Outline:

The website I intend to create will be based on the television series “Friday Night Lights”. “Friday Night Lights” is a show about a small fictional town Dillon, Texas that has a big heart for football and Christianity. The show really emphasizes the importance of Christian faith in the way they go about everything each character either exemplifies a true progressive Christian or is challenging the ideas to think bigger. The show is solely based on how one coach(Coach Taylor) and how his family moves to a small town as a way to save himself and the team.

Themes;

-Coach Taylor is the saviour of Dillon Texas for the community and all of his football players are his followers, which can be seen as Jesus and his disciples.

- Football teams in American high schools usually pray before games, but coach Taylor has one motto or phrase that he says each game,” clear eyes full hearts can’t lose”. Could this be in reference to the commandments of Christianity?

- Why is religion always brought into sports in southern American states?

Argument:

- How does the motto by Coach Taylor, “clear eyes full hearts, can’t lose”, play into his role as the saviour/Jesus to the football players of East Dillon High, but also the community?

 

                            Annotated  Bibliography 

 

Articles:

Fung, Lena.(2002). “Task Familiarity and task efficacy: a study of sports coaches”. perceptual and motor skills. Vol95(2),pp. 367-72.

 

This article can help provide insight into how a coach thinks about their techniques when helping their players succeed. Having this knowledge is important to understanding how coach Taylor runs his team and what is values and priorities are when coaching. This article I would say suggests that Coach Taylor is very much into the motivation aspect of coaching his players, but he puts it out in a Christian way.

 

Jirasek, Ivo. (July 3, 2015). “Religion, Spirituality, and Sport: From Religion Athletae Toward Spiritus Athletae”. Routledge.Vol.67(3),     p.290-299.

This article is helpful with my argument because it goes into detail about how sports are affected by religion. The finer details of the article take about how coaches need to ensure that “the spiritual needs of personality” of a player is maintained, and how their involvement should never try to “omit those important aspects” of the sport. This could build the case in why Coach Taylor says his motto, but also is willing to hear the boys out when they have concerns in order to help them the best he can.

 

Nelson, Marcia Z. (November 27, 2003). “Pop Goes Theology: A growing number of books mine popular culture for religious      meaning”. Publishers Weekly. Vol. 250 Issue 46, pS10-S12. 3p.

This article creates the connection between books and how they are turned into motion picture, and since “Friday Night Lights” originated as a book I thought it was fitting to include. Within the text Nelson mentions that sports has long had acknowledgement with religious beliefs. From praying before competitions to worshipping and idolizing certain athletes is all a part of the experience of being in sports.

 

Mclean, Kristy N, and Mallet, Clifford J. (2012). “What motivates the motivators? an examination of sports coaches”. Physical        Education and Sport PEdagogy. Vol.17(1),p.21-35.

This was an article about a case study done in Australia on 13 coaches and what motivates them to coach, it was based on connection with the sport, athletes, external influences and internal influences. The same tactics could be used to examine Coach Taylor in order to find out why he cares for the sport so much and how he is influenced. Coach Taylor is influenced by his faith on the field and likes to make deep connections with his players, but also internal influences such as changing the pride of the school is a major factor in how in coaches his players. This is important to include in my site because it can help show the factors that help create why Coach Taylor does what he does.

 

Price, Sean.(2013). “Religion in the Locker Room”.Teaching Tolerance, Vol.52(43),p.35-37.

This is an article about a young man who struggled with the concept of having to have “team chapel” with his high school football. This article promotes how Christianity should possibly be questioned in the locker rooms of football teams or any sports. For Coach Taylor no one ever questions that he is influencing his Christian values because he does it in a subliminal way. This can help address the idea is it right what Coach is doing or is it just a means of helping the players.

 

Books:

 

Forney, Craig A.(2007). “The holy trinity of American Sports: Civil religion in Football, baseball and basketball”. Macon, GA: Mercer    University Press. First Edition.

This book can help portray football and its myths in the religion context background on how the game is played. This can help my analysis of the television show because the book goes in depth about how sports help to portray daily life rituals such as congregated once or more a week to promote and proclaim a common ground faith. It is in a way the same actions of those who follow the Christian faith.

 

Romanowski, William D.(1996) “Pop culture wars: religion and the role of entertainment in American life”. Downers Grove, III  InterVarsity Press.

This book helps to emphasize how pop culture, especially television can given a false sense of what religion is to a wide majority of Americans. There are stories in this book about humour attempted to draw people into Christianity, but the humour was based on a widely shared assumption about the basic incongruity between organized religion and entertainment. This promotes the idea that Americans always have a pendulum relationship with religion by attacking it or accepting it, “Friday Night Lights” shows a balance of the two without viewers even realizing.

 

Sassower, Raphael and Scholes, Jeffery.(2013). “Religion and Sports in American Culture”. New York: Routledge. First Edition.

This book goes into detail about how the true story of a young man was impacted by religion through the eyes of sport. It gave him a sense of direction, and that is what Coach Taylor attempts to do in the fictional show, but in actuality it can be done.

