Friday Night Lights

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Corey Perez SPMT 304-002 Book review: Friday Night Lights: A team, a town, and a dream Written by: H. G. Bissinger

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Bissinger, H. G. (2006). Friday night lights: A town, a team, and a dream. New York: Da capo

For this book review I decided to read Friday night lights: A town, a team, and a dream written by H. G. Bissinger. Bissinger is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The book is written about a town that is centered on a high school football team. Bissinger goes into great detail about both the town and the team. The town is the west Texas town of Odessa and their high school football team the Permian Panthers. He breaks down the book into four categories: pre-season, the season, push for the playoffs, and the post-season. I will give an overview of the book and state my opinion of the book and the author. In the pre-season Bissinger begins the book at the very beginning of August practice. He starts in the first paragraph by saying, “It was the very first official day of practice and it marked the start of a new team, a new year, a new season, with the new rallying cry scribbled madly in the backs of yearbooks and on the rear windows of cars: GOIN’ TO STATE IN EIGHTYEight!” which sums up the whole book (Bissinger, 2006, p. 23). He outlines the panthers preseason by giving a history of the town and following the football team through their pre-season scrimmages. Bissinger even talks about one of the Panthers star players. The third chapter: Boobie is dedicated to Boobie Miles. The team then moves into the season and Bissinger makes sure to bring us along with him. Bissinger starts the season by introducing us to the quarterback of the team, Mike Winchell. He gives the personal insight of when Winchell’s father passed away. He also introduces us to Don Billingsley and his legendary Permian Panther father, Charlie. Bissinger then leads us in another direction. He takes us into a chapter entitled Black and White. The title serves two meanings: the colors of the school and the recent desegregation of the school. The very first

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word you read in this chapter is “Nigger” (Bissinger, 2006, p.89). Bissinger sets the mood perfectly for this chapter by using this word. He goes on to tell the reader about how the school finally got desegregated and was mixed with blacks and Mexicans. This chapter shows that race and class ideology are thoroughly followed in the town of Odessa. In the section of the season, Bissinger describes the typical school day a football player has and what it’s like on Friday nights. After the season, Bissinger then brings us to Permian’s push for the playoffs. This section really caps off the history of this area in west Texas. He begins by talking about the sister towns of Odessa and Midland. Bissinger (2006) sums up life in west Texas in this single line, “Logically they should have been united, not only by the common bond of oil that had kept them in clothes for sixty years, but by the bonds of loneliness.” (p. 211). This quote says it all about this region; a region that is dependent on oil and alone in the vastness of Texas. In this section he also vividly describes what happens if a Permian team loses. He shows us just how serious high school football is in this region. When the team loses to a rival, it seems that the whole town turns its back on the coach. The team’s push for the playoffs is capped by a three-way tie in their division. Bissinger, who states, “Since only two teams could go to the playoffs, the district’s tiebreaker rule went into effect: a coin toss”, describes the situation the team finds their selves on their quest to the playoffs (Bissinger, 2006, p. 251). Permian advances after the coin toss and carries us into the post-season. This section follows the panthers through the playoffs. Bissinger gives brief descriptions of some of games that the Panther’s play in. He even devotes a full chapter to talk about their opponent of the semifinal game, Dallas Carter. This section contains the only chapter in the whole book that actually describes a complete football game that the Panther’s play. Bissinger gives us great detail into

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Permian’s semi-final loss to Dallas Carter. He ends the book with the Permian coaches taking off the names of the seniors, already preparing for the next season. This book went a complete different direction than I had anticipated. After viewing the movie based on this book I had fully expected for Bissinger to go into great detail about the team’s practices and games. These details I had waited for and looked forward to were minimal in his book. I was not disappointed as I read the book, however. I thought this really served its purpose. This lack of detail I had originally thought turned out to outline directly Bissinger’s thesis. It became very clear that he wanted to find a town that was centered on high school sports. His method of research, which took almost an anthropological view, was ingenious. He immersed himself in the town. This forces him to become a part of the town’s history and its team. By doing so, this makes the author’s opinions and facts very credible. Not only was his research done in such a way that ensures his credibility, his organization of what he wanted to say was flawless. The way Bissinger outlines the team’s season makes the book creative and intriguing. The book, written in 1988, gives the reader a good outlook into the time of the region. This book is not the latest in the field, but it still is a viable read. It can really provide the reader with an interesting insight into different ideas of sport word. Ideas that include class ideology, race ideology, and even gender ideology. Bissinger’s detail in this book gives us many examples of all of these ideologies and how they work in real-life situations. Bissinger’s Friday night lights: A town, a team, and a dream is a well written book about a west Texas town that’s culture is high school football. Bissinger’s desire to find an area that is focused on high school sports was completely fulfilled. His great detail and superb method of research allows me to definitively say that I would recommend this book to anyone in the sport world or even someone who enjoys a good read. This book may not have been what I had

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anticipated, but it still seemed to capture me right from the beginning. H. G. Bissinger receives two thumbs up with this book which seems to be an instant classic.

Works Cited

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Bissinger, H. G. (2006). Friday night lights: A town, a team, and a dream. New York: Da capo