“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” So goes the Dillon Panthers’ team mantra in Friday Night Lights, the mid-noughties drama that follows the lives of a fictional high school football team in Dillon, rural west Texas. The first time I watched Friday Night Lights was at my brother’s behest. Considering the series is ostensibly about good ol’ God-fearing Texas boys playing ball, and I’m a decidedly unsporty, Australian atheist, it was an unexpected recommendation. But my brother described the show as surprisingly soft, even soothing. And he was right.
In every episode, stalwart coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) acts as a surrogate father figure to his misfit team, stoically imparting advice with a firm hand. The show is fundamentally about a community and, within that, a band of brothers. The players are often dysfunctional and sometimes even hostile to one another, but are united by their love of the game. The game itself, at a certain point, is merely incidental.
