Overstating the Glow of the Lights

The latest issue of the New York Times' sports magazine, Play has an interesting piece on both Friday Night Lights and the spectacle of Friday Night Lights that inspire the show. Football is fast approaching and so naturally Odessa and the region are getting geared up for another season under the lights. There is no doubting that football is huge in West Texas, and that Permian High is the most prominent program, though in Odessa it appears that the coverage of both PHS and Odessa High are fairly evenhanded (my guess is that Bronchos fans might disagree).

To a degree I take issue with one assertion from Darren Allman, Permian's third-year head coach who played on the Panthers' 1984 state championship team, when he discusses how realistic the television show is:

“The book, movie and TV show are all based on how rabid the people in this community are about high-school football,” he says. “Is that realistic? Yes.” Football is “the No. 1 source of entertainment,” he continues, adding, “It’s what people think about and talk about all the time.”

This represents fiercely insular thinking. Lots of people spend lots of time thinking about football here, to be sure. But football simply is not so dominant throughout the community that we all sit around discussing whether the Panthers can improve on last year's playoff performance. (I think perhaps they can).

For parents and alumni and die-hard fans, of course, local football is huge, as it is in just about any community across the country. But once you escape the penumbral shade of Permian's world, one can live an existence in Odessa quite removed from the black and white wonders of Mojo. And this does not come from a hostile observer -- anyone who has read this blog for even a week nows that I obsessively love sports. But like most things related to high school life, those within its ambit tend to over-inflate the significance of what goes on within.

Of course Coach Allman thinks Permian High football is the be-all and end-all for the community's existence. As well he should as the program's head coach. But one of the problems we as a country tend to have with regard to high school sports is to make them life-or-death, and thus more important than they are. Since 1998 Permian High has made the playoffs exactly once. And by almost any indicator, the community is thriving, arguably more, on the whole, than it ever has. Like a swath of the city's denizens, I'm looking forward to next weekend's Permian Basin Football Preview in the Odessa American. I'm hoping to make my first foray under the lights at Ratliff Stadium this fall. But if I chose to pay the hype no heed, I would not represent a scorned outlier in this community. In a sense, it does Odessa and this region a disservice to imply otherwise.