Football as a Means: A Review of Undefeated

The best football movies focus on high school. The players still possess a raw idealism and capacity for self-sacrificing commitment. This visceral passion infuses the game with social power and camaraderie. High school teams are still anchored in real communities where people know your name. These loyalties and sacrifices erode at higher levels. High school players exhibit the devotion and attention to authority that makes 16-20 year olds ideal soldiers. High school movies rule supreme for capturing the power and complexity of football.

Undefeated, an academy award winning documentary, follows the Manassas high school Tigers in North Memphis for one season. The moviemakers earned a level of trust and invisibility that opens windows into the compelling stories and tropes that give football such a unique and compelling American narrative. While the documentary can sometimes feel like Blind Side and sometimes like Friday Night Lights, it follows the true and serendipitous story of a poor and downtrodden football team that had not won a game in 15 years and not won a playoff game in mover 100 years. The story unfolds neither as fairy tale or nursery lessons, but as an abiding portrait of what football can sometimes accomplish through community, authority and challenge to the characters of young men. 

North Memphis exists as an independent character. Roving cameras and inside homes reveal a profoundly broken community abandoned by its job generator Firestone. Dilapidated and abandoned houses, cracked streets and left behind people populate the background and foreground. The young men slouched in a team meeting when we first meet them are cast offs with no future and seldom a real family. Mansassas coach Bill Courtney announces at the meeting:

“ Starting right guard shot, one linebacker shot, two players fighting right in front of the coach, star center arrested for shooting someone in the face with BB gun. For most coaches that would be pretty much a career's worth of crap to deal with. I think that sums up the last two weeks for me."

When the team meets with an ex-NFL player Aaron Hayden and he asks how many of you have two parents who went to college, no hand go up. When he asks  “how many have a relative in jail” every player raises their hand. Welcome to North Memphis.

Six years ago Bill Cartney shows up as a volunteer coach. He throws himself into coaching and trying to save the young men of the Manassas team. He loves coaching; this is clear, and would gladly give up his successful wood products business to do in it full time. His passion drives him at home, and interviews with his resigned and exasperated wife and a few shots of home life with his kids reveal how consuming and costly his coaching obsession can be. One of the film’s untouted strengths is its no nonsense revelation of how hard on family committed coaches can be. I watched Cartney struggle with his own sense of not being there for his own kids. Cartney reflects on how his own father had not been there for him and his coaching other fatherless men help to redeem that absence. I am also reminded of associate head coach telling me, “I spent 22 years being a better father to my players than my kids.”

His coaching extends who he is at work and home. His blunt, outspoken tough love drills through to the abandoned and cast off players of his team. By accident he has become the only caring male model in their lives. He knows it and feels the responsibility deeply. So deeply it starts to undermine his responsibilities to his family.

When Courtney started Manassas had only 17 players. Although the school is brand new replete with state of the art security and metal detectors, the sports facilities are a weed spotted afterthough. A local reporter points out how the real money has flown to the private schools and suburbs, so none of the public schools, despite new buildings, has any real resources to face their massive task of rescuing generations of minority students left behind and cast aside by society.

The only way the team can finance itself is to sell itself to play fodder games with richer schools. They travel hours to go get a payday of 5,000 dollars to support the program. Just like an underfunded FCS team, they make themselves a punching bag for rich suburban teams for the money. After several early season slaughters, the team is usually broken physically and psychologically before playing their district games.

No external motives, no race fairy tales, not story of black white reconciliation here; just a committed guy who loves football and loves coaching.

He spends hours with the team and spends his own money and recruits other white well off assistant coaches to drill and plead for discipline. He organizes fund-raisers to get the team off the treadmill of early season games. He and his cadre of white assistant volunteer coaches truly believe that if the students let it, “football can save your life.” It sounds like the worst form of paternalistic coach-speak. But, in this case, football provides an identity, place of safety away from streets, sense of efficacy and above all male authority figures to young men who have none of the above.

When Courtney and his coaches lose a player, they believe they also lose a soul.

This infuses the football quest with a sense of urgency that all the best high school and college coaches carry—they “to build a platform of character” from which the young men have a chance to forge a life. Courtney and the film prove what players have known forever, what sounds like clichés to outsiders, becomes truth to insiders. Good leaders create mantras and repeat and model them endlessly until they become truths for the players and the coach. In Courtney and the team’s case:

"Young men of character and discipline and commitment end up winning in life. Football doesn't build character. Football reveals character."

It takes time, patience and endless passion pouring into what can seem like a black hole of emotional apathy and resignation in the team. But Courtney has been at this for five years now. He has a core of seniors who stayed with him and slowly committed and grew to trust this large passionate white guy from far away.

