The film Friday Night Lights covers the real-life story of a high school football team from a small Texas town as they attempt to win the state championship. As can be expected from a movie of this type, themes of never giving up, courage, perseverance, etc abound throughout the film with everything culminating in the “big game”. In perhaps a mildly unique twist from the usual plot of a sports movie, (stop reading now if you are bothered by spoilers) our high school team fails to secure the coveted state title, but rather learns that perfection can be found within themselves. The team takes to heart their coach’s words, “perfection means looking your neighbors in the eye with the knowledge you did everything you could”. This is a good message, and I agree with it. However, I feel like the actual story line of the film provides little supporting evidence as one player proves to his father that he is capable of being good at football…..by being good at football for one play, another player ruins his future career with an injury….and his story essentially ends there, and another player is worried about leaving his sick mother alone….until he goes to college hundreds of miles away anyway. We should be proud of simply knowing that we tried our best to make things right, particularly today when it seems like fixing the world’s problems is a Herculean task. The “best” result shouldn’t be what we focus on. We are going to lose at some point and we need to be ready to face that. I just think that a movie whose main thesis is “be proud that you tried” should at least show some evidence that the players tried to be something greater than a high school football player for four years.