Sports Pages #13: Friday Night Lights

Countless times in movies, hollywood and so many national depictions the significance of sport in African American culture has been so important.  Many times this depiction of the lives of African Americans displays their lives in ways that it seems that the only thing African Americans can do is sports.  In no way do I agree with the previous observation, however there are several real life stories like we saw in Hoop Dreams where young African American's only chance at a better life is to succeed in sports and receive scholarships.  In those cases where young African Americans use sports to get out of there rough home life and childhood, sports are incredibly important and play a significant role in their lives.  

In the film Friday Night Lights, the story follows the world of high school football in a small town, Odessa, Texas.  The film follows the high school football team through the entire season until the state championship game, which they lose (sorry for the spoiler if you haven't seen it).  The team's star running back who 'carries' the team, Booby Miles, tears his ACL in the first game of the season.  Booby then spends the rest of the movie trying to cope with his injury and trying to keep his numerous Division I scholarships.  This is very similar to the story we saw in Hoop Dreams with William Gates.  Just as William struggles with getting good grades in school to be able to get into college we see the same thing in a powerful scene in Friday Night Lights in which Booby breaks down in the car with his uncle and cries and repeats that all he wants to do is play football and the only thing he can do is play football. 

Personally, I don't think sports are ruining African Americans, in most cases I think sports create a vast amount of advantages just as they do to other athletes.  This idea of sports ruining African Americans is rooted in the idea of the lack of advantages they have in other aspects of life.  If we really want to change this idea and not make sports such a focus maybe there should be more advocating for educational and real-world advantages to African Americans.  As far as this idea preserving race, I don't agree at all.  However, if we are going to acknowledge this and say maybe it is preserving race, then there are countless other things present in today's society that are preserving race as well.  Race is always going to be present, its not going away.  What can go away is choosing to judge, stereotype, deny, and overall let it affect the way we interact with people on a daily basis.  If we could act this way it wouldn't matter if race was preserved or not because at the end of the day disparities among races wouldn't be anything like they were fifty years ago, or eventually the way they are today.