(Washington) The world’s richest sports league broke a taboo this year. For the first time in 60 years, the National Football League (NFL) played a game on a Friday night.
Even though it took place in Brazil, it didn’t go well at all.
Because there is a sacred sequence to respect in American football. Saturdays are reserved for college teams. Sundays belong to the NFL — with only one game on Monday and another on Thursday.
Friday belongs to the million teenagers who make up the 16,000 high school teams in every corner of the United States. Much more than a sporting event, it is the social and family fabric of the small town America that vibrates every Friday in the fall for the “Friday Night Lights.” Everything stops: families, friends and students gather around the stadiums at sunset. There is music, singing, dancing and shouts of joy.
Not just in small towns, either. On Friday, in Northeast Washington, there was a summit meeting between the two finalists for the 2023 local cup: Dunbar, the oldest black high school in the United States, was visiting Friendship Academy, a public school that opened in 2000 and is also almost 100% African-American.
ShaVaughn Sanders had put on the jersey of his son, RiShaughn, 15, No. 58, a defensive lineman from Dunbar.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
ShaVaughn Sanders and his triplets
“I built my children’s names around mine,” she tells me, introducing me to her triplets Jonaugh, Jawjaughn and Jaughn.
“I graduated from Dunbar, my mom graduated from Dunbar and my grandma graduated from Dunbar, because Dunbar is the best,” the teacher says, keeping an eye on her 8-year-old triplets who are starting to think the line is long on sunny Minnesota Avenue.
You know why it’s called Dunbar? It’s in honor of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Our school educated the black elite, darling.
ShaVaughn Sanders, mother of Dunbar player
As in the South, the school system in Washington was long segregated. Dunbar, once M Street High School, was home to several generations of African-American teachers who had graduated from top American universities and could not find jobs in higher education.
The public school, which selected the best black students in the region (coeducation was prohibited), rivaled the most prestigious white private schools. Many of its graduates went on to study at Ivy League universities and hold important positions — the first black army general, the first black presidential staffer, Elizabeth Catlett, the first black woman to graduate from the fine arts, not to mention all the professionals, etc.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
The line stretches outside Friendship Academy ahead of the game against Dunbar.
Dunbar’s star has since faded, it is no longer an elite school that selects its students, and its graduation rates have plummeted, like those of many urban public schools. But its engineering prep program is still touted. And the pride of a 154-year-old tradition is alive. The city invested a huge amount of money in it 12 years ago, and Dunbar’s entire athletic campus was rebuilt from scratch.
“They are a big family, they care about us,” a mother of seven told me.
In line ahead of me, Tae Young, 38, who works for Defense, is also a Dunbar graduate, as is his girlfriend Jamere, a federal civil servant.
“Football is huge, it’s the activity that unites everyone,” the young mother told me. “I was in the bandwe did choreographies during the matches.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Friday night’s game was played to a sold-out crowd.
Despite due respect to the alma mater, Tae is rooting for Friendship tonight. “My nephew is playing for them. No choice, I’m going for the family.”
Friday football is a family event before it becomes a sporting or school event. Grandparents are here with teenagers, cousins have come to watch their cousin play — and their cousin’s friend. People remember coming with their parents, their sisters, their aunts…
It’s not just a rule that prohibits the NFL from showing games on Fridays. It’s one of the deepest and most enduring traditions in American society.
There is no question of letting billionaire clubs come and play with the Friday night spotlights.
Football remains, by far, the most popular sport in the United States. But beneath the seemingly unshakable surface, tectonic plates are shifting.
Participation, especially at a younger age, has been in sharp decline over the past 10 years. The reason is simple: scientific data on the effects of concussions. Researchers at Boston University have been documenting the impacts of contact sports on athletes’ brains for a generation. But now the general public is well aware of the risks associated with repeated impacts. Especially since the release of the film Concussion (2015), which is the dramatization of the journalistic work at the basis of the book League of Denialwhich starkly exposed the concussion crisis and the league’s attempts to cover it up.
As a result, parents are more hesitant to send their sons to play football. A survey by Washington Post1 Last year, however, showed that while overall turnout is down, it is stable in conservative states and even up in the two poorest states — Mississippi and Alabama, where it has increased by nearly 20 percent in 10 years. Turnout has declined much less among African-American children.
Where football is seen as a tool for social advancement, participation continues, despite the risks.
The survey also shows a new political divide. Of the 23 states with youth turnout above the national average, 19 voted for Donald Trump. In a national poll, the proportion of parents who said they wanted their son to play football dropped from 63% to 44% in just 10 years among those who called themselves “progressive.” We remember Barack Obama saying that if he had a son, he wouldn’t be sure he’d let him play football — we know he prefers basketball, by the way…
Conversely, parents who describe themselves as “conservative” are more inclined than 10 years ago to have their child play (75% versus 70%).
All of this, still invisible to the naked eye on the nation’s fields, has NFL officials extremely worried. Everywhere, attempts are being made to change the rules to make the sport a little less dangerous and reassure talent providers — parents. It’s a complicated task in a sport that is inherently violent…
Flag football is seemingly replacing traditional football in elementary schools and among younger children. Experts believe that the absence of tackling at a young age greatly reduces the cumulative risks to the brain.
PHOTO TAKEN FROM THE FRIENDSHIP ACADEMY INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT
A moment of joy for the young victorious players of the Friendship Academy…
Flag football has also been admitted as an Olympic sport, for boys and girls, at the next Olympic Games, in Los Angeles in 2028.
Will the Friday lights shine on one night for this non-contact football?
It is not for tomorrow, nor for this century, probably.
The proof? Neither ShaVaugh and his triplets, nor Tae and his girlfriend, nor I were able to get into the stadium. There were several hundred of us waiting on the sidewalk for an hour and a half and having to turn around.
“It’s full, even if you have your ticket, sorry!”
As it is a major sporting event, local TV and newspapers were present and according to the Washington PostFriendship won 20-14 against my neighborhood school.
But Dunbar has not said his last word.
1. Read the survey of Washington Post (in English)