Did Friday Night Lights Producer Peter Berg Implicitly Endorse The #FireCraigJames Movement?
By Kyle Kensing
Before he left ESPN for a Quixotic Senatorial campaign,
Craig James was a favorite target of the blogosphere
. Complaints about James’ behavior, specifically pertaining to
, were dismissed as the misdirected frustrations of
parents’ basement-dwelling losers
a
.
But does the #FireCraigJames movement have a supporter in Friday Night Lights producer Peter Berg? It would certainly seem that way given his comments regarding the widely rumored and much anticipated FNL movie. Per MTV.com’s interview with Berg (by way of Grantland.com):
"“[Show runner Jason Katims] has come up with a really great storyline that parallels what happened to Mike Leach, one of my heroes, a coach at Texas Tech who was unjustly fired and unjustly accused of mistreating a player with a concussion, which was proven to not have been the case. He’s now at Washington State getting ready for what I think will be a great redemption story,” Berg explained."
Berg almost assuredly won’t be cracking jokes about Candidate Craig and the whereabouts of Dallas Metroplex ladies of the night, but he doesn’t mince words about Leach’s dismissal. Leach made an unforgettable cameo in Season Four:
The excellent FNL ended an all-too-short run of five seasons last winter (summer if you held out for the NBC re-broadcast). The series spoke to college football fans with storylines that mirrored real life matters of the NCAA gridiron in a non-patronizing fashion.
FNL writers had a proven finger on college football’s pulse; perhaps Berg is even more in tune with the college football fan than we know.