Purple Haze
Communal Friday nights
By Lauren Bagian

Sept. 10, 2009

We’re back in football season. It seems as if last season never ended and we have simply run straight into the next. The football team, the band, the cheerleaders and the student athletic trainers all run on a routine. We live our lives all week, but when Friday rolls around, we become new people, bursting with excitement. We’re fans.

Many of us may not even like football, we may not know the rules and we may not know the players because our friends who played graduated years ago, but when the team puts on their Northern jerseys and runs through the cheerleaders’ paper banner, it’s game time, and we all love football then. We all cheer until we’re hoarse and challenge the referee’s flags. Everyone’s a football fan.

It’s not the rules or object of the game that makes football the center of autumn. We all feel something different while we watch a game. Some people are nostalgic--memories of high school and their home town football team--others remember the joy of teaching their sons the game out in the front yard when they were just in elementary school.

It doesn’t matter what brings the spectators to the games; that they come is what matters. It is important that we all support the football teams, both junior varsity and varsity. We all have memories of Friday night football and its imperative that those who do not have those memories yet can make them.