The team possess O. C. Brown a large easy-going and very talented player who could earn a scholarship. OC lives with his grandmother and as he says “I’m not very smart…Football is my way out.” But he struggles with grades and above all the dreaded ACT. Almost without noticing it, the film points out how he ends up moving in part time with an well off white assistant coach where he gets tutoring. In the end after failing the ACT once,  he squeaks by with the minimum 16 and earns a scholarship to Southern Mississippi. It felt eerily like scenes from Blind Side without the fairy tale aspect. The coach is direct and to the point, “if I were a piano teacher and found a great talent, I’d try to help.”

I kept expecting the black-white dynamic and subtext of the idea of well off white guys plying their coaching passion with a bunch of underprivileged black kids to dominate the story and reveal the insidious racial paternalism that this could represent. Courtney feels absolutely authentic with the kids. Certainly his blunt language and his “us” against them motivation about how the kids have to overcome the rep of inner city teams who “quit” drives home. We see him visiting the kids in their homes and hugging, cajoling, demanding and helping them keep together during the craziness of high school years.

In the case of Chavis Brown, a talented but troubled young man, the coach suspends him for attacking his own teammates. But Courtney literally chases Chavis to stay with the team and endure a suspension. Chavis does and in one of the profound and wrenching scenes complete with subtitles to help with the kid’s thick north Memphis accents apologizes to the team and gives the teams coveted “uncommon man” award to his teammate Money Brown.

Money is an undersized player who succeeds because of his “mental toughness.” He has a 3,8 but no money to get to college. Worse he injures himself and in scenes reminiscent of every football injury film ever shot. he meets with caring and honest doctors who tell him he cannot play but has a chance if he can rehab.

Money despairs and struggles with losing football and facing the inability to get into college for lack of money. He quits coming to school. Again Courtney’s mantra, “you can’t quite because you are frustrated,” matters. Courtney goes to his house and literally drags him back. Courtney demands and models to them all that “character is revealed in failure.” He knows there are not second chances in North Memphis, if the kids quit, it is all over not just for the team but for their futures.

Character and discipline and team before self. He desperately screams, yells, cajoles and loves them to internalize this in the  hopes they can carry that beyond the high school. At the end it all comes out in football where he yells, “Please remember discipline. Please remember character, and let’s go kick their ass.”

At the end the coach knows he has to leave coaching at the school for the sake of time with his family. His solution, ironically, is to coach at his son’s school and coach his kid’s teams. The documentary really reveals how coaches really are coaches. Coach-speak grows from deep inside and what people may consider clichés, remain deep truths when spoken by a passionate and smart and caring coach to young men struggling, “Success does not reveal character. Character is revealed by failure.” We all hear this ten times in the movie. The coach lives it and the players struggle with it and now and then understand and live it when Chavis returns and Money gets to college and plays in the last game. The team hears it after the first defeat in their first game.

Courtney believes that one way to cut through the apathy and despair is to “reach hearts through something you love.” In this case football is all  he and these young men have. The coach never stops demanding that the kids “get their heads on right” and pay attention to “character” and put “team before individual.” It slowly sinks in to the reluctant and cynical, no cynical is to optimistic, resigned team and to those of us who watch. The coach and team capture the real lesson of football at this level. In a close game, Courtney looks at the team and exhorts them to act with “mind with heart and bodies. Let’s finish this thing.”

The team loses the first game of the season. The team loses the last game of the season in the playoffs to one of the teams that used to pay them as mercenary punching bags. In between they win nine games and OC garners a scholarship; Chavis begins the journey to becoming a functional person and Money rehabs and plays in his last game.

The title reminds us that losing a game is not the same as being defeated. One’s heart and mind and spirit can remain unbroken and undefeated even amid defeat. The coach and players learned the lesson so dear to Courtney’s coaching heart—character endures. To repeat, the true test of character is “not success, but failure.” Character endures, character gets back up, character continues to work and achieve after set-backs.

For Courtney and the committed coaches of high school and college football, that remains the abiding truth, the end for which football is but a means. One hopes the kids when they leave and face that bleak unforgiving neighborhood can remember.

"Friday Night Lights"-the Significance of Football I & II

“Can you be perfect?” Coach Garry Gaines asks his Odessa-Permian high school team at the start of August practice in the movie Friday Night Lights. Perfect, the word will have profound importance for the team later, but at this beginning of the football season, at the beginning of every football season like this week, perfect beckons players to a faultless season of wins and a state championship. To garner the championship the team must surmount the favorite Dallas-Carter, an all black power house with eight D-1A scholarship players. As the ubiquitous overlapping radio announces “It’s football time in Texas.” And this movie presents one of the finest portrayals around of the relation between football and identity by focusing upon high school football in Texas where the lineaments are inscribed with crystalline clarity.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best American sports movies and the second best football movie. The rise of fine football movies reflects the cultural shift to football as the axis of national sports consciousness. The movie later morphed into a critically acclaimed soap opera on TV. For two generations, however, the best movies and books on American sports focused on baseball, but as the center of sport gravity moved, art has caught up and FNL epitomizes this new generation of books and movies.

