Marketplace of Ideas Blog

Where might you find the single largest number of people in Wisconsin on a Friday night between late August and late October?

Probably at one of the state’s more than 200 high school football games each week, beginning with games in this area tonight — Bonduel at Crivitz, Crandon at Lena/St. Thomas Aquinas, Elcho/White Lake at Wausaukee, Little Chute at Fox Valley Lutheran, Marion at Manawa, Oconto at Peshtigo, Rio at Stockbridge, Suring at Wabeno/Laona, Tigerton at Goodman/Niagara/Pembine and Winneconne at Waupaca, according to the Wisconsin Football Network. (Think about it: If an average of 1,000 people attend a game, that’s 200,000 football fans interspersed throughout the state Friday nights, or Friday or Saturday afternoons for teams in stadiums without lights.)

High school football has been part of my life ever since I played in high school. (That is, played trumpet in the band. The football team at whose games I played won, in order, three, one, one and four games my four years in high school.) After that, I started covering high school football at the newspapers I worked at, and then started announcing games, first on radio and then on cable TV. I’ve seen everything from winless seasons to undefeated state championship teams, two of which Ripon has enjoyed in this decade.

At its best, high school football (as with other sports) teaches its participants things not always learned in conventional classrooms — teamwork, on which athletes get reinforcement once they hit the work world; improving yourself through competition, for playing time or a starting position, or through competition against an opponent; the necessity of discipline and sacrifice (even if only sacrifice of your own time, since one does not have to play football, and in any sport practice time greatly exceeds game time) to reach team goals; the value of excellence whether it gets noticed or not (ask any offensive lineman about that); the social grace of sportsmanship, win or lose; and the need to neither excessively exult in your triumphs nor wallow in your failures, since there’s another game next week, or, in the work world, another deadline or project ahead. (Done right, extracurricular activities, including but not limited to sports, have a value far beyond their budget impact, which usually runs about 1 percent of a school district's general fund budget.) High school football is also the last place, or next-to-last place (the other last place might be Division III college football), where people play because they love the game, not because of any benefit such as a college scholarship or pay.

At its best, a high school football game, ideally played in a small town that empties out for the game (large cities take a more blasé approach to the local teams), is a panoply of sights, sounds and other senses — a full stadium with partisans of the home and visiting teams, blaring marching bands, the smack of players hitting players, the smell of fresh-cut grass in the crisp air, the field and other surfaces getting damp as the temperatures drop, wafting charcoal smoke, trees changing color as fall approaches, the lights overtaking the evening darkness making one think the area the stadium lights illuminate is the only thing on earth, and the unique sound of cheering high school crowds. (I finally figured out why high school crowds sound like they do — screaming girls, something I’m experiencing personally from a much younger source.)

High school football is not as big in Wisconsin as it is in Texas, Florida, Ohio or other states. (That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as you may note from reading H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream, on which the movie and TV series are based.) Football is generally not fancy in high schools, and generally not fancy in Wisconsin, but coaches will tell you that schemes are far less important than execution. (Some business book authors need to learn that lesson — plans, strategies, mission statements, vision statements and so on that are sound are nonetheless only as effective as the degree of success to which they are carried out.)

Football has, however, become Wisconsin’s number one sport, for one obvious reason and for one less obvious (in this area) reason. The obvious reason is the Green Bay Packers, which sold out games even in their bad seasons, but whose season ticket waiting list is now 30 years thanks to their success since the early 1990s. The less obvious reason is the University of Wisconsin Badgers, which, also since the early 1990s, have won three Rose Bowls (three more than they won in their previous century of existence), played at bowl games practically every season, and sold out Camp Randall Stadium.

The Badgers’ success is probably more significant because they have done it with a large contingent of Wisconsin players — including Packer offensive tackle Mark Tauscher, one of 38 Packers and one of 36 Packer draft choices who attended Wisconsin — many of whom arrived in Madison without a scholarship to play football, such as Berlin’s Joe Stellmacher. (Ten players on this year’s UW roster are from Northeast Wisconsin, including Appleton’s Nate Emanuel, Drew Woodward and Matt Fischer, Ashwaubenon’s Mike Taylor, Menasha’s Andy Kemp and Tyler Westphal, Neenah’s Peter Konz, Sheboygan’s William Hartmann, Sturgeon Bay’s Jake Bscherer, and Suamico’s Brad Debauche.)

The business connection with high school football reveals itself when you step into a high school football stadium and note the ads on scoreboards and elsewhere from hometown businesses providing support that taxpayers cannot or should not have to provide. Most high school football head coaches are teachers, but a large percentage of assistant coaches are not school district employees, and go directly from their jobs to the football practice field, many without pay.

One example is in Ripon (full disclosure: where I announce high school and college games for the local cable TV channel), whose Ingalls Field now has a new artificial grass surface. Ripon Area School District voters twice turned down referenda to raise property taxes to pay for a new football surface, in large part because school district voters, who have one of the highest property tax mil rates in their area, didn’t want to raise taxes further to pay for the field.

After the second referendum lost, a group of civic-minded people who had already contributed a lot of time, energy and money to improving Ingalls Field (in the past five years, new lights, more seating on the home-team side, new press boxes, new visiting-team bleachers, a new ticket booth/concessions stand and a new scoreboard) swung into action again, getting more than $300,000 in contributions from Ripon businesses toward the $625,000 project. It’s not a free project for the school district, since artificial grass is not maintenance-free, but the school district didn’t raise taxes to pay for the surface (the district has started a fund for its eventual replacement), and both the high school and college football teams (the college donated about one-third of the project cost) play on a surface that is actually level and lacks bare patches, holes and grass that separates from the dirt underneath. The high school’s soccer teams also benefit, because they now have a facility that has bleachers, lights and a scoreboard, all of which were lacking at their previous field.

My favorite Vince Lombardi quote applies to football, or any sport, or any field of endeavor, including business: “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-the-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.”