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Summary: A superb recount of the religion of high school football
Review: I just completed reading this book a week ago, and was thoroughly amazed at how engrossing this book is. I found myself turning page after page after page just to see how the Permian Panthers fared in their next game. The story is about the Permian High School Panthers, a team in the hard-scrabble town of Odessa, TX, where there are "only two things, oil and football, and we ain't got oil no more." The Panthers are a legendary team, having won Texas State championships in 1965, '72, '80 and '84 at class 5-A, the highest level of high school football anywhere. The author, H.G. Bissinger, follows the team through its trials and travails in the 1988 season. Bissinger also does an in-depth examination of several of the Panthers' star players, its embattled coach, and the town of Odessa itself. Bissinger's style of writing pulls no punches. He writes about the town's unforgiving obsession with football, where anything short of "going to state" (playing for the championship) is considered a disappointment, and a reason to publicly pillory the otherwise highly successful coach. He examines the race relations in the town, where Permian is on the richer, white side of town, yet the few black players imported from the poor, south side of town often are the team's biggest stars. He writes about the ambivalence some players feel for playing for a team where expectations are so high, while other players live for every moment they can still suit up for the Panthers. Most of all, however, Bissinger writes in a way that fully engrosses the reader in the games themselves. Although I never played a down of football in my life, I faithfully followed my high school's football team (Bishop Amat HS in La Puente, CA) while I was in high school, and several years after I graduated. The feelings and emotions I felt in the stands while watching my team's fortunes rise and fall were aptly described by Bissinger in this novel. Every first down, every fumble, every bone-jarring tackle are recorded that you feel like you're attending the games themselves. This is by far the best book about football I've ever read. As Bissinger says in his epilogue, "the games remain some of the most exquisite sporting events I've ever experienced." I roundly concur. There's just something about high school football that is so pure, so intense, that watching the millionaires in the NFL and the prima-donna college players readily pales by comparison.
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Summary: Friday Night Lights Review
Review: Friday Night Lights, is about a football team in Texas and the struggles they encountered throughout the 1988 season. When H.G. Bissinger wrote this book, he did not leave out a single detail. He makes it feel as if you are at the game with the excellent descriptions and detail throughout the book. The book by no means moves on at a fast pace. There is so much detail in the book that it feels as if you have been reading about the same thing for the last hour. I would recommend this book to anyone even if they do not like to read. It kept my interest so it can keep anybody's.
The main reason I liked the book is because it was about something that I could relate to. I have been to high school football games and been in school with the football players but never knew exactly what went on behind the scenes. Friday Night Lights kept my attention because it was not boring like most other books. It did provide background information, but it was relevant to the book and still, not boring.
Throughout my high school career we read books like Shakespeare that I had no interest in and were of no resemblance to modern day. Friday Night Lights is a great book that actually has something to do with how things are today. I would recommend it to anyone even if they do not like sports. I think it would still be more enjoyable than Shakespeare or any other book of that category. It was not a book that I had to struggle through, but rather one where I found myself not wanting to put it down.
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Summary: A microcosm of American life--magnificently told
Review: I don't give a hang about football, my three sons' schools don't even have football teams, and I have no particular interest in west Texas. Three strikes, you're out? No! H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger's story of the ongoing competition between Odessa's Permian Panthers and their adversaries across Texas is a moving, beautifully told saga about America, our values, what brings us together and what pushes us apart. I still can hardly tell a first down from a touchback, but "Friday Night Lights" was one of the best books I've read this year, and hands down, the best thing I've ever read on the oil-based culture of West Texas. I'm glad to have the tenth-anniversary edition with the updates on the characters portrayed in this book--it's an added pleasure to read what happened after that season's lights went down.
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Summary: Gladiators
Review: The oil town of Odessa, Texas, is home to the most successful football program in Texas, The Permian High School Panthers. In FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, H.G. Bissinger, an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, sets out to shadow the 1988 team.
The Panthers drew as many as 20,000 fans on a Friday night. But football wasn't Bissinger's only concern. He wanted to examine racial relations, politics, and the effect of a one-industry economy. He wanted to know how sports impacted the educational system. Bissenger goes to every practice, meeting, and game. He goes to school with the players, visits their homes, goes to church with them; he even hunts rattle snakes with them.
In his preface, Bissinger refers to the Friday night games as "the Friday night fix." Adults live vicariously through their sons. Bissenger interviewed hundreds of Odessa citizens during the time he lived there, and it seemed the biggest danger was that these boys would have their fifteen minutes of fame on the gridiron and spend the rest of their lives reliving it.
