It's how you play the game

Friday Night Lights - H.G. Bissinger
Cambridge, Mass.: DaCapo Press, 2004 (originally published 1990)

I've gotten attached to the tv show. After roommates and friends and some growing up, I was finally ready to appreciate a little bit of Texas. So when I heard the book was good, I bought it. And when I was searching for something different to read a couple weeks ago, I turned to it.

And then, maybe 80 pages in, I found myself in a convention center hall in Riverside. And looking out at a room full of excited youth who spent their weekend competing, having developed surprisingly strong bonds with their teammates as well as their fellow competitors. And at their parents, and coaches, who give so much of themselves to help their kids succeed. Suddenly I was not-quite-eight again, at my first feis. Or 10, in San Diego, winning my first championship. Or 14, at Nationals, when I was supposed to make the final round as a soloist and failed and when my team paid more attention to our placement compared to other California schools and so was pleased with a 6th place finish. Or 17, at my last Nationals as a competitor. My teammates... we were a family. I didn't always like all of them, and I know they felt the same. But on stage, I trusted them implicitly. I knew exactly where they would be at any given moment, without looking. I don't think you realize how unique and rare that experience is until it's over.

But back to FNL. It's about a football team, and the town the team props up. Their heroes, their goats, the ways football fits into a broader social and historical context, and the importance of being part of something bigger than yourself.

Over my time as a dancer, I learned what it was like to be the newcomer, to be the small Cinderella school. And I experienced life on top, what it was to be part of the elite school on the West Coast, expected to win. And I also felt the confusion that comes when you are supposed to win, going to win, and somehow you don't. So maybe, in my own way, I know what it's like to be a Permian Panther.

And even more so, I know what Bissinger points out that these boys learn: it doesn't last.

They [the former players] might come back to the locker room after a big game [...] and paw around the edges of the joyful pandemonium and it would become clear that it wasn't theirs anymore - it belonged to others who had exactly the same swagger of invincibility that once upon a time had been their exclusive right.

It had been my right once too. And maybe that's why I enjoy watching these mock trial teams trying to guess their standings by analyzing the matchups. And why I cared so much whether the Permian Panthers made it to State. And why I do care about the games that end most episodes of the tv version of Friday Night Lights. And why I want them to win, and to lose. To experience it all. Before it's the next generation's turn.