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I watched my first game of football five years ago. I’m now utterly addicted.
As a Brit, I grew up watching cricket and soccer. I played rugby and fenced for my university. So hear it from me: there is no sporting contest as exhilarating as your version of football.
A football game can turn on a dime. An interception, or the diving catch by a wide receiver, and the entire game can switch in seconds. At the FIFA World Cup this summer, a close soccer game meant one side winning 2-1, with long periods in which the ball was simply passed around. In American football, games are often decided in the final few seconds. When Ole Miss lost to Texas the other week, it came down to the final throw into the end zone — and in my view, the wrong side caught it.
The longer I watch football, the more I have come to appreciate the game’s depth. At first my eyes always followed the ball — from snap to quarterback, then looking to see what he might do with it. Now I realize football is a performance with so many different subplots. You need to keep an eye on the wide receivers and the running backs. There is an endless series of moves and counter moves. No other sport I know is as multilayered.
I might be new to your sport, but I have a clear idea of what I like to watch. College football over the NFL. High school football above everything.
Friday night lights is not just a game of football. It’s an event.
Almost two hundred years ago, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville toured America and marveled at the richness of your civic society. You don’t need to have read him to see what he was on about. I see what he meant every Friday night during football season.
Not every kid is cut out to be a quarterback or wide receiver. Not everyone is suited to cheer. But at the local high school football game, there is a role for everyone — in the band or the pep squad, filming the game or directing the drone. Or simply cheering on their side.
I spent nine years enjoying the finest of the British education system. Not once can I recall more than a fraction of the school turning out to cheer on a school team.
On one of the rare occasions, I missed a Friday night football game in the past few years, it was because I was on a delayed flight back from Atlanta. Annoyed to be missing the game, I found solace in peering out the window at the floodlights of scores of high school stadiums far below. I realized for the first time that what happens at your local high school happens across America.
No other sport I know teaches players, and those watching, about more than just the game.
This season I have especially enjoyed watching Jackson Prep play. Ahead of the playoffs, they have lost only once. Oddly, perhaps, it was watching them the one time they lost that makes me most proud of them.
Down 28-10, the game had seemed settled. A lesser team would have limped along, accepting their fate. Not this team. Instead, they clawed their way back — 15 points in a few minutes. The opponents commanding lead evaporated. Never have I seen a team play with such grit and determination.
Sure, they still lost narrowly. All teams lose sometimes. But a team that can rally like that has learned something beyond football — something that will serve them well long after that game is a distant memory.
Football coaches that teach a team to play like that are doing something right, no matter the score. A school that produces students with the character to play like that has got the most important lessons that can be taught right. A society that can produce young men with that attitude is going to be okay, no matter what the future throws at it.
To be born American is to have won first prize in the lottery of life. To be an American watching Friday night football is to be cashing in the prize.
Rejoice in football. So many of America’s great virtues come alive under those floodlights.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He is an immigrant to America.
MageeNews.com is the online news source serving Simpson and surrounding counties as well as the State of Mississippi.
