Bissinger, H.G. (1991). Friday night lights: A town, a team, and a dream. New York: HarperPerennial.

OVERVIEW

Bissinger left his job with the Philadelphia Inquirer and moved—with his wife and five-year-old twin boys—to Odessa, Texas for a year in which he lived with the football team, its players, and its coaches. The town became home, they made many friends there, and his boys attended the local school. "I talked to hundreds of people to try to capture other aspects of the town that I had come to explore, the values about race and education and politics and the economy." (p. xiii)

But above all else, Bissinger lived with the team—in the field house and on the field, at its practices, team meetings, and games.

 

I went to school with (the football players), and home with them, and rattlesnake hunting with them, and to church with them, because I was interested in portraying them as more than just football players, and also because I liked them. (p. xiii)

 

The author went to Odessa looking for what West Texas folks call "those Friday night lights" of the football stadium. This oil-town of 89,000 had built a $5.6 million, sunken artificial-surface stadium which seated almost 20,000. According to Odessan retired grocery chain supervisor, Jim Lewallen:

 

‘I have to have something to look forward to, or life is just blah. That football is just something that keeps me goin’. Mojo (the team nickname) football, it helps you survive all this sand, the wind, the heat. I wouldn’t live any other place.’ (p. 41)

 

His friend, Bob Rutherford, in the struggling real estate business, concurred, " ‘It’s just part of our lives. It’s just something you’re involved in. It’s just like going to church or something like that. It’s just what you do.’ " (p. 41)

So, the author brought himself and his family to Odessa.

 

It became apparent that this was a town where high school football went to the very core of life...There seemed to be an opportunity in Odessa to observe...the enormous effect of sports on American life...as well as the value system that went with it especially in ‘an America of factory towns and farm towns and steel towns and single economy towns...trying to survive.’ (pp. xii-xiii)

Odessa is the setting for this book, but it could be anyplace in this vast land where, on a Friday night, a set of spindly stadium lights rise to the heavens to so powerfully, and so briefly, ignite the darkness...As someone later described it, those lights become an addiction if you live in a place like Odessa, the Friday night fix. (xiv)

In the absence of a shimmering skyline, the Odessa of the country had all found something similar in which to place their faith. In Indiana, it was the plink-plink-plink of a ball on a parquet floor. In Minnesota, it was the swoosh of skates on the ice. In Ohio and Pennsylvania and Alabama and Georgia and Texas and dozens of other states, it was the weekly event simply known as Friday Night. From the twenties through the eighties, whatever else there hadn’t been in Odessa, there had always been high school football. (p. 35)

 

The story of Odessa is primarily the football story. Its teams were expected to win. In fact, they did have the winningest record in the state and had taken several championships. If there was pride of tradition here, it was for its football team.

 

Of all the legends of Odessa, that of high school football was the most enduring. It had a deep and abiding sense of place and history, so unlike the town, where not even the origin of the name itself could be vouched for with any confidence. (p. 25)

 

The town is important as a context for the lives of a few exalted athletes who were told again and again they were special and given preferential treatment in school and in town.

 

‘There’s twelve-hundred boys in Permian High School...Football’s not for everybody. But you guys are special.’ (Coach Gaine’s August welcome speech, p. 24)

 

At the fall pep rally—attended not only by the student body but the whole town—

 

Behind the rows of stools stood the stars of the show, the members of the 1988 Permian Panther high school football team. Dressed in their black game jerseys, they laughed and teased one another like privileged children of royalty.

Directly in front of them, dressed in white jerseys and forming a protective phalanx, were the Pepettes, a select group of senior girls who made up the school spirit squad...The number on the white jersey each girl wore corresponded to that of the player she had been assigned for the football season. With that assignment came various time-honored responsibilities: (p. 45)

 

• • To bring a sweet for her player before every game.
  • To make a large sign to be placed on the lawn in front of his house (sometimes costing as much as $100).
  • To make smaller posters to hang along the school halls.