H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: a Town, a Team,  and a Dream is a modern American sports classic. It reveals an intimate painful look, almost anthropological in its intuitions, of the 1988 quest of the Odessa-Permian football team to win a state championship. The huge sign before the school and stadium announces the four prior state 5A championships as a warning and challenge to every player on the team. The community expects this team to win the championship for the town and the book, and movie etch an unforgettable portrayal of football as a way of life that still resonates today

The movie pans over the dry flat arid plains surrounding Odessa,Texas. An oil town surrounded by brown plains and monotonously pumping rigs, it lies in the heart of the Permian basin, old oil country and in the shadow of Midland. This is East Texas where football grows from the soil and players, like the warriors of Thebes, grow from the dragon teeth planted by parents and culture. Forgotten and feeling forsaken, the town defiantly proclaims its identity and worth through its team.

 “You have played since you were 8 years old,” Coach Gary Gaines, played with superb understatement by Bill Bob Thornton, tells his team. Beleaguered, thoughtful and realistic, he reminds his players, “You have dreamed of this for 17 years.” The first day of practice he informs them they will win the championship; they have no options, and by the way, neither does he. The movie sweeps along with a track of ubiquitous overlapping radio announcers incessantly dissecting the team and especially the coach.

The movie engraves the deep-rooted relation between the town, forgotten and barren, and the team, its crowning glory. The coach challenges his team “can you accept the responsibility to protect this town.” In the final showdown, he demands, “show them who we are.” The team represents the towns avatar, and generations of people haunt the players from trophies to the sheriff with his state championship ring to the disturbed alcoholic father of Don Bllingsly who tortures his son over his own failures. The team offers redemption and purpose to a town simmering with resentment and little hope.

Rooted in the soil and town, the team must be carried by its players and above all by its coach. The first glimpse of Gary Gaines frames him sitting watching film with laser intensity. Behind him stands the totem of all coaches, the depth chart with 2 deep names attached. It provides the first glimpse of the names that will be so familiar by the end of the movie.

Mike Winchell plays quarterback. His leg pumps constantly as he sits across from his mother reciting plays and responses as she shoots football situations at him as unerringly as a linebacker breaking through. Her medicines lay on the table nearby. Some families might use flash cards for French; she uses them for plays. Mike never smiles and carries the weight of the team, town and caring alone for a very ill mother on his frail shoulders.  He feels cursed, and only trusts Coach Gaines who recognizes in Mike the courage and resilience to take control of his own life. Mike’s perplexed resignation leads a recruiter to ask him, “is it fun for you?” It is “supposed to be fun.” Football should be fun, but for the players of Odessa it feels like a burden. After one critical loss, Mike Winchell bangs his head against the concrete wall groaning, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

James “Boobie” Miles stands as the polar opposite. Arrogant, self-absorbed and abundantly talented Miles is destined for greatness. He is the star and the reason for the team’s high rating. Letters from schools such as USC and UCLA rain down on him offering scholarships, although he can barely read the letters they send him. Brian Chavez, linebacker, Harvard bound and the emotional center of the team, helps him read them. But Boobie does not believe he needs to know how to read since he proclaims he will be a star and all Winchell has to do is hand off the ball to him. Boobie skips on weight training and succeeds through sheer bravado and athleticism. He represents the ideal and temptation of sport. A young man raised by his beloved uncle and whose life depends upon the dream of getting to the professional ranks. After he is hurt in an utterly senseless play, the team falls apart and loses a game. Their offense and morale collapse. He and his uncle travel to Midland hospital where the doctor tries to inform him that he needs surgery and cannot play.

Boobie and his Uncle ignore the doctor; lie to the coach, and Boobie gets into the last regional game when Permian must win. In the game he destroys his knee and leaves in pain. The coach walks over to him and turns away expressionless, “he’s gone.” No room to mourn or miss, the coach has to send in a play, find a new back and somehow hold a shattered team together. They lose for the second time and only get into the playoffs on a coin toss.  Later Boobie, now diminished from the extravagant personality he had adopted, watches a garbage man pick up trash seeing his own future. After collecting his gear for the last time, he breaks down with his uncle “I can’t do nothing else but play football.”

The fragility of athletic glory lingers behind every play along with the fickleness of fans. When Boobie goes down, his third string understudy, Chris Comer, whom Boobie had named “the water boy,” emerges as a star. By the end of the movie, all the colleges have lost interest in an injured Boobie Miles, and the town has replaced him with Comer in their mind. For the coach, the losses lead to threats to be fired by the leading boosters. All their schmoozing with him hid the moral ignominy of boosters solely dedicated to winning, heartless and racist about using the kids for their own dreams, and ready to dump a coach on a dime. It reminds us why good high school coaches are quitting in droves and how the big time football boosters mirror a deep model of callous sycophants.

