The Magical Power of College in Friday Night Lights

I’m rewatching Friday Night Lights (currently on season 3) for the first time in 7 years. I watched the series in full in 2011 and haven’t gone back to it since, so it has been fun to revisit the show.

One thing that stands out, in particular, is the powerlessness so many of the young characters feel regarding their future. To them, the only path out of Dillon is college and it is blocked by gatekeepers. They feel that they face a fork in the road with only two options, be blessed by the gatekeepers of college or be destitute in Dillon.

Bryan “Smash” Williams is resigned to working at the Alamo Freeze unless he can get a scholarship to play football at college.

Tyra Collette is going to repeat her sister Mindi’s life as a stripper unless she can find a way to get an admissions board to let her into college despite her mediocre grades.

Tim Riggins is going to become a drunken baffoon unless he happens to catch a college recruiters eye for a football scholarship.

To them, college is not just an educational institution, it is some type of magical force that completely changes the course of your life when you are granted the power to attend.

All of the characters have options and pathways that they could take–at one point Smash is offered a position with an arena football team and he is also offered a job at the Alamo Freeze as a regional manager where he would be 19 years old, making decent money, learning a ton, and opening up lots of options for his future, but in his and others view, working is a dead end path. To them education is not a path of hard work and learning, it is a permission slip from college.

This is just a TV show, but unfortunately, it accurately describes the worldview of many young people. They have so much opportunity around them, but can’t see it. To them, the world is closed and depressing and the only opportunity for advancement is controlled by the college admissions office.

They stand at the start of the highway to their future and feel resigned to go nowhere if the college toll booth doesn’t let them through. What they don’t realize is that they could simply walk on through and not pay the toll.