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I recently watched the movie Friday Night Lights. Growing up in a family that appreciates the sport I understood to a certain degree how passionate people can be about it. However, I did not realize the extreme difference between football here and football In Texas. My high school football team hardly won a game my entire high school career and that was ok. We weren’t expected to win every game. For us it was more about fun. After watching the movie, though, football is not meant to be fun. It is a way of life. For these students and their parents football was everything. Anybody could be a somebody as long as they could play. The better you played the better you were. It was that simple. Even the town drunk could be proud when his son played well. The pressure these students faced was something that many of us will never experience. At least not directly from football. I believe this movie had a lot of strengths and few weaknesses. The characters were believable and reminded me of Plains folk. They still appreciated the simple things in life and were proud of where they were from. They get it done, no matter what. One of the weaknesses of the film I believe would have to be that some characters were developed much farther than others. I realize there are time constraints with films, but I wish they would have developed some of the football players families more. What they did for a living, how they came to live in Texas, as well as what more of the players planned to do after graduation. Overall I believe that this film was a good portrayal of southern Plains people. While certain things may have been exaggerated, most importantly the strong resilient spirit shows through the movie. These are characters that we can love, hate, dream with and think back on fondly. While some football movies are all about the game, this one is about a bigger game. The game of life.