The movie does not flinch from nor romanticize the physical violence of football. The day-to-day brutality of practice, the tortured drills in 102-degree heat unfold as normal for these kids. They have played in the Odessa leagues since 8 years old, rising up through the ranks culled and groomed to participate on the team. The movie relentlessly reminds us how much sheer pain a football player must endure. Chris Comer remains on the sidelines from his fear of being hit. Even when Boobie Miles goes down, he must grapple with the reasonable fear of being hit by multiple G forces. Boobie Miles ends his career in pain and despair as two players on the side slap each other “job well done.” Players stumble out unable to figure out where they are.  Harried trainers send injured players back into the chaos of the field to plug holes. Don Billingsley has his dislocated shoulder popped into place on the sideline so he can play the last series in excruciating pain. Mike Winchell, the QB, faces dislocated fingers, punched faces, bleeding scars when someone kicks him and plays on with a scary resigned stoicism. Anyone who has played or been close to football knows the sheer physical assault and pain experienced by the players. A stoic courage drives the players to stay in when most of us would quit.

That courage plays out in another way. Not only must they overcome their fears like Chris Comer but also discipline their demons. Don Billingsley wrestles with his father’s endless abuse and periodically erupts on the field causing penalties or blown chances. Like so many young men who channel their barely controlled anger, he can lose it and in the final game gets a penalty for a late hit. Coach Gaines tells his team, “We are small” and the only way they will win is with “heart,” “mind,” and “discipline.” The movie makes clear how discipline, focus and courage must exist on the football field.

Part II  follows and examines the movie's insights on race, class and community.

As Friday Night Lights unfolds, we realize that for many of the players, football provides the only order in a chaotic life. Mike Winchell escapes his mentally ill mother who quizzes him on plays. Don Billingsley gets away from the mental and physical beatings of his father. Others do the same, and the coach becomes their surrogate father as much as coach. The coach also has to bench them, corral them, encourage or scream at them sometimes in the same game to move them beyond their fears and personal devils.   When it is over, the three seniors who have played together for a decade walk away. “I will miss the heat.” “I will miss the lights,” say Chavez and Billingsley. But Mike Winchell was never sure he liked the game and not sure he’ll miss the game, for him it comes as a relief.

In this the players join with the community which anchors so much of its identity with the team and the narrative of victory that the football team provides. But for the town and the players, each game, each season ends; the evanescence of glory only remains as a haunting memory. The town and the players forge their narrative from the team, but the narrative lingers as fragile as fleeting radiance of victory.

At the drive-in an old state champion quarterback prophetically tells Winchell, “Make memories.” Don Billingsley’s father, in a moment of lucidity, begs his son,  “you just ain’t getting it…you got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.” For most of the kids who will never play football again, not only did the game give order but meaning and worth, these are their “glory days.” No wonder the town and the older players vest so much in it, because the life awaiting them on the streets of Odessa, forgotten by the American dream, offer little.

To portray football in America also is to portray class and race. The Permian team is working class or poor. The player’s homes have large signs with their names, but no one is wealthy and most barely get by. A few rely upon free meals from local businesses a sort of natural perk for members of the team. But the Permian Odessa team is integrated-white, black, Hispanic-reflecting the diverse groups that work the oil fields. They share a deep blue color ethic and resentment. They fear and distrust the big cities. When Boobie Miles hears from the Midland doctor that he cannot play, he almost assaults the doctor and accuses him of trying to hurt Boobie's team to help Midland.  The focus upon the dream and team enabled the players to deal with the racist tensions that bubble up.

Coach Gary Gaines has to deal with the casual racism of the “boosters” of the program. They carelessly throw out the N word referring to their stars and treat them as meat for the grinder. When the championship game is set up, a  startling meeting occurs where the Dallas-Carter representatives, all black, face off against the all white state and Permian representatives. They haggle over sites—neutral Astrodome and who will be the refs. The Dallas-Carter representatives want an equal race balanced crew, the state officials expect to use an experienced crew who have worked together. Race chafes the entire meeting.

During the game, one egregious call on a bounced pass reception comes from the sole black referee and goes in the favor of all black Carter. Permian knows it has been shafted but must keep discipline and go on. On the other side, the Dallas-Carter school epitomizes a street swagger and intensity, even arrogance, when they strut past the smaller Permian team. The usually unflappable “Preacher” Ivory Christian tells Gaines, “They’re fast, they’re big, they’re dirty…plus they’re fast.” The dirty play feels race based but it’s as much about urban versus rural and as another voice over announcer broadcasts “East Texas” versus “West Texas” which might as well be a civil war.  Remember the late eighties glorified the rogue Miami teams, and dirty play just fed intimidation. The race, geographic and class conflicts spill over into the game, but the rules and demands of the sport channel it and harness it as long as the refs keep it together.

The class pervades in another way. You sense it from the hanger-ons from Dallas-Carter, but Coach Gaines has to entertain or be entertained by the well off boosters of Odessa. They visit his office unannounced with ideas for formation and package sets and demands to play Boobie Miles both ways. Every compliment to the coach is tinged by “when we win the state championship.” In the end the boosters threaten his job, and his first loss produces a yard full of for sale signs placed there by thoughtful boosters.  The money speaks but only to victory, the rest, players and coaches, are expendable.

