Fine book about the positive things an athletic program can mean for a young person's life and for a community. Very entertaining to read about plaes I had been. I covered Claflin when they had a football powerhouse, and saw Smith Center play several times. I also know some of the folks mentioned in the book. But it would have been a good book even if I didn't know them.

I really do like while this is about Smith Center's Football season and their continuing of their winning streak, it really about the community that supports them. And how believing in kids can really motivate them.

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This book is the chronicle of one season for a high school football team in a small town in western Kansas. While that may not sound too enticing to some readers, there's in fact quite a bit going on in this book that elevates it into the category of pretty darn good sports literature. Even readers who don't have much interest in football, or high schools, or even Kansas may find a lot to like here.

Smith Center sounds like a fairly average rural farming community. What makes them stand out, however, is the Redmen, their local high school football team. When New York Times reporter Joe Drape begins telling their story, the Redmen are preparing to begin a new season, one they hope will end with the team's winning its fifth consecutive state championship title and maintaining an undefeated streak lasting just as long. There's some question, though, whether the current crop of seniors are good enough, and unified enough, to maintain the standards set by their predecessors. Is this the year when everything goes bust?

Joe Drape tells a good story, one that reminded me more than once of Stefan Fatsis' "Wild and Outside," about the impact of sports loyalties on small mid-western towns. "Our Boys" has that to an even greater extent, though, because the while the fabled Smith Center Redmen have a statewide reputation for fearsome football, they're still -- as Drape makes clear -- a bunch of kids. It'd be too easy to label this "a coming of age story," but there's certainly some of this here. It's also a look at the impact a good coach can have on a community, a school, and, again, a bunch of kids.

There are any number of ways a story could have gone adrift, and Drape has skillfully avoided them. There is a lot of football here, to be sure, but "Our Boys" is not a play-by-play almanac of practices and games. We get to know players, coaches, and families, but our look at them is respectful and appropriate, not voyeuristic. Best of all, perhaps, Drape resists the temptation to make "Our Boys" any sort of allegory about the crisis in family farming, the decline of the rural way of life, the tension between athletics and academics, or any of the other Big Issues you might expect a New York Times writer to flirt with. This is a story of a team and the community that surrounds and supports it. It's straightforward, well-written and insightful, and by the end of the season you might even find you have a bit of an emotional connection to the Redmen yourself. Nicely done. ( )

A Kansas small town with a big football story to tell. I personally love the game and as a parent of a son who played and learned so many life lessons from his coaches and the game itself, I had an idea of what to expect. It was a feel good story and if it didn't have real people and a real place tied to it, I would have considered it a work of fiction. It was too perfect at times, what school wouldn't love to have such a huge staff and great community support?
As far as the book istelf, at times it felt disconnected and more like underdeveloped glimpses leaving the reader to feel like they are reading scrapbook excerpts. But the passion of the story, the game and the people came through clear.
A feel good story for sure but if I hadn't committed to write a review, I would have put it down about halfway through. ( )

If you read H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights and have been seeking another accurate and insightful analysis of the impact of high-school football mania on adolescent boys, their families, and a hometown, you will NOT find it in this book by New York Times sports writer Joe Drape, If you read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? and are expecting any attempt to see a relationship between the socio-political reality he documents and the school system of this Smalltown, KS, USA, you will be disappointed. Somehow I had hoped for a bit of both these perspectives; hence, readoing Our Boys was a ho-hum experience for me. If you grew up reading good sports stories by writers like John Tunis, filled with tension, genuine conflict, character development and growth, and at least a hint of social or moral significance, that's probably exactly what Joe Drape was hoping for when he decided to relocate his family to Smith Center, Kansas, for the duration of a football season. For whatever reason -- maybe the somewhat unexpected success of a not-ready-for-prime-time team, or his immediate and lasting admiration for the coach and his staff -- you don't get that kind of tension, conflict, or characterization.

If on the other hand, you are looking for a rah-rah, hip-hooray celebration of high-school fottball in Smalltown, KS, USA, wtih a fairly ideal set of coaches (as large a staff as most universities), an all-American-boy team of players (with only occasional, minor exceptions), civic pride that translates into all-out support, and -- well, of course -- another win-win-win season, then you've found what you're looking for. Our Boys is a book-length report of the sort you might expect to read in the Kansas City Star on a Sunday morning when there's not much news, say between the NCAA championship bowl and the Superbowl a month later.

Now I grew up in Smalltown, USA, and I've taught in high school, lived in West Texas, and spent a good bit of time in the heart of Kansas. I know where the real stories are -- the important stories involving high-school football players, stories that seek answers to critical questions: What about those schools that don't win championships, that even have losing seasons year after year? What about those kids in Smalltown, USA, who are good at music or writing or science or drama or 4-H, but NOT on the football team? (Oh, I forgot: they get to handle the PA system so they'll feel needed.) So the coach, we are told, is a silent Democrat in a conservative Republican community, and this is all taking place in the George-Bush era of corporate control and international chaos. Only background noise, right?

Our Boys is a so-so book, just as long as you aren't expecting too much. It's about winners, but it's an also-ran. As I made my way through it (I had agreed to write a review, so I couldn't just put it down, as otherwise I would have done) -- as I made my way through, I kept hoping the next chapter would be better (sorry, more of the same), and I kept saying to myself, "I wonder . . . I wonder how H.G. Bissinger might have written this story, or Thomas Frank, or -- yep -- even John R. Tunis. Or how the kids who handled the PA system might have written it, Hmmm."

Last night I met a family from the heart of Kansas, another Smalltown, KS, USA. I referrred to this book I had been reading about the football champions from Smith Center. They're literate, articulate, responsible, knowledgeable citizens. They didn't know what I was talking about. They never heard of the Champions. Much less a book written about them that a New York Times eporter spent a season researching and writing. I suppose some champions are also-rans.

The copy editors obviously didn't think of this as a championship book either. Perfectionism was clearly not one of their goals. For that -- well, you'd better go back to the Kansas City Star. ( )