Online school is kinda hard. That’s okay though. We’ll adapt. This is going to be a short episode though. Podcast time!
Hey y’all! Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Come with me on my exploration of the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever (and never) wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.
Today’s episode: football games, high school social life, and if any of it really matters.
My high school probably has a mediocre football team. They win a lot, but, surprise surprise, I don’t know anything about football. So maybe all the other high schools nearby are just bad. I don’t think they’re incredible, just good. There’s this trope in American media that football is a huge deal and it’s all that matters in high school. And honestly? It’s kind of true. Wasn’t there a bad Riverdale quote about it? Something about not knowing pain until you’ve experienced the epic highs and lows of high school football. You can treat Riverdale like a satire, and honestly you probably should, but some people seriously do take football that seriously. It’s an interesting piece of culture.
I don’t have direct access to the school’s budget. I think. So I can’t be entirely sure how much funding the football team gets. I know they just hired a new coach this year, and I’m not sure who he’s replacing or if he’s replacing someone. Why would you hire a brand new football coach in the middle of a pandemic? When we have no idea what sports will look like this year? Beats me, man. I don’t control the budget. But that’s another thing, why spend money on a football coach right now? Aren’t there better things to do? The guy they hired is teaching Accounting and a business class, so he replaced the old accounting teacher, who was a basketball coach.
But why, if they needed an accounting teacher, didn’t they hire an accounting teacher? Why, if they needed to hire a new basketball coach, didn’t they hire a new basketball coach? Did a football coach switch to basketball and they had to hire a new one? I don’t know, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the money could possibly have been spent better than hiring a new football coach straight out of college to teach Accounting. No hate to that teacher though, it’s not his fault. He’s cool.
So the football team gets new coaches and fancy uniforms every year, but the band has to constantly run a thousand fundraisers at once so they can have equipment? Sounds maybe not quite right. Maybe the football team gains a bunch of revenue for the school and it’s self-sustaining that way? I don’t know. Something in me suspects that a good chunk of school funding goes to the football team instead of, oh, I don’t know, paper? Pencil sharpeners for teachers? First aid kits that every teacher is required to have but aren’t given the supplies to fill? Fixing the sinks in all the bathrooms so that they have handles to turn the water on? That’s at least one perk of online school, no more terrible school bathrooms. Anyway. Football.
Last year, I sat next to a star football player in English. I think he was a runningback? I’m not sure. But he was like, everyone’s favorite. We worked together on projects a couple times. In another world, it would’ve been the start of a bad YA romance novel, jock boy meets nerd girl. Luckily, we live in reality, where he and I did a Forrest Gump-themed project on the rubric for our AP exam. Is that lucky? It was something. He’s just a normal teenage guy, but throughout the class I was aware that he was a Football player, with a capital F. People knew who he was, even if they had never talked to him before. Popularity in high school is an odd game, especially in the age of social media. Some people, especially people who play club sports and know tons of people, have thousands of followers. That’s wild! I’m sure I probably know that many people, but for context, I have about 360 followers on Instagram, and while I know many of them, I’m certainly not close with most of them. I can’t imagine having thousands.
I’ve only been to one football game in high school, but I think that was enough to get the general vibe. I don’t know if you know this, but at my school, football games have themes. We’ve got camo night, where everyone wears camouflage, we’ve got neon night, where everyone wears neon colors, and I know we have a day where everyone wears red, white, and blue. It’s probably called America night or something. I went to one with a relatively tame theme, which was college night. Everyone was supposed to wear college jerseys or hoodies. It was more chill than a lot of ones. I sat in the student section, in the very last section of seats. We only have bleachers on some of the stadium – the rest of the seats are concrete, just like the stairs. The student section was a concrete section. It was kind of cold, and kind of windy. A group of guys all took their shirts off, and the letters painted on their chest spelled out “Hoco?” One of the football players was asking a cheerleader to the homecoming dance. It was sweet, I think. She said yes, so good for him. I hope they had fun at homecoming.
The marching band does a good job at football games. Band is so important to the students who take band. I think that’s cool, though I don’t quite understand it. Of course, I’ve never felt the pull of a musical instrument. So I find them incredibly fascinating. They work so hard to put on good performances. I watch them through the window sometimes, pushing their instruments and equipment up to the football fields to practice. It seems like a lot of work, so good for them.
I don’t remember the outcome of that football game. Did I have fun? Yeah, I think so. But I never went to another, so maybe it wasn’t that much fun. I also don’t really know how football works. I’m planning a sports series on this podcast, where I learn about some sports, but I’m not sure when I’m going to do it. Is that something you guys want to hear soon? Let me know.
The trope in American media is that the popular kids are the football players and the cheerleaders. I suppose that’s true at my school too, but I do wonder about what that label really means, “popular.” Is that having a lot of friends? Knowing a lot of people? Being well-liked? I mean, I think the dictionary definition is more along the lines of well-liked, but every word has connotations and nuances outside of that. I’m not really sure what it means in high school. Maybe a combination of all three, though I expect there are plenty of so-called popular people who aren’t so well-liked. But the thing is, does that label really even matter?
I mean, yes and no. Social bonds matter. It is important for humans to have friends. We’re meant to group together, to form close emotional bonds with people we like and trust. We get lonely otherwise. But does being popular mean having a lot of strong social bonds? I don’t know. If it means having a lot of followers on Instagram, I’d say no, that doesn’t really matter. Will that have an impact on the rest of your life? Almost definitely not. But then again, who am I to say what matters and doesn’t matter? Maybe it’s important to some people. Maybe it serves as a form of validation or it truly does bring them joy to be active on social media. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s healthy to seek a lot of validation from social media, but I’m no expert.
Besides, teenagers are emotionally volatile creatures. It definitely affects some people to be popular or unpopular. And those emotions are as real and important as any other, even if we think the reason for them is irrational. Feelings aren’t rational, and they don’t follow rules. That’s okay too.
I’ve been spoiling you guys these past few weeks with long episodes! I’m pretty sure they’ll come back eventually, but in this first week of online school, I’m letting my eyes and brain take a break from staring at my little laptop.
Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. You can find me @FastFactsPod on Twitter, so feel free to tweet me anything you want to hear about. This is Callie, signing off.
Commenti