In the movie at half time, the Permian Panthers are been battered. They verge on losing their coherence and will. Suddenly the Preacher, strong and silent and aloof, explodes in outrage at how they are playing and being treated. He demands better of his team and himself and shocks everyone even himself out of their lethargy.

Before they return to the field, Coach Gary Gaines talks one last time. He reminds them that the vast majority of them will never play football again; this is it. He again reminds them to be “perfect.“ But this time it is different and he captures the essence of athletic competition:

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn’t one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect! “

Gaines touches upon the fundamental moral moment for a competitor—being present to self, game, team and excellence. The rest is dross.

The movie ends with Mike Winchell saying goodbye to his friends and tossing a spiral to young kids playing football in the shadow of Odessa-Permian’s huge stadium. It feels like handing on the legacy to the next generation.

But the real end is less theatrical and more real. Coach Gary Gaines is in his office and gazing at the 2 deep chart. One by one he removes the names of the seniors from chart and drops them into a drawer. One by one the players we have come to know and watch fight through games and lives drop off. Coach Gaines places a new name at the top of the depth chart. At last he comes to Mike Winchell’s name. He pulls it off with ritual care, stares at it for a moment and gently drops it into the drawer.

The season is over. The memories made. The glory passed. The players departed. But the coach and town continue the narrative with a new cast and new dreams the next day.

"Friday Night Lights"-the Significance of Football

“Can you be perfect?” Coach Garry Gaines asks his Odessa-Permian high school team at the start of August practice in the movie Friday Night Lights. Perfect, the word will have profound importance for the team later, but at this beginning of the football season, at the beginning of every football season like this week, perfect beckons players to a faultless season of wins and a state championship. To garner the championship the team must surmount the favorite Dallas-Carter, an all black power house with eight D-1A scholarship players. As the ubiquitous overlapping radio announces “It’s football time in Texas.” And this movie presents one of the finest portrayals around of the relation between football and identity by focusing upon high school football in Texas where the lineaments are inscribed with crystalline clarity.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best American sports movies and the second best football movie. The rise of fine football movies reflects the cultural shift to football as the axis of national sports consciousness. The movie later morphed into a critically acclaimed soap opera on TV. For two generations, however, the best movies and books on American sports focused on baseball, but as the center of sport gravity moved, art has caught up and FNL epitomizes this new generation of books and movies.

H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: a Town, a Team,  and a Dream is a modern American sports classic. It reveals an intimate painful look, almost anthropological in its intuitions, of the 1988 quest of the Odessa-Permian football team to win a state championship. The huge sign before the school and stadium announces the four prior state 5A championships as a warning and challenge to every player on the team. The community expects this team to win the championship for the town and the book, and movie etch an unforgettable portrayal of football as a way of life that still resonates today

The movie pans over the dry flat arid plains surrounding Odessa,Texas. An oil town surrounded by brown plains and monotonously pumping rigs, it lies in the heart of the Permian basin, old oil country and in the shadow of Midland. This is East Texas where football grows from the soil and players, like the warriors of Thebes, grow from the dragon teeth planted by parents and culture. Forgotten and feeling forsaken, the town defiantly proclaims its identity and worth through its team.

 “You have played since you were 8 years old,” Coach Gary Gaines, played with superb understatement by Bill Bob Thornton, tells his team. Beleaguered, thoughtful and realistic, he reminds his players, “You have dreamed of this for 17 years.” The first day of practice he informs them they will win the championship; they have no options, and by the way, neither does he. The movie sweeps along with a track of ubiquitous overlapping radio announcers incessantly dissecting the team and especially the coach.

The movie engraves the deep-rooted relation between the town, forgotten and barren, and the team, its crowning glory. The coach challenges his team “can you accept the responsibility to protect this town.” In the final showdown, he demands, “show them who we are.” The team represents the towns avatar, and generations of people haunt the players from trophies to the sheriff with his state championship ring to the disturbed alcoholic father of Don Bllingsly who tortures his son over his own failures. The team offers redemption and purpose to a town simmering with resentment and little hope.

Rooted in the soil and town, the team must be carried by its players and above all by its coach. The first glimpse of Gary Gaines frames him sitting watching film with laser intensity. Behind him stands the totem of all coaches, the depth chart with 2 deep names attached. It provides the first glimpse of the names that will be so familiar by the end of the movie.

