Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Can't Lose

I must be losing it; scribbling about a television series that I haven't watched with any regularity since the first season, some five years ago. I wasn't quite sure what the fascination was. Just like millions of others my age, I'd been to high school, played some ball, goofed off, chased girls, and graduated about the time Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were releasing their third album. Nothing special about that. A lot of time has passed since then. Like most, I had my own family including a son who went to high school, played some ball, goofed off, chased girls, and grew up. Just like millions of others his age.

So what was so special in this moving, but ratings-crippled TV series? At first it reminded me more of the old Friday night soaps, Dallas and Falcon Crest that featured preposterous characters with two-dimensional personalities, but little emotional investment required from the audience from their plastic characters and implausible storyline. Those series were not serious. Friday Night Lights, while still having to adhere to the requirements of serial television, was serious. The title suggested it was about the religion of Texas High School football. Many folks said it was not. Actually it really was and before you get mad, let me explain.

Friday Night Lights ran its last episode this season, and like any TV series that comes to an end, much of the character resolution remains unrevealed, while a lot of the audience experiences the bittersweet sadness that comes at the end of something special and shared. But so did graduation day in real life. Followers must imagine the rest of the characters lives for themselves. And that’s what a lot of high school was about as I recall. Imagining what life was like afterward. For myself as well as former teammates.

After high school and college and turning in my glove and cleats, helmet and pads for wings and a log book, and eventually those for a suit and tie, I didn't have much time nor interest for reflection. Later in life, after some very short-lived curiosity, I had to admit I really had not cared what life had held in store for former mates, and I felt bad about that. At the time, when the lights go out one last time, you swear that you will be there for each other forever. But it rarely if ever turns out that way. Life and you move on.

Looking back, I think leaving high school was a bit like going to a funeral. (Graduation parties notwithstanding) And despite mutually assuring words to the contrary, I was acutely aware that before 12 months would pass, I would relegate most of my teammates, friends and neighbors to the bins of selective recall and time-altered memory. And that thought disturbed me greatly because, even though, many were not my friends, they were part of the familiar landscape of routine and stability that the school day brings, no matter how stressful at times. Their presence provided a shared familiarity and acceptance that as high-schoolers, we seemed to possess so little. And there was comfort in that. But in the end, the 800 pound gorilla had its way, and we parted strangers.

The years passed. Some good, some bad, some eventful, and others not so much. Like you. Like everybody. Then a funny thing happened. Through a conflation of events and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I ended up back in high school at the age of forty-something. Only this time as a head coach. Mostly it felt weird having my own mail slot in the school office and a parking sticker that said "faculty" on it. Consider if you will, Ricky Vaughn sitting in the principle's chair, this time behind the desk, with his feet propped up on an ink blotter and you get the idea.

They gave me a lanyard full of keys marked gym, locker-room, faculty lounge, copier machine, equipment shed, field lights, and several others I never did figure out. I never understood why schools have so many different locks and keys. I'll bet that if you could melt them all down for scrap, you could pay off the federal debt. But after a period of several years of re-enmeshment in high-school follies, I turned in my keys and confined myself to the fringes of college and semi-pro ball for the next several years, as life and circumstances changed yet again. But before the high school lights went out for the second and last time, I came to appreciate and understand what so many were trying to tell me all those years ago.

As the title of this suggests, Friday Night Lights was about a shining ideal of "Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Can’t Lose". And for some reason when I heard it and saw it played out on the screen, it struck something in the way-back machine. It was really a vague feeling at first, then as the weeks went by and the characters were revealed, often in a very pointed and melancholy way, it became clear that much of what FNL ("Friday Night Lights") tried to convey was the depiction of the ideals of brotherhood, and sisterhood and the failures of betrayal and selfishness.

As much as it was about heroes and villains, it was just as often about really good people doing harmful things to themselves and it was about marginal personalities redeeming themselves in spite of their instincts. It was about forgiveness and perpetration and cash-register honesty walking in hand with self-seeking deception, and virtue and vice and just about everything else in life that we mortals struggle with on a daily basis. It was about noble and brave and silly acts done by imperfect, yet striven people, all just trying for their own little slice of happiness and acceptance.

Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose. That's how you aspired to play. How you put yourself to work. How you went about your day. What you wanted to believe about life. That it was good. That it was honorable. And things would always turn out for the best, not matter what. It was like hearing an old familiar hymn, but not being sure why it was special. Perhaps there are more antiquated clichés. Or less evocative ones for that matter. But for anybody who believes in believing in something, a lot of us need that creed. It is six words to hang onto when life presents danger and fear and the abyss stares back at us in black emptiness. Six words to still the heart stir the soul and fire the imagination.

Fictional characters like Rocky Balboa, Roy Hobbs, and Jake Taylor. Real life stories like Brian Piccolo, Lou Gehrig, and Jack Robinson. When I think of them, "Clear eyes, Full heart, Can't Lose doesn't seem quite so childish or naive or un-tough. And for every one of those publicly celebrated guys, there are a million others who we do not know, who have lived their lives with the same commitment to exceptionalism. Some of them in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. That is when we begin to see things in a different, much brighter light. And it's not so much self-reflective, as it is a beacon turned outward to the bigger world around us.

Now I am away from the game as a part of the game, I can reflect upon the simple honor and an overwhelming sense of humility and gratitude experienced when I watched those whom I had helped in some small way along their journey from adolescence to adulthood. To see them as young adults, actualize the dreams you had promised them if only they would choose to believe in what you believed. Work smart. Play against the game. Respect yourself. Respect your teammates. Respect your opponents. Respect the game. Appreciate and share everything good in life, on and off the field, with those who do not have what you have. And most of all, remember to smile and laugh and not to be afraid of the occasional tear, and if you do all these things all the time, you will win at life. You cannot lose.

"Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose. To have been even a small part of instilling that belief in another leaves an indelible mark on one's character I think. And I think this is why Giants fans love their team so much. They're relationship with them is personal. With each other. It is the belief that the team believes in them as much as they believe in the team though we know that to be mostly untrue in the long term when it comes to individual players. No matter. That part of the Giants that belongs to the fans is a manifestation of so much of what dreams are made of. The spirit of 2010 was not Clear eyes and full heart, but it was the same. "Don't stop believing"

Believing is an act of faith and an act of hope when you love your team. It is something seldom mentioned in public. It is a passionate virtue.

And whoever thought the simple act of being a baller or a beer-drinking fan could be a virtue?

"Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose"?  Believe it.