The start of fall at Cornell can only mean one thing. No, not the first round of prelims, not club recruitment and not even Halloween yet. In a matter of days, campus will be abuzz in anticipation of its most beloved early autumnal tradition: Homecoming. Throngs of Cornell students, alumni, staff and families will crowd streets and bleachers, rallying together as the football team faces one of its fiercest in-state rivals, Colgate University. Of course, Cornell is one of many scholastic institutions across the country to celebrate Homecoming and the spirited traditions that come with it. Before making its way to high schools, the concept of a Homecoming game was founded by American universities looking to draw alumni support back to campus. Despite ongoing debate, the most popular origin story of Homecoming credits the University of Missouri in 1911. At the time, the university’s athletic director, Chester Brewer, wanted to host a community-wide event for the opening of football season against the University of Kansas. Starting as a celebration of unity and school spirit, the enduring presence of football and the Homecoming tradition in popular culture has grown into a widely-recognized symbol of youth, pageantry and American nostalgia. After all, Archie Andrews of Riverdale puts it best: If you don’t know what many refer to as the new “great American pastime,” “you haven’t known the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football.”
Beyond mere campus traditions, football and Homecoming games have garnered international recognition in popular media as iconic rituals of American culture. From Friday Night Lights to She's The Man, football and sports-related media serve as the contemporary battlegrounds of American youth grappling with conflicts in identity, belonging and rivalry all at once. A plotline most commonly depicted in TV dramas, triumph and heartbreak play out under the lights of the football stadium, its packed bleachers creating an amphitheater for the spectacle that is the coming-of-age experience. For decades, the media has utilized football to capture the ferocious intensity of youth while pairing it with the aesthetics of seasonal fall nostalgia. Whether portrayed sincerely or satirically, depictions of American football and Homecoming in the media offer not just an understanding of how we see ourselves, but also of how the rest of the world sees us.
Friday Night Lights is the perfect, if not the most prominent, example of football culture in televised format. Released in 2006, the five-season saga centers around the rural town of Dillon, Texas and its football team. Dillon is the spitting image of classic small-town America, and naturally high school football is its crowning jewel. The series follows Coach Eric Taylor as he navigates the pressures of athletic victory while managing the highs and lows of familial drama. Friday Night Lights makes sure to follow the storylines of players like Tim Riggins, Jason Street and Matt Saracen, all of whom must tackle personal challenges under the weight of the entire town’s scrutiny. The team’s never-ending fight for the state championship is perfectly balanced with characters’ individual struggles to make for an incredibly addictive plot. More than just a game, football is the beating heart of the Dillon community. Characters young and old meet their fates on the field, confronting themselves beyond sport in ways that viewers might not expect.
Though football isn’t necessarily the premise of hit series Glee, it certainly plays a key role in the hierarchical structures between its characters. Taking more of a satirical approach to portrayals of football in popular media, Glee capitalizes on traditional high school caricatures — your average jocks, cheerleaders, nerds and stoners alike — to make comedic jabs at the social politics of modern-day teenagers. Glee’s plot revolves around unexpected connections made between a group of students who decide to join the school’s glee club, led by math teacher Will Schuester. Repeated football games and Homecomings throughout the show serve as consistent plot points that highlight the hilarity of high school drama while shedding light on the very real pressures of conformity that define adolescence.
Whether through the attempted realism of shows like Friday Night Lights or the comedy of Glee, stereotypes of football and Homecoming in the media make for a fascinating study of what we consider to be quintessential American values. Just as classic as their letterman jackets, football players represent a particular demographic of American youth, one that promotes ideals of exceptionalism, physical prowess and social dominance on and off the field. Especially in the microcosm of high school life, Homecoming and football are more than just backdrops of social hierarchy between teenagers; they serve as tangible symbols of our nation’s most idealistic and prized beliefs. Whether these depictions accurately capture the reality of American youth is, of course, still up for debate.
Charlotte Feehan is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at cgf47@cornell.edu.