Mike Winchell plays quarterback. His leg pumps constantly as he sits across from his mother reciting plays and responses as she shoots football situations at him as unerringly as a linebacker breaking through. Her medicines lay on the table nearby. Some families might use flash cards for French; she uses them for plays. Mike never smiles and carries the weight of the team, town and caring alone for a very ill mother on his frail shoulders.  He feels cursed, and only trusts Coach Gaines who recognizes in Mike the courage and resilience to take control of his own life. Mike’s perplexed resignation leads a recruiter to ask him, “is it fun for you?” It is “supposed to be fun.” Football should be fun, but for the players of Odessa it feels like a burden. After one critical loss, Mike Winchell bangs his head against the concrete wall groaning, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

James “Boobie” Miles stands as the polar opposite. Arrogant, self-absorbed and abundantly talented Miles is destined for greatness. He is the star and the reason for the team’s high rating. Letters from schools such as USC and UCLA rain down on him offering scholarships, although he can barely read the letters they send him. Brian Chavez, linebacker, Harvard bound and the emotional center of the team, helps him read them. But Boobie does not believe he needs to know how to read since he proclaims he will be a star and all Winchell has to do is hand off the ball to him. Boobie skips on weight training and succeeds through sheer bravado and athleticism. He represents the ideal and temptation of sport. A young man raised by his beloved uncle and whose life depends upon the dream of getting to the professional ranks. After he is hurt in an utterly senseless play, the team falls apart and loses a game. Their offense and morale collapse. He and his uncle travel to Midland hospital where the doctor tries to inform him that he needs surgery and cannot play.

Boobie and his Uncle ignore the doctor; lie to the coach, and Boobie gets into the last regional game when Permian must win. In the game he destroys his knee and leaves in pain. The coach walks over to him and turns away expressionless, “he’s gone.” No room to mourn or miss, the coach has to send in a play, find a new back and somehow hold a shattered team together. They lose for the second time and only get into the playoffs on a coin toss.  Later Boobie, now diminished from the extravagant personality he had adopted, watches a garbage man pick up trash seeing his own future. After collecting his gear for the last time, he breaks down with his uncle “I can’t do nothing else but play football.”

The fragility of athletic glory lingers behind every play along with the fickleness of fans. When Boobie goes down, his third string understudy, Chris Comer, whom Boobie had named “the water boy,” emerges as a star. By the end of the movie, all the colleges have lost interest in an injured Boobie Miles, and the town has replaced him with Comer in their mind. For the coach, the losses lead to threats to be fired by the leading boosters. All their schmoozing with him hid the moral ignominy of boosters solely dedicated to winning, heartless and racist about using the kids for their own dreams, and ready to dump a coach on a dime. It reminds us why good high school coaches are quitting in droves and how the big time football boosters mirror a deep model of callous sycophants.

The movie does not flinch from nor romanticize the physical violence of football. The day-to-day brutality of practice, the tortured drills in 102-degree heat unfold as normal for these kids. They have played in the Odessa leagues since 8 years old, rising up through the ranks culled and groomed to participate on the team. The movie relentlessly reminds us how much sheer pain a football player must endure. Chris Comer remains on the sidelines from his fear of being hit. Even when Boobie Miles goes down, he must grapple with the reasonable fear of being hit by multiple G forces. Boobie Miles ends his career in pain and despair as two players on the side slap each other “job well done.” Players stumble out unable to figure out where they are.  Harried trainers send injured players back into the chaos of the field to plug holes. Don Billingsley has his dislocated shoulder popped into place on the sideline so he can play the last series in excruciating pain. Mike Winchell, the QB, faces dislocated fingers, punched faces, bleeding scars when someone kicks him and plays on with a scary resigned stoicism. Anyone who has played or been close to football knows the sheer physical assault and pain experienced by the players. A stoic courage drives the players to stay in when most of us would quit.

That courage plays out in another way. Not only must they overcome their fears like Chris Comer but also discipline their demons. Don Billingsley wrestles with his father’s endless abuse and periodically erupts on the field causing penalties or blown chances. Like so many young men who channel their barely controlled anger, he can lose it and in the final game gets a penalty for a late hit. Coach Gaines tells his team, “We are small” and the only way they will win is with “heart,” “mind,” and “discipline.” The movie makes clear how discipline, focus and courage must exist on the football field.

Part II examines the movie's insights on race, class and community.

As Friday Night Lights unfolds, we realize that for many of the players, football provides the only order in a chaotic life. Mike Winchell escapes his mentally ill mother who quizzes him on plays. Don Billingsley gets away from the mental and physical beatings of his father. Others do the same, and the coach becomes their surrogate father as much as coach. The coach also has to bench them, corral them, encourage or scream at them sometimes in the same game to move them beyond their fears and personal devils.   When it is over, the three seniors who have played together for a decade walk away. “I will miss the heat.” “I will miss the lights,” say Chavez and Billingsley. But Mike Winchell was never sure he liked the game and not sure he’ll miss the game, for him it comes as a relief.

In this the players join with the community which anchors so much of its identity with the team and the narrative of victory that the football team provides. But for the town and the players, each game, each season ends; the evanescence of glory only remains as a haunting memory. The town and the players forge their narrative from the team, but the narrative lingers as fragile as fleeting radiance of victory.