Bissenger introduces us to some unforgettable characters. Boobie Miles dreams of playing for Nebraska or Texas A&M, of winning the Heisman, and his uncle L.V., who had rescued him from a foster home, expects those dreams to bear fruit. But a bad knee made Boobie tentative. Jerrod McDougal is a 5'9" offensive tackle with no such dreams, but he loves to play for the Panthers, the Boys in Black. "It's like the gladiators," he says. "It's like the Christians and the lions . . . . a high no drug or booze or woman can give you." Then there's Gary Gaines, the coach of Permian High. He returns home after losing an important game to find several "for sale" signs planted on his lawn.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is a cautionary tale, warning of the consequences of putting too high an emphasis on high school sports. In some respects, this is a depressing book. There's an epilogue at the end detailing what became of some of the players. Knee scopes, failing grades, and the inability to compete claiming most of the Permian gladiators.
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Summary: the best football book ever written
Review: H.G. Bissinger's great account of one year in the life of the Permian Panthers football team in Odessa, TX. Odessa provided the perfect setting for him to explore a complex set of issues including race, exploitation, community pride, etc., but most of all to examine the centrality of high school sports in the life of a town. Now we were in Texas when oil prices were booming and everyone was rolling in it, but by the time Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, got there in 1988, the boom had gone bust and west Texas faced a genuine economic crisis, which only added to the social pressures that he addresses in the book. The book focuses on a couple of key contradictions: (1) the vaulting ambition and unrealistic dreams of the athletes as opposed to the harsh reality that awaits them; (2) the relative innocence of these kids as opposed to the really cynical and exploitative manipulation of them by coaches, parents, boosters, college recruiters, etc.; and (3) the dependence of the athletic programs in such places upon black athletes, despite cultural racism which does not acknowledge their value as full human beings. Bissinger intertwines all these threads with the very real community pride and unity that the program brings to a city that is in dire straits. The end product is a truly great book, not only one of the only great football books ever written, but one that rises far beyond the gridiron to illuminate the problems of school boy athletics in America. So this review originally ended here, but then I found a couple of delightfully ironic items while looking for links. First, there's the article below, Author Cancels Trip After Threats in Texas, about how Bissinger was getting death threats so he had to skip Odessa on his book tour. Way to show the world that the author's wrong and you don't take football too seriously. Then I found an essay by a University of Minnesota student on the book. The student's name? Bobby Jackson. Yes, the same Bobby Jackson from their great NCAA Final Four basketball team of several years ago. My interest piqued, I read further. The essay was posted by the Minnesota Pioneer Planet, as part of their series on the academic scandals that rocked that basketball program, as an example of the classroom work that Golden Gopher players turned in but which was actually done by a supposed tutor. What can have run through the writer's mind as she wrote about the unhealthy emphasis placed on sports, to the exclusion of all other concerns in the students' lives? Obviously, the concerns that Bissinger addressed in Friday Night Lights remain just as topical and timely ten years later. GRADE: A+
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Summary: This is one of the most amazing stories ever told....
Review: I've read this book 6 times because I can't put it down when I start reading. I PROMISE you won't be disappointed!!! Like many others here, I too played highschool football in Texas and have known of the Permian Panthers even before highschool. The book will take you through the '88 season both on and off the field. From the first booster club meeting to the last game of the season, you'll be there for it all. The author follows a few players closely and you get to hear their stories. Although they played on the same team, some of their experiences are so different. The way the games are described is incredible and realistic. Even the coach feels the pressure when he comes home to "for sale" signs in his front yard after a loss. To me the most interesting and best chapter in the book was when the author talks about the Dallas Carter Cowboys. He sets up the showdown with Permian in amazing fashion. I'm from a suburb of Dallas and I know of that Carter team. They were filled with nothing but "superstars" who were some of the baddest players around. Current Wash. Redskins linebacker Jessie Armstead is a sophmore during this season. It was great because the Permian players are not big at all and you get to hear about a group of over-achievers going against superior athletes. My boss played on this team in the book (offensive line) and has a small quote in the book. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a few games he had recorded from the '88 season. It was amazing to get to see the actual players in the book play those games. The summaries in the book of those games are right on target. Those kids played their hearts out every play and the crowd was just unreal. Like someone else in their review said, "Even if you hate football, you'll love this book." Do yourself a favor and read this book.
