury which would give him a lot of time to think

For many years has football has been considered the utmost dangerous sport in high school, but recently many new studies have been made to prove the exact opposite. High school football gives money to the school and improves the school. In high school sports when a team wins the championship the school gets money that can be used towards hiring new teachers, providing scholarships for students, buying new books, and overall improving the school itself.

Football has become very popular over the past years. People are starting their kids to play at the young age of five. It is some people’s main priority to watch on a Saturday and Sunday, and the “Friday night lights” are a very popular thing in high schools all around the country. Some people think the popularity of football is getting out of hand in schools. They are worried it is taking away from the educational aspect of school. One person who thinks strongly about this is Steven Salzberg. Salzberg is a student at University of Maryland. He wrote an article called Get Football Out Of Our Universities. In this article, Salzberg talks about how football should be taken out of colleges. His reasoning is because, football players who get a

As football developed into one of the most popular sports in America during the 20th century, it became associated with idealizations. In his framing of Friday Night Lights as an antihero model, Robert Kerr establishes how football developed into the quintessential model of being a gentleman. Walter Camp, one of the earliest coaches and promoters of the game, felt that its standard of excellence emphasized being an honorable and respectable men, going as far as to say that “Whatever bruises he may have in the flesh, his heart is right” (Kerr). By portraying early football players as virtuous men, the sport established a facade that incorporated sportsmanship, tradition, and morality, effectively obscuring its savage nature. Football became

From the beginning of the Greek, Romans to our day-to-day life, sports has been affecting all its users. We can safely assume now that a body in motion will stay in motion, with that, a body at rest will tend to stay at rest. Our thoughts and our worries will

Letting him know that he, the players and fans, will stand behind him in “their house.” The adversity and tribulations that these characters go through are so real that you are right there in the mix with them. According to an article by Scott D. Pierce, “Top 10 TV: 'Friday Night Light's' the top show in a year of zombies, TV families and cliffhangers," although it was the "simplest and most complex show…. it felt like real life, and real life is complicated. Sure, it was about football and family, but it treated both with nuance, intelligence, and heart.” Riggins' character is very much like the metaphysical theory of Aristotle. He acts a certain way because he knows it is the right thing to do without an expectation of a reward. In “The Myth of Sisyphus” Albert Camus claims that an essential battle between what we want from the universe and what we find in the universe. We can only realize that “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.” Camus suggests that Sisyphus' punishment of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down, is

In the movie Friday Night Lights, there is more to the story than the typical football movie. In this movie, there is a high school football team that is based out of Odessa, Texas who puts everything on the line in every game. This high school team has a very unhealthy worry and obsession over winning every game that they play in, no matter what the score is or what they must do to win. Every game they play the entire town knows that they will win because they do anything and everything they can to ensure that. This obsession not only lied with the team, but it also lied within the community. Every year it was an expectation that they would make playoffs and win the state championship. In the very beginning of the movie, one of the starting

Bissinger concludes his argument by depicting the harsh realities of life beyond high school football, demonstrating the idea that high school sports create a make believe world, leaving the players unprepared for life after they graduate. Football in high school is filled with excitement and glory. In high school the players are the kings who rule their towns. Upon leaving high school they are faced with a rude awakening to reality. In the words of former “Golden Boy” Joe Bizzell, “it had been victory after victory...the world seemed only to consist of cheers and praise and glory and rules that had no meaning”(282). At Permian, the players were treated like heroes and were left completely unaware of what was to come. After leaving high school

"Bigger, Faster, Stronger" is the motto of the athlete, or at least for many athletes. Sports are something quite special; they drive our testosterone levels through the roof and may give great or horrible feelings! Fans, at times, can be very crazy; they will cheer their teams 24/7, cry when the teams lose, and celebrate when the teams win. Humans have been attracted to competition for a long time; sports can be traced to ancient times. Football (soccer) is believed to have evolved in China in the 3rd century B.C. and the first sports event ever recorded was in Greece in 776 B.C. (Wood). Sports became a significant part of society in ancient times and are still significant today. But why are people so attracted to sports? The answer is the

The sun illuminates countless all-American names, with the occasional Coke or Papa John’s sponsor signs. The play clock ticks down to zero, and the stadium is finally filled to maximum capacity. Kickoff commences, players scramble across the field, and suddenly the only problems in the world hinge on if the Nike plastered football is past the downs marker. There are the elite suites high above the stadium cloaked in shade, but the majority are cramped and blisteringly hot. We are all united as one, cheering our team to victory, and thriving on the culture that is modern day sports. Every aspect of game day, from the Nike apparel to the intricate regulatory facets within the game itself, developed from influences that existed in the era between