One of the big sports questions of the weekend (besides the obvious question of why Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire is allergic to bringing in relief pitchers once the guy on the mound has allowed multiple baserunners) is whether Friday Night Lights would live up to the hype and become one of the great sports movies of all time.

The story itself is hard to top -- hardscrabble, undersized oil patch kids carry the hopes and dreams of their hard-luck town all the way to the state finals. I don't think it tops Hoosiers or Rocky, though, for a couple of reasons. First the coach -- Gary Gaines, played by Billy Bob Thornton -- is more of a soft-spoken, love-your-teammate kind of guy in the mold of John Wooden, and not a Vince Lombardi clone who spits out memorable quotes left and right. The great sports movies give you great quotes that can be posted on the locker room wall of every high school in America, and this movie doesn't measure up.

Second, you see too clearly the toll that football takes on the psyches of these players. You still want them to win, but you also see the absurdity of the whole town pinning its happiness on a band of 17 year-olds. The kids are told that the high point of their lives is playing football, and it will be downhill after that. And no one in town cares to keep that mania in check. It's fascinating, but you lose that romantic vision of the football that is necessary in the great sports movies.

Watch the movie; but watch it as a movie about Odessa, not about winning.