At the drive-in an old state champion quarterback prophetically tells Winchell, “Make memories.” Don Billingsley’s father, in a moment of lucidity, begs his son,  “you just ain’t getting it…you got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.” For most of the kids who will never play football again, not only did the game give order but meaning and worth, these are their “glory days.” No wonder the town and the older players vest so much in it, because the life awaiting them on the streets of Odessa, forgotten by the American dream, offer little.

To portray football in America also is to portray class and race. The Permian team is working class or poor. The player’s homes have large signs with their names, but no one is wealthy and most barely get by. A few rely upon free meals from local businesses a sort of natural perk for members of the team. But the Permian Odessa team is integrated-white, black, Hispanic-reflecting the diverse groups that work the oil fields. They share a deep blue color ethic and resentment. They fear and distrust the big cities. When Boobie Miles hears from the Midland doctor that he cannot play, he almost assaults the doctor and accuses him of trying to hurt Boobie's team to help Midland.  The focus upon the dream and team enabled the players to deal with the racist tensions that bubble up.

Coach Gary Gaines has to deal with the casual racism of the “boosters” of the program. They carelessly throw out the N word referring to their stars and treat them as meat for the grinder. When the championship game is set up, a  startling meeting occurs where the Dallas-Carter representatives, all black, face off against the all white state and Permian representatives. They haggle over sites—neutral Astrodome and who will be the refs. The Dallas-Carter representatives want an equal race balanced crew, the state officials expect to use an experienced crew who have worked together. Race chafes the entire meeting.

During the game, one egregious call on a bounced pass reception comes from the sole black referee and goes in the favor of all black Carter. Permian knows it has been shafted but must keep discipline and go on. On the other side, the Dallas-Carter school epitomizes a street swagger and intensity, even arrogance, when they strut past the smaller Permian team. The usually unflappable “Preacher” Ivory Christian tells Gaines, “They’re fast, they’re big, they’re dirty…plus they’re fast.” The dirty play feels race based but it’s as much about urban versus rural and as another voice over announcer broadcasts “East Texas” versus “West Texas” which might as well be a civil war.  Remember the late eighties glorified the rogue Miami teams, and dirty play just fed intimidation. The race, geographic and class conflicts spill over into the game, but the rules and demands of the sport channel it and harness it as long as the refs keep it together.

The class pervades in another way. You sense it from the hanger-ons from Dallas-Carter, but Coach Gaines has to entertain or be entertained by the well off boosters of Odessa. They visit his office unannounced with ideas for formation and package sets and demands to play Boobie Miles both ways. Every compliment to the coach is tinged by “when we win the state championship.” In the end the boosters threaten his job, and his first loss produces a yard full of for sale signs placed there by thoughtful boosters.  The money speaks but only to victory, the rest, players and coaches, are expendable.

In the movie at half time, the Permian Panthers are been battered. They verge on losing their coherence and will. Suddenly the Preacher, strong and silent and aloof, explodes in outrage at how they are playing and being treated. He demands better of his team and himself and shocks everyone even himself out of their lethargy.

Before they return to the field, Coach Gary Gaines talks one last time. He reminds them that the vast majority of them will never play football again; this is it. He again reminds them to be “perfect.“ But this time it is different and he captures the essence of athletic competition:

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn’t one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect! “

Gaines touches upon the fundamental moral moment for a competitor—being present to self, game, team and excellence. The rest is dross.

The movie ends with Mike Winchell saying goodbye to his friends and tossing a spiral to young kids playing football in the shadow of Odessa-Permian’s huge stadium. It feels like handing on the legacy to the next generation.

But the real end is less theatrical and more real. Coach Gary Gaines is in his office and gazing at the 2 deep chart. One by one he removes the names of the seniors from chart and drops them into a drawer. One by one the players we have come to know and watch fight through games and lives drop off. Coach Gaines places a new name at the top of the depth chart. At last he comes to Mike Winchell’s name. He pulls it off with ritual care, stares at it for a moment and gently drops it into the drawer.

The season is over. The memories made. The glory passed. The players departed. But the coach and town continue the narrative with a new cast and new dreams the next day.

Remember Football; Remember Race;: Review of Remember Titans

Football season begins. Years ago, football, especially college football, displaced baseball as the center of American sport obsession. It also became the locus for narratives America tells itself about itself through movies,

With the start of college football, I want to remember an iconic football movie central to America's sense of itself and its story about race relations, human relations and what sport can accomplish. In my ethics classes for our intercollegiate athletic program, students regularly use Remember the Titans as one of their iconic film movies. Why?

Remember the scene. America grapples with desegregation; war occurs in the streets, people die in the south, riots hit the cities. No one knows how the court ordered experience of integration will work. A few think of how the military has managed integration after being ordered. It shines as one example, imperfect, but real, where a relentless meritocracy and insistent commitment to common goals plus facing a common enemy united races in ways no where else in American society.

