Friday Night Lights and Varsity Blues showcase two vastly different sides of high school football, but both are excellent sports movies.
Texas high school football is a religion for many and it was showcased perfectly in a pair of movies that couldn’t be any more different: Varsity Blues and Friday Night Lights.
Varsity Blues came out first in 1999 and stars James van Der Beek, Paul Walker, Jon Voight, Amy Smart, Scott Caan and Ron Lester and their exploits on and off the football field at West Canaan High School. The movie centers around van Der Beek’s character, John Moxon, who is prepared to go to an Ivy League school but is thrust into the role as the team’s starting quarterback after the studly Lance Harbour gets hurt and puts the team’s championship hopes on life support.
Behind the ever-aggressive head coach Bud Kilmer who is chasing his 23rd district championship, he pushes one player to play through a concussion, is accused of denying his star running back’s role in the offense to hurt his chances of getting a college scholarship because of his skin color, and has lost all sense of control and common sense.
He’s the stereotypical evil coach figure who puts undue pressure on the players who are used to being treated like celebrities in their town where high school football is king. The players get the hot girlfriend, they don’t get carded when they buy beer at the local convenience store and they rarely face any sort of consequences for their behavior, which includes staying out all night at the strip club where they saw one of their teachers hit the stage.
It’s all about the excess and overtly sensationalized fantasy of what it means to play high school football in a state or community that puts those players and coaches on a pedestal. Sometimes those coaches need to be knocked off their pedestal, which happens in Varsity Blues when Moxon gives an impassioned speech about being heroes and remembering this game for the rest of their lives in a moment that will rile up even the non-football fans who watch this movie.
It’s somewhat realistic, but completely dramatized, for entertainment purposes, and that’s why it’s a fun movie to watch, especially if you’re a teenager and dreaming of having these same types of perks like whip cream bikinis and basically doing whatever you want without fear of getting into trouble.
But it’s a completely different tone in Friday Night Lights, which is based on the H.G. Bissinger book of the same name that also spawned a TV series that ran for five seasons.
What makes Friday Night Lights so exceptional is how real it all is.
Billy Bob Thornton plays Coach Gaines, who couldn’t be any more different from Coach Kilmer. He’s not really a yeller or a screamer, and demands accountability from his players and asks them to be perfect when the moment arises. Set in the racially divided, economically challenged town of Odessa, Texas, the Permian Panthers, represent the town’s main attraction. The people flood the stands on Friday nights to watch their star running back Boobie Miles lead the way to another championship.
Similar to Varsity Blues, there’s a major injury to a star player that causes the team to rally without their star and find a way to win. When Miles suffers a knee injury that forces him out of the lineup, viewers couldn’t help but break down with him when he cleaned out his locker and broke down in tears in his Uncle’s car outside the stadium when he wondered what he was now going to do with his life.
Football was his life and now football was taken away from him.
It was a great loss, but the team couldn’t give up. They still had games to play and try to win.
They faced long odds, especially against Dallas Carter, which featured a lineup of college-bound stars and were so much bigger, stronger and faster than the players on Permian. But behind the emotional, inspirational and motivational speech of Coach Gaines, the players gave their best effort and didn’t let down the guy next to them. That’s what perfection means to Coach Gaines.
Despite the overwhelming amount of pressure placed on Coach Gaines by the school, parents of players, former players and boosters, he doesn’t back down and give in to them or let it affect his coaching style.
Winning isn’t the only goal for Coach Gaines. It’s part of the goal, but his goal, unlike Kilmer’s was turning his players into quality young men who will be great husbands and fathers. If they also happen to win a lot of games, that’s even better.
Both good movies in their own right that showcase the opposite ends of the high school spectrum.