The sun sets, the stadium lights begin to buzz and the student section roars to life. Decked out in the traditional red, white and blue theme for the first home game of the year, students cheer for their team. Throughout the next two months, every home game will have a different theme, mostly consisting of different colors and only one theme that strays from the pack.
The crazy, chaotic fun that is the football games is one of the main highlights of the first semester. Dressing up and going all out for the themes with your friends and joining in on the cheering brings something to look forward to every Friday. However, the repetitive, overused and ultimately boring themes take away from the fun and instead make students question what they’re missing out on.

With the access that we have to social media today, it’s so easy to come across a photo or video showcasing a high school’s game-day themes. Filming these fun and creative videos has turned into a popular way for high schools to present their themes for the school year. Scrolling on an app like TikTok, you are bound to see at least one of these types of videos.

In these videos, there are a few common themes that seem to be respected by everyone: the red, white and blue theme more commonly known as the “USA” theme, the pink out and of course the blackout. Not only are these some of the most commonly recycled themes, but they also serve a purpose: The USA theme is obviously for patriotism, the pink out in awareness for breast cancer and the blackout, because who doesn’t feel ready to win like a bunch of hyped high schoolers dressed in black from head to toe.

We can reserve three games for those “classic” themes. That leaves us with two more home games where the students essentially have a free-for-all to decide the theme. Yet, for some reason, the chosen theme for these two games is the Wild West and a whiteout. Although the Wild West is a seemingly fun theme, it tends to be used at any given chance; an overused theme that could be replaced with a more creative one. Similarly, the whiteout is a complete disappointment. It lacks originality and there are better options that could’ve been used.

A great deal of potential seems to be wasted on unoriginal themes when finding unique themes takes a simple Google search. Those TikTok videos for example. Within five minutes of searching, I was able to find multiple themes that would be perfect to replace some of the current ones. This includes a Secret Service theme (which out of fairness is similar to a blackout), camo, snowstorm, beach, space and even a costume dress-up.

Originality will take extra effort but the outcome is definitely worth it; a student body that doesn’t feel like it’s missing out. If creativity is truly an issue, students could become part of the solution and vote on themes they would like to have themselves.