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Summary: A great book in many ways
Review: I read this book in high school when it first came out, and could not put it down. The book focuses on Odessa, a town in Texas that revolves around its high school football team. From playing high school football, the name Permian was a familiar one due to its prominence for fielding great teams. The players had(and this was in back around 1990)luxuries available to them that most colleges still do not have today, a stadium built for thousands of people with the capacity to sit almost their entire town, the UT Longhorn college band which plays at their games, and their players are elevated to the status of heroes during the season. There is two stories told though. One the story of the towns unwavering support for the team, and two, the story to those who aren't or can't play anymore. It does follow a star player after he experiences a knee injury and is unable to play or perform again. He is no longer a hero the book follows him as he slowly fades into obscurity. You can see many of the kids banking everything on football and not anything else. What awaits for many is a rude awakening (as it does for many other kids in high school) when they graduate or are injured and are not good enough for college or the pros and have nothing else to fall back on. Many of these people are the people filling the stands in Permian, working in the oil fields, lining up for 2 days to get tickets to the games, and living vicariously through the new crop of players on the field. This is a great sports book that captures all the essence of sports; the winners, the losers, injured, the fans and families and the town. The ironic thing is that Odessa and Permian High School's greatest strength may also be its greatest weakness; that the town and its people seem to live for and depend so much on Permian football.
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Summary: Even if you didn't play high school football, READ THIS BOOK
Review: As a three year member and starter of the varsity squad of my High School in Chesapeake Virginia, the stories from this book were all too familiar. The small Virginia town in which I played was similiar to that of Odessa, Canton, Penn Hills, and others across the country where High School football is the main focus of attention and entertainment. This book made me think back to all of the great times I had, the great friends I made, and the many memories that I will never forget. Bissinger brought out the many "behind the scenes" views of the sport. All the problems and events that happen in the Permian locker room, coaches office, halls, classrooms, and in the lives of the players, occur everyday in schools everywhere. On the bus ride home from the very last game of my senior year..a tough last minute loss, giving our school its first losing record in 25 years at 4-6. I thought about the two state championships we won in the two years before, and why it had to end like it did, and I thought about the blood, sweat, and tears that we have all spilled on the playing fields. As we pulled away I realized that I'd probably never step onto a football field to play again and that these days are now behind me forever. Then, like so many of the seniors on the bus with me, and the thousands more around the country...I cried. I sometimes forget why I played football in high school. Three years after my final game I bought this book and read it. It then became all clear to me, and I recalled why I played. I laughed a little, and maybe even cried a little, and you will too.
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Summary: Friday Night Lights
Review: Friday Night Lights is a great book that tells about the whole entire 1988 season of the Permian High School Panthers. The town of Odessa, Texas' financial trouble is very easy to recongnize by its boarded-up shops and broken down lives. But through all of this turmoil there is a football team keeping the citizens hopes alive. Every Friday the Panthers take the field and revitalixe the grim thoughts and feelings of the citizen of Odessa. In a place where economic troubles has taken away the spirit of its people, nearly everyone wants the feeling given by the Friday night ritual, where the dwindling dreams of the community are put into the helmets of high school athletes. Friday Night Lights captures the imagination and craze of a small town that love its school teams and their games every Friday. with Odessa now being like other places just like it across America, this book provides a thrilling and exciting look at the hope for successes and the many failures of trying to live the American Dream by cheering and hoping the best for a group of young men they call their heroes. This nonfiction thriller is everything a sports enthusiast should look for in a book. It it action and page turning ability is one of a kind.
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Summary: Must Reading for Every Parent of Every Boy Who Plays
Review: This book helps you understand what the game means to your kid. You must understand that to understand his sacrifice. My wife and I moved to Texas in 1980. We had a daughter age 5 and no sons. We moved to Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, which, in many ways became the Odessa of the 80s and 90s (Permian was one of the two high schools). By the time we read the book, our older son was already playing Jr. High football. And, I asked my wife, "What did you think?" Her reply, "I don't think I want our son playing high school football in Texas." It was too late. He loved the game ...still does. As a senior his Plano East Senior High Panthers were state quarterfinalists. I cannot count the the tears that were shed the night they were eliminated, nor can I count the joyous moments of that year. I cry when I see the cover of the book ...15 years or so later in another city ...that was my son. He now plays for Baylor University. This book helps you understand what the game means to your kid. You must understand to understand his sacrifice.
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