I played football until I was a sophmore in High School. I was never great, usually #3 wide reciever. I snapped my arm in half during practice freshman year. It was literally in a Z shape. The radius and ulna had a clean snap and were resting on top of the other half of the bones to give it that appearance. Luckily it was not compound.

As for having football separate the "men from the boys" I think that is BS. Sure, it is a great sport to play and teaches you discipline and gets you in shape, but most of the football players that were first string were cocky assholes.

And as for pep fests, those were the gayest things ever. I am not at all a goth or shit, just a 6'4" 20 year old guy dressed in Abercrombie who loves to smoke weed. I had ZERO school spirit whatsoever, and so did my friends. We did whatever we could to ditch those stupid things. At least it made classes shorter, and then we could just sneak out of school right before it started...