stereoptype of American High school Sports - Jocks & cheerleaders - IS IT REALLY ???

This is mainly out to those members from America as they will know, when i have watched a film that involves an American high school. It is always the same - The top sports " Jock " and the head cheerleader. Is it really like this, and are there cliques where only sports people talk to the popular kids etc etc.
Also what is the main sport in american high schools, because some films such as Coach Carter and John Tucker seem to make out that the basketball players rule the school, where as the likes of remeber the titans will show the footballers to be it. Or is it soccer, wrestling, Lacross, Baseball etc.
Just wondering because here in England we dont have cheerleaders, and the jocks, our soccer players are just players but thats about as far as it went at my high school.

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james adams

The 1st part: No, I mean I am a total movie geek, not very popular but one of my best friends is Center on the Basketball Team

The 2nd part: varies by school, it is usually the best sport teams at the school

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I used to be addicted to crystal meth, now I'm just addicted to Breaking Bad.

You got me... I was a band geek.

I will say, though, that High School was the most clique filled place I ever had to try to live my life. No one ruled the school, so to speak, but, certainly, some kids were more popular than others. Then again, I graduated high school in 1989, so things are probably quite different now...

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Back in the stone ages of the mid 80's when I was in High school, it was very much like that. The jocks skated by on borderline grades that they didn't even earn and the pretty/rich kids did pretty much run the school in terms of trivial things like being class president and such foolishness which they felt made them better than everyone else. I was a card carrying geek/freak, so I really didn't care one way or the other what they did as long as I got through the day.

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"It's a kilt, not a dress, you uncultured swine!"

Founding member of the Divide by Zero Foundation.

There's too much blood in my caffeine system!!

Nope.

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Everything I do, I do to make my second stepdad proud.

I only graduated from high school last year so I can answer this question. I was also on the football team in Freshman year, but dropped out to be a slacker, but I did remain friends with quite a few people on the team. Funny enough me and the rest of the slackers were so indifferent to everything around us we couldn't even pull together a clique so we just wandered from one group to another. This gave me a pretty good understanding of every clique but the "popular kids". And by popular kids, I mean the loud ones that wear expensive clothes. From what I observed, the sports kids and the popular kids didn't get along as well as the movies would lead you to believe. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the sports kids play a little too hard (heavy drinking, fighting, breaking laws, etc.) for the popular kids' comfort. Also the top sports jock and head cheerleader didn't get significantly more press than anyone else on the team, though that might've just been at my school which had close to 4,000 students. And the most popular sports team at the school is almost always football or basketball. This is for two reasons. One: football and basketball are the two most exciting sports for young kids to gather around and watch. Not to mention they get the nicest facilities to play in. Two: the football and basketball team players are usually the biggest kids on campus and if they want you to make a big deal about something it's usually a good idea to do it.