Friday night lights, Week 4

I didn't blog immediately after Week 1, but I wanted to add a few thoughts.

First, back to Week Three.

It was Friday the 13th, and superstitions and belief in luck as a metaphysical issue aside, it was lucky for some teams and unlucky for others, complete with a Friday the 13th full moon, with high clouds and a humidity haze from Texas' normal September late summer being stronger than normal, diffusing that full moon just a bit.

A night like this, especially in small towns, makes one realize how high school sports can be somewhat of a community unifier. It's still not a perfect one, and high school sports, above all football, is still overvalued in Texas. It also makes one realize how rare African-American players can be in small towns west of I-35, for Texas history reasons.

Second, on to Week Four.

I'm getting the remaining rust knocked off my photo eye, and off my note taking fingers as well.

The picture at right is a leftover, compared to what we'll be running in one of the newspapers in our group.

This was Ponder (red) hosting S and S. (Officially spelled with an ampersand, but since Blogger still can't or won't render ampersands, I have to type that out.)

First, great stadium for a small school for shooting. In the first quarter, with some sunset light augmenting the stadium lights, I was shooting 1/400 at 1600 ISO and that was no underexposure on my 100-300 4-5.6.

I dialed down to 1/320 after that, and shot that the rest of the game. I was getting some underexpose on long shots or in end zone areas, but nothing huge. I never went above 1600.

Second, an issue.

As in, an issue.

I wrote a newspaper column about this more than a decade ago. It was, IIRC, at a basketball game, not a football one, but as even more people may be at the football game, applies there, too.

High school sports events do NOT need "booty music" played over the stadium or gym PA system. It's age-inappropriate. IMO, it's age-inappropriate for high school, and certainly for any younger kids in attendance.

And, I don't just mean "urban contemporary" (which is what I'd classify this as) or hip-hop. There are rock and country songs that are also "booty call" music. It's inappropriate not only on ages, for sexualizing high school kids more than they already are, it's also generally sexist music.

In my Week One Friday Night Lights, I didn't name Lindsay as the school getting titty baby over its grass field getting rain-soaked, as I am now, but ... Ponder? You need to fix this.

Third, another issue.

I understand a certain amount of "working the refs," but ... I also know it goes overboard at times. S and S's new head coach was ridiculously vocal compared to Ponder's, and this was before the score was even close to the 41-7 final. Chillax, dude.