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.
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...
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...
Douglas E. Foley offers an interesting analysis of American football culture in high schools, in his article titled “The Great American Football Ritual: Reproducing Race, Class and Gender Inequality”. The author covers the ways that the football culture splits people apart and segregates them into groups based on what they contribute to the football scene. The football scene seems to bring negativity to the lives of every group it touches, yet it is still a staple in American culture to this day.
Is High School football a sport, or is it more than that to some people? Recent newspaper headlines include such items as coaches abusing student athletes; fathers of athletes murdering coaches, and mother’s disabilitating cheerleading candidates to assure their daughters make the cheerleading team. In Odessa, Texas high school football is a major contributor to the society of a small town in Texas society. Every Friday night, 50,000 people fill the stadium to see high school students put their lives on the line to win a football game. H. G. Bissinger writes a novel called Friday Night Lights, about a year in 1988 where High School players prepare and play on the High School team, and what an impact they have on a small city in Texas.
Obsession is something that gets thrown around a lot, to describe the way someone may feel about something. Obsession can be described by the fans of Odessa as it relates to its high school football team, so much so it is unhealthy. Sustaining the ambitions of not only themselves but the alumni and town of Odessa, Texas is a lot to ask from a young adult. There is a continuous pattern in Friday Night Lights that passion is not always a good thing. The town’s expectations of the team cause the school personnel and coaches to sacrifice the players’ overall wellbeing in return for a successful football team. Although the town of Odessa is unified and sustained by its love of Texas High School Football, Friday Night Lights provides insight into how damaging a fans obsession can be.
American Football is a huge spectator sport where offensive and defensive players will use teamwork and perseverance to try and score more points than their opponent. Football is highly respected in America, where boys will try and pursue the dream of playing in the NFL (National Football Association) someday; but if you look at an average neighborhood, you will find that kids and adults of all ages love to go out and throw around the pigskin. (Lerner and Lerner 275). One thing Americans will take pride in is the college and NFL football teams they root for. People sit down with a beer and talk hours upon hours of football and two individuals can get in a heated discussion in the local sports store of whose sports team is better. Surprisingly enough, one will find the most passionate football players at the high school level. Most boys will start their football career as a young child in football programs such as Pop Warner to get a foothold and to get those involved in teamwork and friendships. These programs are usually the start to someone falling in love with the sport and making it a career choice eight years later. Football is one of America’s favorite sports. When fall season comes around, people across America are placing bets, finding out where that new sports bar is, and buying wide screen T.V’s to watch NFL on Sundays. After their team plays, they will go out and reminisce what happened that Sunday. While thousands of fans are still pumped from the NFL games they watched; small towns across America are getting ready to shut down their shops and restaurants to have the chance to make it to the local high schools football game. Ray Glier, a reporter for the New York Times, writes about football in the small town of Appala...
Camerer, Dave. Winning Football Plays by American Foremost Coaches. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1962. Print.
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.
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.
To me the role of sports in society is for men and women of all ages to grow and develop and be responsible members of society and the community. Sports can bring a community together as long as it doesn 't become the religion of who we are as christians. It also gives us a different setting to interact with each other and learn from one another so we can become better as a whole. Coming together as a community and being able to learn and have fun is probably one of the most important aspects to me when it comes to sports. There should be no reason that parents have to get into arguments because of a call a referee makes in their child 's game. Also sports have become a bigger deal in society then just about fun and learning the sport. A great deal of it, at the higher level has so do with economics and social status’. Players with exceptional talent are now seen in commercials and have huge salaries to play sports or even at the college level earn scholarships to get into colleges for free. I mean hey, if your that good then good for you!
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 ...
Sports may have impacted our culture much more then we thought it would, and keeps impacting. Sports have affected some of the most important aspects of life, such as jobs and money. It has also affected things as little as who we look up to and how we dress. Culture means “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” The definition of sports is “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” So when we put two and two together we get a a nation or world that has changed due to sports. Back in the mid and late 1900’s sports were used to see whose way of life was better. As time went on and keeps going on, we
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...
In the beginning, there was football. The official said, Let the stadium lights come on, and they came on. The football players came onto the field, and they saw the light was good. Other teams started to show up and practice on the battle ground, otherwise known as the "playing field." Fans shouted, and cheerleaders went on about their playful acts. Parents, brothers, sisters, and close friends all piled into the stands to see the game of the year. The official stepped out onto the moist grass at Williams Stadium in Plano, Texas. The time was seven o'clock p.m. on a Thursday night. He paused for a moment, looked at his stopwatch, and blew his whistle. Gigantic muscular men came from out of nowhere as the fans began to cheer, waving various flags, and clanging cow bells. The bells sounded like a wind chime in an April shower, all different sounds at different times.