Ohio High School Football

With the Michigan v. Ohio State game coming up and the high school playoffs in full gear, it's probably a good time to talk about what football means in this state. The Buckeyes and the NFL are huge here, but Ohio football is first and foremost about what happens on Friday nights on high school fields throughout the state.

When it comes to high school football, we're all a little nuts. Okay, let me be the first to confess: I stayed up until 1:00 a.m. Wednesday morning because as I was about to go to bed, I noticed that Fox Sports Net Pacific was showing a replay of 1998's game between De La Salle and Mater Dei High School, and I couldn't pass up the chance to watch one of Bob Ladouceur's incredible football teams strut their stuff. But I don't think I'm alone here-- I mean, when the front page of the Plain Dealer's sports section carries an article bemoaning the shocking news that an entire graduating class has passed through St. Ignatius without winning a state championship, and I sit there and read the whole damn thing (bet you did too), something's not right with either the paper or me.

High school football is a big part of Americana. Those who play the game have an experience that few others in life match in terms of joyous intensity, but for most, the experience is tinged with sadness. You can relive your baseball glory on the softball diamond until you're 80 years old, you can keep playing basketball until well into middle age, but most high school football players will play their last game before they turn 19. Football ends too soon, and for most players, its end means the end of some of the fondest dreams of their youth. The games are over, and those who played it are left with memories of past glory.

We all have to deal with this, but 99 out of 100 high school football players go through it when they're 18, instead of when they're 40. Some never get over it, and they've become so familiar that the ex-football jock whose life hit its peak at 18 has become a stock character in works ranging from the sublime (Biff Loman in "Death of a Salesman") to the ridiculous (Al Bundy in "Married with Children" or Uncle Rico in "Napoleon Dynamite").

Like I said, that part of football we share with everyone who ever played the game anywhere, but what sets Ohio high school football apart is the tantalizing possibility of glory at the next level. I played high school football in New York. To us, places like Ohio State or Notre Dame were fantasies -- one kid in a generation went there. If you were a New York high school player when I played, your in-state Division I possibilities were limited to Syracuse and Army, and unless you were a really special player, the out-of-state schools didn't come knocking. While there are a few more options to New York players now (Buffalo, I-AA Hofstra), New York is still shockingly underrepresented on college gridirons. There are a lot of reasons for this, but maybe the most important reason is New York's idiotic rule limiting the season to 10 games, which for years prevented a state championship game. Now that they've finally established a state championship, this rule saddles New York teams with 6 game regular season schedules in order to fit in a state playoff.

In contrast, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan are very real places to an Ohio high school player. Every single week, he plays with and against kids who will go on to play there, or if not there, at Bowling Green, or Akron, or Miami, or Ohio U, or Cincinnati, or Toledo, or Division I-AA Youngstown State, or Division II Ashland, or NAIA Walsh or Malone. ( Because they don't pay your way, I'm not even going to get into the Division III powerhouses like Mount Union or Baldwin-Wallace. )

The abundance of scholarship-paying college football options in this state means that if you're playing high school ball in Ohio, by definition, you're good enough to dream. So generations of Ohio football players have dreamed of college glory, and for many working class families, high school football has symbolized a real, if faint, hope of a shortcut to a better life. As those dreams slipped away for most, the game became a symbol of longing, of lost youth, and of lost possibilities.

There is actually a poem that captures a lot of this, and many of you have probably read it (it was included in the preface to Friday Night Lights). The poem was written by the poet James Wright, a man who grew up in Martin's Ferry and watched Lou Groza play his football there.

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies

--James Wright

That's good stuff. I know this poem is sometimes read by the beret and clove cigarette crowd as an indictment of football's savagery. I'm no critic, but I think Wright's target was a tad bigger than that. I also think that this reading of his poem would probably come as news to James Wright, who at least one biographer reports, played semi-pro football.