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Friday night lights focuses on high school football in Odessa, TX. Basically football is life in this town as businesses close down early on Fridays so people can fill the seats and get to the game on time. It seems that many of the town’s residents are down on their luck a little bit and are using the football games as a sort of release from the daily grind. You get the idea that many of the players themselves come from poorer families and football may be their way out of town, especially with the character Booby Miles. He is planning on heading to college then getting into the NFL right away. All of that is wrecked when he injures his knee beyond complete repair, especially for the 80’s.

I actually worked with a guy who used to play high school and college football in Texas. He basically verified that that was about how intense it was with towns shutting down on Friday nights and major pressure on the players for both sides. Even in my high school high school football is taken pretty seriously. It’s partly because Divide County has been built into a pretty successful 9 man team in the state with appearances in the playoffs for almost 10 straight years. However it’s hard for me to imagine being put in the positions these guys are.

More than anything the attention paid to the football team seems placed there in large part because of the apparent poverty in Odessa. It provides a release and something to rally around as a community. However it’s becomes obvious that some people have tied themselves into football to the point that it’s becoming unhealthy.