 

Other Sources:

 

B. Zoltan. (July 19, 2011). “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts…”. [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pZHXQ698Ok This video is of different moments when coach Taylor passes on his encouragement to his players and how he believes they can do anything if they have faith in themselves and his faith in them.

 

Bartlett, Ben. (June 25, 2008). “TGFF: Thank God for “Friday Night Lights”. Patheos: Hosting the conversation on faith. Online at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2008/06/daily-life-on-friday-night-lights/

This website was in the christian and pop culture section of the site, and it discussed a summary of the show, but then go into the good and bad parts of the show. One of the bad opinions about the show was that “Friday Night Lights portrays Christianity as a shallow crutch for the weak and purposeless”, because of the amount is of limited portrayal of Christianity in the show leads to it being “shallow, legalistic and cheesy”. Also another opinion stated was that every character in the show has troubles with morality issues even the “Christians”.

 

“Friday Night Lights: ‘Clear Eyes Full eyes can’t lose’”. Webs made better websites made simple. http://fridaynightlightsandreligion.webs.com/friday-night-lights

This is a source that could be used for public comments on what they think that “clear eyes, Full hearts, can’t lose”, which can help my argument on determining what other people think about the motto. There is also youtube videos of coach Taylor giving his pep talk of “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”.

 

Got Questions Ministries. (2015). “What is an Evangelical Christian?”. Got Questions?org. http://www.gotquestions.org/evangelical-Christian.html Definition of what and evangelical Christian is and that is helpful because most of the Characters in the show promote that sense of being.

 

Hughes, Sarah. ( February, 13, 2012). “Why Friday Night Lights is one of the best US shows of recent years”. Theguardian News and media limited. Online at http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/feb/13/friday-night-lights

 

This is a useful source for assisting with my website because it describes that appeal of why people like Friday Night Lights, and that’s mostly because it appeals to the American lifestyle in the South of football and God. It gives a clear representation that the show doesn’t shy away from showing the values the characters have. In one section it mentions how the daughter of the head coach doesn’t care for either football or Christianity helps to bring opposed opinions to the town of very old values type of people.

 

Katz, Emily Tess. (Sept 9, 2014). “Connie Brittion On ‘Firday Night Lights’ Mantra’s ‘Impactful’ Effect On Cancer Patients”. HuffingtonPost: Healthy Living. Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/09/connie-britton-mantra-impact_n_5792550.html

 

This Huffington Article is about how one of the main Characters Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) from Friday Night Lights has taken the motto “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” and how it has special healing powers and bring inspiration to others. Many people have chosen to get the motto tattooed on them, because it is a way to live you life to its purest. Having and open heart and seeing the best in all your actions is how you can be able to be healed, by a subliminal religious message.

 

McKinlay, Kevin. (September 29, 2012). “Great Inspirational Speech- Friday Night Lights”. [Video].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYIzhV2uIbw This is a video I will add to my website to show the dedicate that the players have to their coach, but also the words the coach preaches to the players is about how they can never lose because there is always someone to be their for them. He could be refering that their is always a higher power at play.

 

Nishasha. (January 26, 2013). “Cultural Religion in Friday Night Lights”. SpiritualiTV. Online at https://spiritualitv.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/cultural-religion-in-friday-night-lights/

This website has a reflection of the pilot of the show and how it has progressed since the show began. There are references to the players praying before the game and during the game such as “ let’s touch God this time”. Also it goes into saying how Coach Taylor views moral strength as an asset in his high school football players.

 

October 29, 2015. "Peter Berg". Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Berg

 

This webiste gave information on Peter Berg who is the creator of "Friday Night Lights". 

 

 

Rumi, Maryam. (March 6, 2015). “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose”. Urban Openness; Spiritual Solutions for your modern Life. Online at http://margaretnichols.com/clear-eyes-full-hearts-cant-lose-2/

 

This website can help to bring connection between the Friday night lights and modern day religion, because that it what the site is about. They did a special article on how the motto that Coach Taylor preaches before every football game “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”, is similar to how one can go about understanding and accepting the word of the higher power. It is trying to make the connection with teens who admire the show and how they can see further into the motto of the coach (who is like God in the town of Dillon).

 

September 23, 2015. “ Friday Night Lights (TV series)”. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Night_Lights_(TV_series)

Wikipedia can be used to help find facts about the show a brief summary of the show and it also is a public written site, so it could have some bias about the Christian aspect of the show.

 

Smith, Stephan. (October 4th, 2015). “100 Bible Verses about Honesty”. OpenBible.info. Online at http://www.openbible.info/topics/honesty This website has verses from the bible about honesty that help back up the case about coach Taylor’s motto of “clear Eye, full hearts, can’t lose”. There is a specific verse by John 8:32 “and you will know the truth , and the truth will set you free”, which can help present what the coach wants to put forth to his players. 2nd Rodeo. (December 5, 2014).

 

“Coach Taylor- We will All Fall”. [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utIPo5ZOBHg

This is the coach giving a speech about how everyone falls, but we will become stronger from it by looking inside our hearts and seeing the good. This is following the same values as what Jesus did when he had to sacrifice himself for the sake of his people.