Friday Night Lights - Read it! Meathead, stupid jock. These are just two of the many derogatory labels given to football players. Is it possible for me, a big idiot, to hear the criticism leveled at football? Is it possible for me, an idiot football player, to understand and be objective about the issues raised in the book Friday Night Lights? Yes, because I'm not the stereotypical football player like those portrayed in Odessa, Texas. The Odessa football players were generally a wild crowd. It was common that at the end of the fourth quarter, when the game was over, the players would start talking on the sidelines about the parties they were going to after the game, the girls they were going to try to pick up, and laughing. how drunk they were going to get. They didn't care about academics. Senior running back Boobie Miles was taking a math class that most students took as freshmen. Most senior players' programs were elective courses only. For Oddesa football players, school was just a social gathering, a chance to flirt with girls and hang out with their friends. They knew that their performance in class didn't matter; the teacher would provide the grade needed to stay on the team. It was not uncommon for players to receive answer keys for a test or simply be excused from taking the test. Some didn't know how they were going to do without football once the season ended. They ate it, drank it and slept it. Overall, the identities of these 16 and 17 year old boys were wrapped in a pigskin. Odessa footballers could not be objective in the face of football criticism. Their total self-esteem depended on their performance Friday night. It was the highlight of their football career: wearing the black MoJo uniform in the stadium under the big lights. For them, football was more than just a game; it was a religion. This “made them look like boys going to war for someone else's benefit, unwittingly sacrificing to a strange and powerful god” (Bissinger, p. 11). Because football had so much meaning in their lives, to criticize it was to criticize everything they had worked so hard for and lived through...