No whites wanted Alexandria, Virginia desegregated. A white enclave accustomed to sport dominance, its pride and joy school suddenly had to desgregate. Now I will go with the movie, not the history, for we know this story through the movie.

Remember the Titans hinges around the political spoils decision of the Alexandria School Board to appoint  black Herman Boone, Denzel Washington,  coach of its football team, the Titans. To do so they pushed aside a well loved and successful coach  Bill Yoast, Will Paton. Later we discover after rock throwing and fights, that the Board has declared that if Boone loses one game, they will replace him.

My point focuses upon its lesson about bringing together races; a very football, American, military lesson. Coach Boone exemplifies old school football and reminds me of my Fort Polk drill instructor. He launches a boot camp taking the team away from the chaos of the city to Gettysburg College for practice. When the white and black players get on separate busses, he stops them and in front of horrified parents demands that they sit on defense and offense buses regardless of race.

When the players self segregate he requires them to room with each other and learn and recite facts about each other publically. He subjects them to brutal debilitating two a days, sometimes three adays. Players vomiting; heat stroke hovers. Coach  Yoast warns against treating them badly, but Boone persists in his Bear Bryant imitation. Players suffer together; they hate the coach and hate each other. But slowly, uncertainly, survival and shared suffering bring them together as a team, even if it is against their crazed coach.

The crux lies in old school coaching, high demands, relentless pushing, humiliation and the promise of success. Boone is not an upbeat positive modern coach; he pounces on failure; humiliates players publically and exacts reprisal to motivate. Failure results in pain. "We will be perfect in every aspect of the game. You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts and then you will run a mile. Perfection. Let's go to work." 

The players struggle to survive and learn new systems. Like all football practices, violent competition competes with cooperation. Players fight, push shove because the stakes are high--they want to start--and the means are violent. Coaches have to manage it constantly and when the team grows, its own leaders will break up the fights and focus the anger on playing.

A midnight run leads the team to Gettysburg battlefield. Exhausted, lost, angery, Boone reminds them of the pain and loss of the battle. A battle they are still fighting on the team. "You listen, and you take a lesson from the dead. If we don't come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were. I don't care if you like each other of not, but you will respect each other. And maybe... I don't know, maybe we'll learn to play this game like men." 

Behind the entire approach lies Machiavelli's maxim that common danger, common enemies will build common community across barriers.  The team must develop a commitment to perfection beyond its commitments to self, clan or race. For Boone success lies in the ability of players to see each other as companions in the quest for perfection and victory.

The whole approach depends upon absolute clarity that he plays the best talent, not by race. Football players are used to abusive coaches, not a good thing, but they will live with it because they believe it prepares them for the game. They will live with it if they believe the best players play.

Boone's ultimate success and credibility lies in his race blind assessment. He knows race pervades everything but must prove to the players that he plays by merit. It lies in the fact that he replaces a black player with a white player or a white player with a black player because of talent despite the mutual race based anger of the parents. When Paton asks him to take it easy, Boone replies with a rooted lesson that drives him and this dream of racial reconciliation, "Now I may be a mean cuss. But I'm the same mean cuss with everybody out there on that football field. The world don't give a damn about how sensitive these kids are, especially the young black kids. You ain't doin' these kids a favor by patronizing them. You're crippling them; You're crippling them for life."

The other side lies in the inability of this unity borne of shared suffering and common commitment to carry over into school and society. There simmering hatred and resentment and rejection in bars remain the norm. Playing together creates a possiblity for themselves, for the society, but does not transform it. But the players, for a moment, discover that black and white united in a common cause based upon  merit can come together. The same lesson as the military, the lesson of football and sport. It is real but isolated; bars, houses, parents, girlfriends reject the bond they have formed.

Coach Boone, who throws up before the first game, reminds himself, "it's only a game but I love it." Good to remember but we Americans take our games very very seriously as avatars of our identity and community, as morality tales of our own hopes, failure successes and as remembrances of times and moments of sorrow or triumph.

The lesson of football for live and race and America? This is not the fairy tale of Blind Side, but it involves a deeper level of conflict that football admits it cannot resolve in society at large. But the story remains--groups of persons of wildly diverse backgrounds and race will have conflict and anger. They will carry it with them into life and to each other. This will not be abolished. Neither will the racist structures of society go away because of football.

BUT. A common goal and a common enemy can bring them together. Moral competition for excellence and a relentless leader can demand that race be superceded by merit, but he or she must be utterly transparent in their demands and discipline and merit based promotion. Finally, intense badgering almost brutal physical demands coupled with intellectual demands can mold people together in common pain and suffering. Through shared pain comes unity and  the possibility of excellence and glory at the other end. Competition metamorphosizes into combat.

Remembering the Titans means remembering that race matters in America. It means to remember that it has not gone away. It also remembers and reminds that common pursuit of excellence, perfection, in Coach Boone's words, can bring people together across race. But this is not easy and takes constant effort by coach and player and maybe some day by society.