The Importance of Football in the Movie Varsity Blues Sports play such a huge role in our society; many people form their lives around watching or playing a certain sport. In my house, when football season starts, my dad and brother watch football religiously every Sunday and Monday. On Sundays some of my dad’s friends come over to watch the game, my mom prepares snacks and lunch for “the guys”. When the game is on they are so interested in it, that they have no idea what is going on around them, I try to talk to my dad when the game is on and he always seems to ignore me. I love how they get so into the game, and cheer really loud and yell at the television. For them like many other people, they have found football to be a hobby, something to do in there past time. They have formed habits around watching the game. In the movie “Varsity Blues,” football isn’t just a past time for the town, but it is a way of life, the whole town is involved in the high school football team. “Varsity Blues” takes place in a small town in Texas called West Canyon, in this town if you are a healthy boy, then you are a football player. Young males have tons of pressure from their families, friends, teachers, and others in the town to play football, and take the game very seriously. But how did this town get so involved in the sport, why do they make such a huge deal about the game, and what happens if you are a male in West Canyon and you do not believe the world revolves around a high school football team. Jonathan Mox grew up in this town, with all of these pressures, but he did not agree that high school football was the most important thing in life. His father really pressures him because he used to play football as well and takes it very seriously, and thinks that Mox should as well. The movie begins with Mox explaining how football means everything to the town he says, “football is it’s own society in West Canyon.” Mox started playing football at a young age with his other friends and team mates. They were taught to listen to what the coach says and to win at all costs, football is how they are brought up. The coach at West Canyon is Bud Kilmore, who has been the coach for 30 years, and has never lost a game. He has coached generation after generation of football players. Kilmore also coached Mox’s father, him and some of the other fathers go to the practices ... ... middle of paper ... ... Kilmore coach them, and winning the game without a coach. He was on the inside, he saw the affect that the game was having on his friends and wanted to do something right to fix it. That took a lot of guts for him to do that. Although I think being involved in a sport is a positive thing, but in this situation it was not. Being involved in a sport was one of the best things I ever did. I starting playing soccer at the age of 7 and did not stop until I was out of high school. I loved to play soccer more than anything, I would play fall soccer, spring, winter, and summer leagues, and I could never get enough of soccer. I too, just as Mox had a couple of coaches I did not agree with, I hated to play for them because I felt that they had other motto’s besides just coaching the team. I would still play because I loved the game but did not agree with what they had to say. If I had a good coach I would play my hardest to help the team out. Sports really shape our society, and culture. You will not find very many people who do not have some love for at least one sport or another. There are so many sports out there that people love and will always watch the sport of their choice.
Abstract: High school football in the state of Texas has become out of control. The sport is no longer played for the sake of the school but rather has become a Friday night ritual to these small towns in Texas. The players are no longer just high school kids inter acting in school sports but have now become heroes to these small town communities. Communities simply no longer support their local high school team but rally in pride of their hometown rivalry against another team. School administrators and coaches no longer are teachers and mentors for the kids but are the equivalent to what in professional football are team owners and "real coaches". Parents have become agents and sacrifice their jobs and homes so that their child may play for the right team. Finally the fans, the fans have lost the sense that it is just a high school sport and changed the game to a level of professional sports. I plan to prove and show that for all these reasons Texas high school football has become out of control. It is no longer the game that it was originally meant to be.
Is High School football a sport, or is it more than that to some people? I’ve learned that the book is more sociological, which means that it focused on our human society of racial issues and also emphasizes the economy and the divide between the wealthy residents of one city versus the more working-class denizens of another are all subjects that are given an in-depth examination. This is more of the main or focal point of the whole book and in not so much in the movie. Although Bissinger's story is a true-life recounting of the 1988 football season of the Permian High School team, it reads like fiction and even though I believe his book is superior, the theatrical adaptation still stands apart as one of the great football movies ever to see in theaters. In the movie it was that team unit that was most significant in the development of the tale. Almost 80 – 90% of the book is in the film but there still are some differentiated contrasts found in the book in comparison to the movie. It has the intensity and the realism that kids were and are and also captures the...
The football players in Odessa were generally a wild party crowd. It was typical that late in the fourth quarter, when the game was in the bag, the players would begin talking on the sidelines about what parties they were going to after the game, what girls they were going to try to pick up, and laughing about how drunk they were going to get. They cared nothing for academics. The senior star running back, Boobie Miles, was taking a math course that most students took as freshmen. Many of the senior players' schedules consisted of nothing but electives. For the Oddesa footbal players, school was nothing more than a social get-to-gether, served up to them as a chance to flirt with girls and hand out with their friends. They knew that their performance in class didn't 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.
...e their life as well as the children. The children receive a ton of pressure from their families to perform at a high level so they will feel satisfied as parents that their football player performed well. Thus the families’ obsession of high school football in particular the parents’ obsession proves to be a continuous and damaging cycle for the high school football players.
These seniors had experienced both the trials and victories of previous football seasons. Therefore, Coach Ware, along with the rest of his staff and team relied on these players to step up and take the leadership positions. His seniors proved their leadership both on and off the field through their words, efforts, and examples.
