Football is arguably the country’s most popular spectator sport, producing highly paid professionals, luxurious stadiums, and college bowl games. But there are still places in the U.S. where football is reminiscent of another time.
In 1997 I started traveling the remote two-lane highways of Wyoming and Montana, visiting small towns along the way to document the high-school football games served up on any given weekend. Many of these schools play football on Saturday afternoons due to the prohibitive cost of installing and maintaining floodlights. It’s not uncommon to see the high-school players walking across town in their uniforms on game day because the football field isn’t adjacent to the school. Sometimes it’s necessary before the game for someone to haul away the cow or bison manure that has accumulated on the field.
