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Friday Night Lights

January 26th, 2006 · 3 Comments · 8 views

Watched Friday Night Lights last night…(I know, I’m finally getting some time to see some movies that have been on the “To See” list).

If anything, the movie downplays the role of Texas high school football. Don’t get me wrong - the movie is great. It is a great discussion starter for your high school group and their parents. How important is high school? Do we have a good perspective on high school and sports? It is rated PG-13 for a reason. High school is a PG-13 experience…if you’re lucky.

As a youth pastor in West Texas, I got a first hand look at the place of high school football. It’s unreal. Don’t even try to schedule anything during football season. It doesn’t matter if it is an away game or a home game. Whole towns shut down on Friday afternoon. They put the playoffs on television. Only one other state comes close to this obsession - Alabama.

I remember when the book came out, I was at Hardin-Simmons in Abilene. The book was so hated in Odessa, H. G. Bissinger couldn’t go back there for fear of his life. I’m not sure if that is still the case. The racism, favoritism, and complete lack of perspective he painted in the book was first seen as fiction by the rest of the nation. On the DVD he says “I couldn’t make this stuff up, how unreal the situation is…”

Overall - I’d watch it with a bunch of high school guys and their dads. And start poking around to see how much of the film depicts reality.

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Tags: movies & music · youth ministry

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Chris // Jan 26, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    This one is so close to home for me. Mobile is like a very large small town. The only things that matter here are:

    Where do you go to school? Do you play football? That’s it, it’s a difficult environment for ministry, that’s a fact.

  • 2 Mike // Jan 26, 2006 at 9:44 pm

    I played High School football in Texas - it’s C-R-A-Z-Y!! Want to pull off the biggest heist in the world? You can rob every town who has an away game blind. No one - I mean NO ONE - stays in town for an away game.

    It’s bot unreal, but real at the same time.

    Like Grant said, it’s a great opportunity to talk to High School students about the important things in life.

  • 3 HB // Jan 26, 2006 at 11:21 pm

    it is amazing to see football at that level becoming what college ball used to be. it really defines our need to be entertained.

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