In Odessa, an oil-rich town in West Texas, there is a line that separates the two races of blacks and whites. They called it “the American version of the Berlin Wall – the railroad tracks that inevitably ran through the heart of town” (Bissinger 91). The tracks are the symbol of the barrier, tension, and attitude that stand between the two races. To the Odessan whites, African Americans are often considered extraneous, with few hopes and dreams to follow. It is also a common part of everyday language to blurt out the word “nigger,” without ever categorizing it in a racist context. To escape the predisposed perception, the football stadium, where the night lights shine, is the solitary premises where blacks accepted as an identity, as well as athletes. In the non-fiction book, Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger explores this phenomenon of racial tension and the low expectation that are imposed upon black athletes. Through the use of descriptive imagery, revealing dialogue, and anaphora, Bissinger describes the underlying message of Odessan’s racial division, coupled with the meager education that the general population receives while obsessed with high school football.
Coach Herman Boone, who is played by Denzel Washington, is a very influential person. He is a perfect leader. While it cannot be found out for sure, Coach Boone can be classified under the trait theory of management, that “Leaders are Born”. The type of leadership he displays cannot be taught, he is able to bring together two different types of groups to act as one, to respect each other and play together. He shows power in the movie, he has a large capacity to influence others. Using his power, he gets the players to conform and forget how others think they are supposed to act towards each other. The goal specificity is also clear in the movie. Coach Boone expects his team to be ‘perfect’, he expects them to win the Virginia State Championship. Former head coach and now assistant coach Bill Yoast, played by Will Patton, is also a very influential person and good leader. He is in charge...
Varsity sports play one of the largest roles in the modern school system. They can one of the most influential parts of a youngling’s experience. However, with that comes great challenges and sociological issues embedded into the sports that show conflict and adversity in certain times. After reviewing some of these issues the true structure of varsity sports may be identified, and possibly reviewed.
Football is a game of adversity and emotion. People who have not played a sport or follow one closely don’t understand the emotion behind game. They think that football is just a game, but for those who are involved with the team don’t think so. All those horrendous hours of countless preparation are for something players and coaches love. About a few years ago, a football player at the collegiate level was told that he wouldn’t be able to play another down of football again due to his banged up h...
All over America, friends and families join together on Friday nights in order to watch their hometown’s high school football game. However, many of the spectators do not go to just watch the game. As suggested by Lewis Lapham, the players play and the spectators spectate in order to feel a sense of various abstract things. There is much more to sports than the game itself. In Friday Night Lights, sports establish the illusions of both innocence and hope.
African-American players are often negatively affected due to the prevalence of racism in the town. Ivory Christian, for instance, is a born-again Christian with aspirations to be a famous evangelist, but he is unable to pursue his dream due to his commitment to the football team. Because of this, the townspeople have unrealistic expectations of him and assume that he will put all his time and energy into football. Furthermore, there is a greater pressure on him to succeed...
Building on turn-of-the-century passions for the game among college alumni, no American sport better capitalized on the opportunities provided by new electronic media than football, in both its professional and collegiate forms. The annual Super Bowl has become late-twentieth-century America's single-greatest televised sporting event—indeed, its single-greatest television event, period, with workplace water-cooler talk the following Monday as likely to concern the new advertisements debuted in 30-second, one-million-dollar advertising slots as on the game itself. Like the Thanksgiving Day college games in New York during the 1890s, football today is as much a spectacle as a sporting event. Football is not just a televised marketing and entertainment vehicle, however. While it trails other sports as a recreational activity for youths and adults, football is the cornerstone of extracurricular life at high schools nationwide as well as college. In some areas, local "football fever" is so prominent that entire communities' identities seem to be wrapped up in the local football teams—places like Stark County, Ohio, where the legendary Massillon High School Tigers draw more than 100,000 spectators per year, or Midland-Odessa, Texas, where the annual Permian-Lee rivalry draws more than 20,000 partisans. Football's popularity helps make the sport a symbolic battlefield in American "culture wars." For it...
Mental test? First thing that probably comes to your head is how to describe football as a discourse community. According to Swales “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals”(Swales, 471) and one of the main goals for high school football is success both in the classroom and on the field for players. Doing so will most likely lead to a scholarship, or an “Offer” as we like to call it. An offer is an official scholarship given by a university who finds interest in an athlete playing on their team, if they feel you fit their programs criteria. To achieve this goal, coaches and teachers work together to set up study hall time for players to get extra work done or to tutor kids who are having trouble in a particular
The movie I decided to analyze was Remember the Titans. I examined the dilemmas and ethical choices that were displayed throughout the story. In the early 1970s, two schools in Alexandria Virginia integrate forming T.C. Williams High School. The Caucasian head coach of the Titans is replaced by an African American coach (Denzel Washington) from North Carolina, which causes a fury among white parents and students. Tensions arise quickly among the players and throughout the community when players of different races are forced together on the same football team. Coach Boone is a great example of a leader. He knows he faces a tough year of teaching his hated team. But, instead of listening to the hating town or administrators, Boone pushes his team to their limits and forces good relationships between players, regardless of race. His vision for the team involves getting the players concerned in what the team needs to become, and not what it is supposed to be; a waste. Boone is a convincing leader with a brutal, boot camp approach to coaching. He believes in making the players re-build themselves as a team. When Boone says, You will wear a jacket, shirt, and tie. If you don't have one buy one, can't afford one then borrow one from your old man, if you don't have an old man, then find a drunk, trade him for his. It showed that he was a handy Craftsman and wanted done what he wanted done no matter what it took.During training camp, Boone pairs black players with white players and instructs them to learn about each other. This idea is met with a lot of fighting, but black linebacker Julius Campbell and stubborn white All-American Gerry Bertier. It was difficult for the players to cope with the fact they had to play with and compete with ...
Stein G., Raedeke T., Glenn S. (1999). Children’s Perception of Parent Sport Involvement: It’s Not How Much, But to What Degree That’s Important. Journal of Sport and Behavior, 22, 591-601.