Friday Night in Texas
I live on the far edge of a very large metropolitan area -- an area so large that my boss, who lives on the other far edge, lives 61 miles away from me. Think about what is 61 miles away from you for a second, and you get an idea of how much gawdawful White Plastic Suburbia surrounds me.

I broke free from White Plastic Suburbia tonight -- from my position in the metropolitan area, it doesn't take too long -- and, with the Old Daughter, took in some Texas tradition: small-town high school football. The daughter enjoys the little preview of high school life, and I get to watch a live sporting event, which is rare for me these days.

Celina is one of the few remaining places in North Texas not touched by the ever-lengthening fingers of Dallas and Fort Worth. It's a little town in the middle of a cornfield with no real distinguishing characteristics, except that it has a monster high school football program. With a victory tonight, the Celina Bobcats would tie a half-century-old state record for most consecutive wins. In Texas, that's Really Big Stuff.

The game itself was no contest: When we left in the third quarter, it was 42-7, Celina, and their backup quarterback was playing. I didn't buy a program, so I can't verify this, but I swear the PA announcer's pronunciation of the backup quarterback's name was "Jacques Chirac." One somehow doubts the French president has ever been to Celina.

Some images from under the Friday Night Lights:

--Teenagers apparently don't get acne anymore. I never saw more clear-faced 16-year-olds in my life.

--Apparently Celina is a racially diverse town, which is rare for a small town in this part of Texas. Unfortunately, less rare: From the visitors' side of the stadium (the only place we could find seats), racially tinged catcalls rang out, directed at one of Celina's black football stars and a black nominee for homecoming queen. It was said relatively quietly, but it was still said, and it still made me want to grab the guy and kick the crap out of him -- until I turned around and realized the source of the remarks was probably 10 or 11, which just gave me the bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. We're so close to having stomped out this racism thing for good, we really are, but occasionally there's the ugly reminder that we're not close enough.

--After the homecoming queen was crowned, people swarmed to congratulate ... her dad. What exactly did he have to do with it? I also should note that it is apparently a tradition in Celina to bring back the homecoming queen from 10 years ago and give her the duty of crowning this year's queen. Based solely on aesthetics (which is the whole point, right?), the 1991 Celina homecoming queen would still have been a very viable candidate in 2001.

--On the way from my house to the Celina stadium, I passed a very, very large house in the middle of nowhere. A really ornate mansion, really out of place in the middle of a cornfield. The homeowner: Deion Sanders.

--Even a lopsided Class 2A contest is really entertaining football. Most Class 2A teams in Texas -- schools with enrollments of about 300 -- could wipe the field with any of the teams from the 1,300-student schools in Missouri. And I couldn't help but notice that this tiny little stadium in this tiny little town had a double-level, enclosed press box. This means nothing to most people, but as a former sports writer, it really impressed me. I covered probably 80 high school games in Missouri, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I sat in an enclosed press box. (The time in Cabool when I could watch the game from inside my truck doesn't count.) As somebody who once covered a state playoff game from an open-air press box with the thermometer showing zero degrees, I can tell you an enclosed press box is the hallmark of a first-class football stadium.

Back to reality:

I'm declaring Saturday a News Blackout Day. No newspaper, no TV (except the Nebraska-OU game, and maybe the World Series), no msnbc.com. If it's happening somewhere other than my house, the soccer field or those aforementioned Major Sports Events, I won't know about it. And I couldn't be prouder.