High School Football (Wk 8 Assignment)

Hello Reader,

For this week's assignment, we were asked "If you were going to pick a high profile organisation (like Ipswich Town Football Club) to promote sustainable consumption, which organisation would it be? Why would they be a good choice? And what would you do?" For those of you not in class with me, the Ipswich Town Football Club, hosted a public campaign aimed at their fans to make the club carbon neutral. While they achieved their goal a few seasons ago, the impression that I got during the lecture is that since then the idea has not come up again.

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In response to this week's prompt, I am going to suggest an answer that I think would be particularly well suited for Central Pennsylvania (where I grew up). My organization(s), though not entirely "high profile", would be high school (American) football teams. I believe that calling upon high school football teams would have a number of advantages over some higher profile organizations. Some advantages relate to the ubiquity of high school football teams, the dynamics of high school social structures, and community ties that teams tend to have.

First, it may be surprising to non-Americans how ubiquitous high school football teams are. Though I do not have hard statistics, it seems that nearly every American high school that has a large enough population of students has a football team. Since public high schools tend to be geographically spread based on the density of the general population, there tends to be at least one public high school per town or community. Thus, the football teams are often a source of entertainment and pride for smaller and rural communities. In fact, taking Central Pennsylvania as an example, local football teams garner enough popularity to warrant regular, Friday night news coverage on local television channels in addition to typically well-attended games. While larger urban centers tend to have professional or college sports teams that overshadow the popularity of high school teams in the general public, the potential impact of high school teams is not necessarily entirely undermined.

Beyond the external popularity of high school football teams, there are certainly some advantages to be gained due to the internal social structures of American high schools where "popular kids" tend to have significant influence. Fortunately, in the case of this scheme, while it is not universal, high school football teams tend to include some if not many "popular kids". Thus, if the football team is seen to be taking the lead on an issue, there is an increased chance that the issue will be addressed by other students. In other words, football players could help to breakdown social norms that might impede changes to a sustainable culture. Additionally, for whatever reason, local rivalries between neighboring high school teams are quite common and could be used appropriately to further promote sustainable consumption causes in the form of "team spirit" similar to the way that Ipswich Town Football Club did.

Finally, since most high school football teams are filled with players from the local community and watched by members of the local community, there is a great potential for community service and public participation in any schemes to promote sustainable consumption.

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Although the prompt requests specific actions to undertake, I think that the main issue at hand has been addressed and that the general model could be adapted to meet the needs of individual communities, so I am going to leave it at this. I hope you enjoyed this week's post.

Sensibly,

Sean Diamond