 

These were the basic Pepette requirements, but some girls went beyond in their show of spirit. (p. 46)

 

Before a big game, and after a pep rally, star running back, Boobie Miles,

 

went to class, but it was impossible to concentrate...Like most of his other teammates on game day, he couldn’t be bothered with classes. They were irrelevant, a sidelight to the true purpose of going to Permian High School: to play football for the Panthers. (pp. 4-5)

 

That Friday night, after dressing in their fieldhouse, they boarded the school bus... "with the flashers of a police escort leading the way so there wouldn’t be any wait at the traffic lights, the caravan made its way to Ratliff Stadium like a presidential motorcade." (p. 10) Then, in the stadium, the players were hidden behind a huge banner through which they would suddenly burst while their fans waited. Among the crowd

 

...all dignity and restraint were thrown aside because of these high school boys in front of them, their boys, their heroes, upon whom they rested all their vicarious thrills, all their dreams. No connection in all sports was more intimate than this one, the one between town and high school. (pp. 14-15)

 

Even after a tough defeat, the players knew that by "Monday no one would think of them as losers":

 

They would still be gladiators, the ones who were envied by everyone else, the ones who knew about the best parties and got the best girls and laughed the loudest and strutted so proudly through the halls of school as if it were their own wonderful, private kingdom. (p. 127)

 

Not only privilege, but incredible pressure came to these boys.

 

The sound of vomiting echoed through the dressing room of the stadium, the retching, the physical embodiment of the ambivalence Ivory Christian felt about what he was doing and why he was there...There was so much about football he hated...the conditioning, the expectations because he was a captain...None of the other players paid much notice. They had heard it before and gave little half-smiles. It was just Ivory. (p. 10)

 

There were, in fact, more dangerous pressures:

 

In seasons past, playing for Permian had meant routinely vomiting during the grueling off-season workouts inside the hot and sweaty weight room. It had meant playing with a broken ankle that wasn’t x-rayed because, if it had been known that it was broken, the player would have had to sit out the next game. It meant playing with broken hands. It had meant a shot of Novocain during half-time to mask the pain of a deep ankle sprain or hip pointer. It had meant popping painkillers and getting shots of Valium. (p. 44)

 

The much admired slogan for athletes was "no pain, no gain." When no one bothered to examine a sophomore player with a groin injury, his testicle, swollen to the size of a grapefruit, had to be removed. Star running back, Shawn Crow, in excruciating pain, once complained to the trainer, " ‘I can’t run, man!’ " But after examination that showed nothing visible, he was told, " ‘Why don’t you just try?’ " After the game it was determined he was suffering with a herniated disc—and had to postpone college for rehabilitation. (48)

One father (of a track star) worried about the danger of adults living vicariously through young people:

 

‘Athletics lasts for such a short period of time. It ends for people. But while it lasts, it creates this make-believe world where normal rules don’t apply. We build this false atmosphere. When it’s over and the harsh reality sets ink that’s the real joke we play on people...’ (p. xiv)

 

The book’s author wondered the same thing:

 

With the kind of glory and adulation these kids received for a season of their lives, I am not sure if they were ever encouraged to understand that. As I stood in that beautiful stadium on the plains week after week, it became obvious that these kids held the town on their shoulders. (p. xiv)

 

This article is mainly about the subculture of athletes, but there is much more in this book. Here are the stories of athletes as persons, their dreams and struggles. One chapter, "Black and White," examines racism in town, the history of desegregation, and how the two town’s high schools connived to get black runners. The question of exploitation of young, particularly black, athletes is raised.

Another chapter traces the decline in the school’s effectiveness as an educating institution. A study of the school’s budget shows where its priorities lay: $20,000 to charter a game jet, $6,750 for tape and medical supplies, $5,040 for all the educational supplies of the English department. SAT scores had dropped 85 points in 13 years. Many teachers were giving up with laments about:

 

‘...an erosion in standards’ and feeling that their efforts in the classroom ‘wouldn’t make a difference anyway...’ Some teachers ascribed the drop in academic performance to the effects of court-ordered desegregation as well as a rapid increase in the town’s Hispanic population...Some blamed the erosion on the effects of the economic downturn in the oil patch, which had dealt Odessa a crippling blow. (pp. 131-132)

 

Jane Franks, a teacher of thirty-one years, shared some interesting observations with the author about the generation who were part of the Grunge era and whom we now know as Gen X:

 

Today’s students had become an enigma to her. They weren’t disrespectful. They weren’t obnoxious. They weren’t demanding. It wasn’t that they were good kids, or bad kids, or any kind of kid at all. That would have been much better than what they were now, deadened to themselves and to the world around them.

‘These kids don’t take responsibility, or don’t know how’ (she said). Kids used to worry about where they were going to fit into the world. Kids today (late 1980s) don’t seem to worry about where they were going to fit in society, because they don’t give a hoot.

