You know that string at the bottom of a sweater, the one where, when you start to pull it, the whole thing unravels? So goes Eric Taylor’s life right now. Between his daughter, his quarterback, and his team, nothing is firing exactly on all cylinders. As much as I like Ornette when he is one-on-one with Vince assuring his son that he’ll have his back, it is obvious that he is a cancer to his son, and to the Lions in general. A return of a special Dillon alumnus, and the Luke/Becky relationship, were the only things going right in Texas this day.
The Lions still have their perfect record, but at what cost? Coach Taylor obviously has no control over his quarterback. The pass play to finish the game reflects positively on only one person — and only to the few scouts in attendance — but reflects poorly on everyone else associated with the team. As wrong as it was for whatever Panther booster to leak the criminal backgrounds of the Lions players, it doesn’t make up for a team that is coached by a man with so much character who’s showing so little. Coach Crowley has a point, and I think that the team will lose him over it (I actually thought he was going to quit in the final scene, but was surprised). I was excited in past weeks to see the energy the Lions were showing, but this has obviously gone too far.
Hopefully the Friday Night Lights storyline of a QB and his father will not take the same track as what we’ve seen with Cam Newton, with a complete and total lack of consequences for anyone involved. Ornette is taking Vince down the wrong road, though thankfully not the same road he traveled down. Criminal record or not, things are going to get bumpy when real recruiting violations start to occur, and those violations are brought to public light. The website we saw tonight should be a clear indication to Vince, and to the audience, that whatever secrets the Lions hold, someone has the ability to make sure they don’t stay secret long.
Someone who I promised not to talk about needs to take herself back to school. That is all.
It is hard not to like Becky and Luke together. For such a young couple to have the history that they do, and to just be getting to know each other now, is so completely the reverse way of doing things, but it is cute to watch happen. Billy Riggins as a life coach for Luke is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, though. The Rocky IV-esque training methods were only missing an 80’s montage to top off a plateful of awesome. The Billy Riggins style of football coaching, though, works only when you’ve got someone with Eric Taylor’s integrity to temper it, as we saw last week.
Jason Street’s cameo was welcome, and it opened the door to an interesting storyline to end the series. Eric Taylor the college coach is something we’ve seen before to disastrous results. However, taking that kind of job to end a series is a much better scenario than what we saw in season one, because the show isn’t called Saturday Afternoon Sunshine, and a show about a high school football team needs a lead who’s a high school football coach. Any chance that Eric has at this job, whether he wants it or not, will fly right out the window the minute Ornette Howard’s name get’s printed in the Dillon newspaper.
A small aside: The Dillon Panthers have obviously become such an afterthought this whole season, but unless I’ve missed a throwaway line somewhere, I think we deserve a little bit better of an explanation for what has happened to the team. I know we’ve seen Mac once already this season, but I don’t remember hearing he was promoted to head coach (Something that actually made the unsportsmanlike conduct of the Lions so much worse. Street being on the sidelines was one reminder, but Mac was another.) What happened to golden boy JD McCoy and his devil of a father? By my calculations he would still be a junior. Did they take their hand-picked coach and blow out of town?
Notes & Quotes
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Dec 16, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
