Kicking the Habit

A new documentary takes a look at one very football-obsessed high school.

Despite what they say about baseball being the national pastime, football seems to have overtaken it long ago. Do you know of anyone who has World Series parties that can compete in any way with the Superbowl gatherings so commonly held like clockwork every year? Has Oliver Stone made a movie about baseball? Can anyone imagine wrestling promoters wanting to start up an "extreme" baseball league? More to the point, can you leap through the air and ram your shoulders into a hapless foe in baseball (legally)?

None of this intended to start an arbitrary vendetta against baseball, but merely to suggest that football makes for a fantastic and particularly American diversion in times like these. The Japanese may have some outstanding baseball players, because of that game's focus on concentration and accuracy, which are virtues seemingly prized more in Eastern cultures than our own, but for a nation that loves to talk about ass-kicking, football is the ass-kickingest team game in town, and no other nation equals us at it (that it's known everywhere else as American football only adds to the intimidation factor). In fact, it often feels like a way to wage war without actually killing anybody -- a notion that seems to have been what attracted Oliver Stone to Any Given Sunday.

But as pleasing a diversion as it may be for some, it's a way of life for others. Like virtually anything you can name in this culture, football is often taken to extremes by kooks, and they're on full parade in Ken Carlson's new documentary Go Tigers!. Set in the town of Massillon (pronounced Mass'lin by everyone onscreen), Ohio, Go Tigers shows us a place where high school football is an obsession quite literally from cradle to grave, as football recruiters roam the maternity wards handing foam footballs to newborns, and a coffin emblazoned with the Massillon Tigers logo is one of the more popular sellers at the local funeral home.

Massillon has been this way for some time, and the obligatory campy-because-it's-dated newsreel footage from 1951 informs us that it is "the No. 1 grid city in America." It's also apparently the only high school to have its football team on the betting line in Las Vegas. At the time that the rest of the film chronicles, the Tigers are entering their 106th season as underdogs, with a school bond issue on the ballot that is crucial for the team's survival, but will increase property taxes on the mostly working-class population. It's times like these that make the phrase "lesser of two evils" really come home for average folks, much more so than during such comparatively trivial events as the Gore-versus-Bush contest.

Director Carlson, a veteran of TV reality shows, lovingly shows us all the weird eccentricities of the town, from the old lady whose house features more tiger-themed junk than the average Internet surfer has Star Wars figures to the football player bazooka-barfing after shotgunning a six pack, then demanding another beer. Animal crack-ups also ensue, whether it's the bedraggled tiger kitten mascot "Obie" (attention, PETA!) attacking a local kid while being held on a leash, or two bulldogs getting unabashedly intimate for the camera.

But Carlson is not really interested in making fun of these folks, and so, in the interests of balance, the movie becomes a serious sports movie about halfway through. There's nothing wrong with that in theory, although the camerawork during some of the field action shown here leaves a little to be desired. But a stronger point of view wouldn't hurt; if we wanted to watch a game without commentary, we can do that at home, with beer and bathroom breaks. It makes one wish for the amusing obnoxiousness of more self-involved documentarians like Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney) or Michael Moore (Roger & Me).

Sure, it's interesting to hear about the running back who may have been actively recruited away from a rival high school. It's either tragedy or comedy, you pick, to hear that eighth-graders are regularly held back a year not for academic reasons, but because their parents want them to be bigger when they become eligible for high school football. But some issues need more exploring than they get. The intertwining of football with religion is uniquely disturbing, given separation of church and state; do any of these boys possibly not want to say the Lord's Prayer before each game, or resent having preachers as motivational speakers in the locker room? As Bill Maher once put it, if they're gonna thank God when they win, how come they don't blame him when they lose? The issue is less whether any of it is inappropriate, but rather that Carlson doesn't think to ask anyone.

As for a dissenting view on the elevation of football to such a cultlike status to begin with, the only such voices we hear come from kids who seem to have been selected on the basis of their weird appearances -- goths with facial piercings and computer nerds with Insane Clown Posse T-shirts, who look about as ridiculous as a Nick Cave show held in broad daylight at a sports arena (Lollapalooza '94 attendees may remember what a sad sight that was). To put down football fever is un-American, the film suggests; just look at the end titles colored red, white and blue.

That said, if you're a football fan, chances are you won't be bored, and the distraction may be quite welcome. As for everyone else, you may lose interest right around the third quarter.