‘These kids don’t seem to care about their grades. They don’t seem to care about each other. They seem to care about having a good time, but don’t know how to define good. I don’t know what young kids are about. I can’t get into their minds. I used to...’ (pp. 133-134)

 

This teacher does not seem to be a negative person; she even blames herself and wonders if she has lost her teaching touch. But she does sense a fundamental change in the classroom. Football players, even those doing very poorly in class, remained at the top of the social hierarchy..."where girls and partying and clothes and fancy cars were as important as academics, being a football player opened doors that other students could only dream of. All other achievements seemed to pale in the face of it." (p. 135)

Dorothy Fowler, "a spirited and marvelous teacher, tried to wake students up to the realities of the world in West Texas where the days of the fat-paying blue-collar days were over."

 

‘Think about your jobs. Where do you want to be in five years?’ asked Fowler of a female student. ‘Rich,’ the student replied. ‘How are you going to achieve that?’ ‘Marry someone,’ the girl replied. (p. 137)

 

Julie Gardner came to Permian High School from a small Montana college town when she was a sophomore. She quickly discovered:

 

‘It’s very revered to be a Pepette or a cheerleader. It’s the closest they get to being a football player...It was very important to have a boyfriend and look a certain way.’ (p. 138)

 

She also found fanatic sports enthusiasm, a cliquishness among the girls, and an obsession about appearance. Having tried to dress like everyone else, she finally rejected such conformity, got into mostly honors classes, and found herself ostracized. But she ended up an "honors English major at Swarthmore College." (p. 138)

 

With his dark, pouty looks, it was hard not to think of Don Billingsley as a movie star when he walked down the halls of Permian, gently fending off female admirers in his black football jersey...much of his day was spent flirting either silently with his eyes or with his benign naughtiness in the classroom... Sophomore girls fantasized over having him in the same class so they could catch a glimpse of his buttocks in a tight-fitting pair of jeans. He received inquiries about his availability for stripteases...Don was clearly not motivated to be a scholar. His class rank going into his senior year was the second lowest of any senior on the football team, 480 out of 720. He reveled in paying the Sean Penn role in his own version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but beneath all that was a witty, personable kid...

Asked what the purpose of school was at Permian, Don had a simple answer. ‘Socializing, that’s all senior year is good for...except football.’ (pp. 141-142)

 

Brian Chevez held the Permian record for bench pressing 345 pounds. At five eleven and 215 pounds and considering the slow way he talked you might consider him a "dumb jock" which shows, according to the author, "how absolutely meaningless stereoptypes can be."

 

He was a remarkable kid from a remarkable family...Ranked number one in his class at Permian, he moved effortlessly between the world of football and academic elite. On the field he was a demon, with a streak of nastiness that every coach loved to see in a football player. Off the field he was quiet, serene, and smart as a whip, his passivity neatly hiding an astonishing determination to succeed. (p. 143, Brian would go on to Harvard)

 

Besides an interesting description of the Texas oil bust and local politics, several things stick out in the latter part of Friday Night Lights:

• The way kids are often expected to play with injuries (and in the case of Boobie Miles, mocked when he couldn’t play).
• The pressures to win which warps school budgets and coaching styles.
  • Giving illegal money to coaches.
  • Developing coaching tactics injurious to players bodies and psyches.
  • Undermining educational values.
  • Weakening school discipline and violating rules for athletes.
• The transitoriness of the game—how these athletes become "vague, fuzzy shapes," common unknowns as soon as the season ends. (Ch. 14) Updates on key players after the season and the year following are given in the book’s Epilogue and Afterward.

Because the Odessa Panthers would get to the state finals in 1988 (from the luck of a coin toss to break a triple tie...and then win in ‘89), the story shifts from the Odessa to the Dallas football team. In 1988, the Carter High School of Dallas was arguably the best team in Texas—if not the country. The team included several high school all-Americans. Gary Edwards and Derrick Evans were two of top stars—and they experienced the preferential treatment that is one hallmark of jock culture. Gary Edwards himself summed up the situation:

 

‘It was paradise (describing his life at school). You walk around, your break all the rules. The teachers and administrators, they see you, they just don’t say anything to you. It was just like we owned it. Everybody looked up to us, it was just a great life.’ (p. 291)

 

Sadly, Edwards and Evans were allowed—if not encouraged—to slide academically. Both were given final exam answer sheets by a teacher who passed out the tests to each student! Many times they were told they didn’t need to take exams at all. They received good grades for classes in which they had done little or no work.

