#6: Broken Arrow Memorial Stadium

Where did my high school's football team play? I don't know but it was probably the same astroturf pitch that everyone else used during PE class. 

Broken Arrow High School's football team plays in front of 10,000 fans in a stadium that cost $8 million to build.  The team trains in a $2 million facility.  Our entire high school, with half the student numbers of Broken Arrow, cost £17 million to build, sports facilities and all.  I thought yanks didn't believe in public works, especially not in such a red state. 

Two Fridays ago I saw Broken Arrow High School beat Union High School for the first time in years.  I'd struggle to improve on "overly muscular 16 year olds pushing and running into each other" if I tried to describe the game itself.  Friday night lights, baby. 

 

Date of creation: 1999

In 1997 plans were drawn up to replace the half-century old Kirkland Field stadium.  The school board are told the stadium and turf will cost $4 million.  Broken Arrow voters approve a $7.5 million bond issue in March 1998.  Only $2 million of district money was intended to go towards the stadium, with corporate funding covering the rest.  The ever benevolent PepsiCo Inc enter a contract with the school board to provide $1.9 million.

In November 1998, the school board are informed by the contracting firm that costs are set to rise to $8.36 million.  The new budget is approved a few days later.  School officials asked the voters to put up a further $3.5 million and another bond was duly voted through in May 1999.

Historical significance: 75

It's irrelevant how many Broken Arrow footballers went on to NFL fame.  Sports, much like music, is just what people do when they're not engaged in meaningful economic activity.  The number of Broken Arrow alumnus who now have wikipedia pages that someone else wrote is similarly irrelevant.  Our conceptual shortcomings lead us to over-attribute historical agency to individuals!

Human capital, as forged in the furnace of public education, underlies higher living standards.  The role of high school football is misunderstood.  Innovation is driven by nerds still grappling with the insecurities infecting the bottom rung of the high school social hierarchy.

Why do so many individuals shun worldly pleasures and pour their 20s into esoteric pursuits underpinning modern living standards like shaving fractions off of an algorithm's big O exponent or studying pharmaceutical patents to defend the incentive structure behind medical research?  To validate the theory that jocks and cheerleaders peaked in high school.  

If you turn up to a high school reunion to relive football memories, only to find a classmate you don't remember clumsily referencing their international travel, know that they did it because their unrequited crush had an unrequited crush on you.  Rejoice! The nerds are surfing the wake you left behind in your glory days.

European-ness: 7.1

The past two top trumps cards owe their existence to voters approving of three separate bond issues in support of public works.  Is this a weird form of Swiss direct social democracy?  Socialism by stealth?  Round up the libertarians because the Broken Arrow Memorial Stadium is getting a 7.1.

Cowboy hats: 1

10,000 spectators and just 1 cowboy hat. Sad!

Collective consciousness: 48

A live sports event should be a collective consciousness banker.  But consciousness is tiring and the game lasted far too long. I realised the extent to which students weren't even watching the game when I went to the bathroom.  Canoodling abounds.  Shout out to the goths in front of me who couldn't take one selfie they all liked despite three hours worth of trying, although some were discarded because the lanky Brit squinting in the sun sat behind them doesn't fit their aesthetic.

Wokeness: -33 

I'm told there are constant protests outside the Union High School football games because they continue to use an offensive native American image as their logo.  Tut tut, send them for a lecture from the Gilcrease gift shop manager.

Alas, no opportunity to sport one of my native American tatts because I was sat in the home end.  

Overall

Footballers on the field, overly enthusiastic parents, marching band, goths taking selfies, footballers on the sidelines, poms, away student sections in camo, cheerleaders, footballers who never seemed to actually get onto the field, student sports science people, the energetic people who run with the flags, student sections with paint bombs.  It was a lot to take in.  But I'm not sure I needed more than three hours to do it.

Notes from an artist

I enjoyed this one and stuck with it.  "Significant artistic development" is a direct quote from an esteemed family elder.  I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether I left out the players because I forgot to leave white torsos blank or to make a political point about the distorting effects of teenage fame.

Work in progress.