Go Tigers!

The Massillon Tigers high school football team is now 6 - 0, their best start in some years.  For those who don't know, Massillon is a perennial high school powerhouse in Ohio, having won 22 state championships.  A documentary, "Go Tigers!", was even filmed about the team a few years ago.

Massillon is a town that has seen better days; without its football tradition, it would be just another decaying steel town in the Midwest.  Yet if the football team is winning, life is good in Massillon.

It may seem strange that football takes center stage in Massillon, given that the city's unemployment is high and the population is dwindling.  But high school football is special - it taps into our evolutionary roots, and it is easy to fall under its spell.

The connection between high school football and the Stone Age is pretty obvious.  In football, each town gathers its best athletes to battle athletes from a neighboring town.  This is not a far leap from a hunter-gatherer tribe assembling its top warriors to fight a neighboring tribe. 

In Stone Age times, beating the neighboring tribe had obvious advantages - to the winners went the spoils.  Nowadays, the winner only gets a trophy, but the underlying primal instincts remain - our genes still think it is serious business.   

All this is the reason why a city will often pass a levy to fund a sports stadium, while declining a levy to fund the schools.  Our priorities get distorted by our natural emotions.  This is neither good nor bad, but the awareness of it may lead to better outcomes. 

I hope Massillon does continue winning, and gives the town something to cheer about.  But I also hope they focus on their problems at hand, so that there's something to cheer about in the offseason, too.