 

‘I never did homework (Derrick admitted). I loved goin’ to school because I didn’t have to do nothin’. I just went.’ (pp. 294-295)

 

Two educational (and conflicting) policies contributed to a bizarre dispute that ended up in court. One was the Texas "no pass no play" ruling forbidding any student with an average of 70 from participating in sports or any extra-curricular activity. The conflicting policy of the Dallas Independent School District was aimed at inner-city minority schools like Carter; it was called the School Improvement Plan. It tried to raise morale and self-esteem by grading on "participation" as well as homework, quiz, and exam scores.

Only one teacher at Carter had the courage to flunk a star athlete. He looked at Gary Edwards’ algebra II test grades of 40, 60, 60, and 35, figured in that he skipped one class to watch game films and gave him a 68.75. This meant not only that Edwards was ineligible, but that Carter’s last three games were forfeited—denying them the chance to play in the state finals. Dallas, and particularly the black community, erupted in disbelief. The school principal, C. C. Russeau, quickly transferred Edwards to a new algebra class where his grade was re-calculated as a 72. An anonymous caller notified the Superintendent of Schools that any objective calculation confirmed the original failing grade. Now the case was headed through the Commissioners of Education (who backed the teacher’s original grade) to the courts. County Judge Davis ruled against the teacher and educational commissioner, which allowed Carter to go into the playoffs. Will Bates, who failed Edwards, though he had a doctorate and thirty-five good years of teaching, was treated like a felon in court, demoted to a middle school, and had his salary permanently decreased.

Meanwhile Edwards and Evans received incredible offers from major universities who asked them what kind of a girl they wanted for sex in a recruitment process that lavished attention and luxurious amenities upon them.

 

‘The coaches would tell us, they would ask us, what color do you want, black, white, Mexican...’ (He remembers sitting in the back of a limo taking him to the airport to visit his four top choices) ‘I was back there all by myself, looking at the TV, talkin’ on the telephone to my girlfriend. It was like I was on top of the world...’

At Baylor, he went to a party where a woman he had never before met came up to him and said, ‘I know who you are. You’re Derrick Evans.’ She seemed eager to sleep with him, which struck him as slightly unusual because she was white, but he eagerly accepted since it seemed part of the package. (pp. 339-40)

 

Derrick decided on Tennessee because, he said, " ‘the coaches there offered him the best deal—promising him an off-campus apartment and telling him he would never have to worry about money.’ " (p. 340) Gary accepted a scholarship to Houston. " ‘We were on top of the world. We had (all these) recruiters and a state championship and we thought there ain’t nothing that can happen to us.’ " (p. 341) They were, after all, still teenagers.

 

Derrick and Gary committed their first armed robbery together on May 18, 1989. The idea came from another Carter Cowboy, who had already committed several armed robberies of his own and bragged in the school lunchroom how easy it was. Gary and Derrick did not wear masks, and their getaway car was Derrick’s mother’s white BMW. They got around a hundred bucks apiece and it took them several weeks to spend the money because they were both from comfortable middle-class homes and did not want for anything.

They did a total of seven armed robberies in the space of a month until they were arrested by police. Their motive, as far as anyone could tell, was they had done it sheerly for kicks. (p. 341)

 

It is entirely understandable that Derrick and Gary thought they would get off easy. But Derrick is now serving twenty years and Gary sixteen in prison. Several others of what turned out to be a "Carter football ring" were similarly convicted.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What are we (adult American society) doing to our kids?
2. What are the great aspects, and what are some of the negative features, of American jock culture?
3. If you, or someone close to you, were in the a jock culture—the negative features of which you could immediately change—how would you respond?
4. What would be your long-term suggestions to reduce the negative aspects of this subculture?

IMPLICATIONS

1. This book, in weaving a picture of jock culture, admittedly presents a more negative picture of Permian High and the town than many experienced there or in other towns and high schools. It is one story from one perspective.
2. Athletics, despite and apart from its extremes, are very important in the growth and development of boys and girls. Like academic study, jobs, and service projects—sports helps build discipline, a work ethic, team spirit, camaraderie, and character. Many boys and girls have worked through critical crises of self-esteem on the athletic field.
3. When winning becomes everything, when adults become addicted to the vicarious thrill of living through their children, and when teenagers are exploited for team, school, and town glory, dangerous side-effects are felt.
4. In sports as in all youthful activities, cooperation must be stressed above competition. There is a healthy aspect to competition, but it must find balanced in a healthy, holistic lifestyle.
5. The exaltation and pampering of athletes at a young age have been shown in many situations to hinder their maturation and warp the values of a community or institution.

Dean Borgman cCYS