3afan
09-26-2007, 10:03 AM
this is a few weeks old and may have been posted already, but oh well:
Are you ready for some football?
09:23 AM CDT on Sunday, September 9, 2007
To paraphrase Robert Frost, something there is that does not like a Texas town without a high school football team. Texas has many iconic images that it holds dear, but few are as revered as that of the home-town team taking the field on autumn nights for honor, glory and the right to second-guess the coach on Saturday mornings down at the coffee shop.
Ask Celina.
If you are a Texan who loves football — and yes, we know; we’re being redundant — there is something incomplete about your town if it does not field a football team. In small towns, especially, the football team is the glue that holds the town together, the one rallying point for an otherwise ornery and contentious populace. Even in larger cities, the local football team can be a source of pride and unity when things aren’t going well on other fronts.
Ask Odessa.
But if the love of football is a given in Texas, so is flinty-eyed thriftiness, the disinclination to let go of a dollar until the eagle has hollered uncle at least twice. Texans have seen suffering in hard times and wasteful profligacy in fat times; they are not much enamored of either. When football fever runs up against Texas thrift, something has to give.
Two Denton County school districts — Krum and Ponder — are proposing bond issues that would fund start-up high school football programs. Krum, which already has a proud varsity basketball tradition, is seeking a $7.5 million bond issue to finance football and volleyball facilities and programs. Part of a $13.4 million bond issue proposed by the Ponder school district would finance the establishment of a high school varsity football program.
Both schools have tried before to jump-start football programs with a bond vote; both have failed. But Krum came close last year, when a bond proposal for football failed by only 56 votes. Ponder hopes that coupling football with other needed improvements — a new band hall and choir room — will mute some objections that the district is favoring athletics over other extracurricular pursuits.
We have no idea what the voters in Krum and Ponder will end up deciding when asked to vote again on football. Moreover, we have no idea how they should decide. About the only advice we’re prepared to offer is a time-worn cliche: If you want it, go for it, but remember you have to be willing to pay the piper.
More interesting to contemplate are the tugs-of-war that will be going on inside the heads and hearts of folks who love football and hate property taxes (that’ll be just about everybody, we’d bet).
There will be sub-groups among those voters, and a large one will be made up of those who would be willing to pay for a winning program, but not for a losing one, which is how most brand-new football programs start out.
If someone could strike some kind of Mephistophelean bargain whereby the locals could be guaranteed to whup all comers first pop out of the box, we’d bet both proposals would pass in a New York minute.
Are you ready for some football?
09:23 AM CDT on Sunday, September 9, 2007
To paraphrase Robert Frost, something there is that does not like a Texas town without a high school football team. Texas has many iconic images that it holds dear, but few are as revered as that of the home-town team taking the field on autumn nights for honor, glory and the right to second-guess the coach on Saturday mornings down at the coffee shop.
Ask Celina.
If you are a Texan who loves football — and yes, we know; we’re being redundant — there is something incomplete about your town if it does not field a football team. In small towns, especially, the football team is the glue that holds the town together, the one rallying point for an otherwise ornery and contentious populace. Even in larger cities, the local football team can be a source of pride and unity when things aren’t going well on other fronts.
Ask Odessa.
But if the love of football is a given in Texas, so is flinty-eyed thriftiness, the disinclination to let go of a dollar until the eagle has hollered uncle at least twice. Texans have seen suffering in hard times and wasteful profligacy in fat times; they are not much enamored of either. When football fever runs up against Texas thrift, something has to give.
Two Denton County school districts — Krum and Ponder — are proposing bond issues that would fund start-up high school football programs. Krum, which already has a proud varsity basketball tradition, is seeking a $7.5 million bond issue to finance football and volleyball facilities and programs. Part of a $13.4 million bond issue proposed by the Ponder school district would finance the establishment of a high school varsity football program.
Both schools have tried before to jump-start football programs with a bond vote; both have failed. But Krum came close last year, when a bond proposal for football failed by only 56 votes. Ponder hopes that coupling football with other needed improvements — a new band hall and choir room — will mute some objections that the district is favoring athletics over other extracurricular pursuits.
We have no idea what the voters in Krum and Ponder will end up deciding when asked to vote again on football. Moreover, we have no idea how they should decide. About the only advice we’re prepared to offer is a time-worn cliche: If you want it, go for it, but remember you have to be willing to pay the piper.
More interesting to contemplate are the tugs-of-war that will be going on inside the heads and hearts of folks who love football and hate property taxes (that’ll be just about everybody, we’d bet).
There will be sub-groups among those voters, and a large one will be made up of those who would be willing to pay for a winning program, but not for a losing one, which is how most brand-new football programs start out.
If someone could strike some kind of Mephistophelean bargain whereby the locals could be guaranteed to whup all comers first pop out of the box, we’d bet both proposals would pass in a New York minute.