Summary Of In Football We Trust

The documentary In Football We Trust followed the stories of four high school aged football players in Utah over the period of four years. Each of the families featured in the film were of Polynesian descent, and many of the people in the film were active members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though all three families lived in Salt Lake City in Utah, the featured players attended three different high schools, and they did not all share the same access to resources. For many kids who grow up in poor neighborhoods, sports are often viewed as the only way to get out of the area they grew up in. An athletic scholarship is seen as the only way to get to college, and college athletics is the only way to go pro and finally “make it,” so to speak.

The neighborhood they live in has a significantly lower socioeconomic status overall, and significantly higher crime crates than the neighborhood Harvey lives in, for example. Despite their efforts to avoid becoming involved with their father’s gang, about halfway through the documentary, Leva is arrested for pulling a gun on a kid at school, and ends up spending over a year in prison. In the end, out of all four of the players, Harvey is the only one who ends up playing in the NFL. What is interesting, is that Harvey is also the one who grew up in the wealthiest neighborhood and attended arguably the best high school out of the three. While this is obviously too small of a sample size to draw any meaningful conclusion, it is not all that surprising that access to better resources allowed Harvey to find more success in his football career than any of the other featured