CJ Herron

Mrs. Ebarvia

World Lit

10/21/08

tH.G. Bissinger was born in New York City in November of 1954. He spent time writing for the Philadelphia inquirer. Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger is about a small town in Texas called Odessa. Permian High school football is a way of life and almost every kid dreams of wearing the black and white under Friday night lights some day. Permian’s goal in the 1988 season was to reach the state championship. The competition is high and the road is tough, but will they find a way to get it done?
tWhat I found interesting in the novel Friday Night Lights was the descriptions of the characters and the setting. For example, in the beginning of the novel they described Odessa (the town) and Boobie Miles (star running back) extremely well. The descriptions were always clear, and I felt like I knew the characters and I lived in the Odessa. I also found the point of view changes very interesting. In the novel there were many point of view changes; in one chapter the point of view was from Boobie Miles. But the next was from a former Permian High player from the 1960’s. Next I found that the language was interesting because the novel was based in Texas and some words I have never seen before or spelled differently. For example morning was spelled as mornin. Finally I thought that the plot was interesting and it had twists and turns.
tThe weaknesses I found in the novel were that there wasn’t too much plot about the football games, more about practices and the day of a game. In the novel there was not much game plot. Another weakness I found was the racism. I realized that people are still racist and it made me feel uncomfortable. The next weakness was that there wasn’t a main protagonist. It was many peoples point of view and the book could have been better if it had a protagonist. Finally a weakness that came to my attention was the adjectives.
tEven though the novel Friday Night Lights had many weaknesses, it still was one of my favorite books. The strengths towered over the weaknesses and it was very enjoyable to read. I am looking forward to seeing the movie this weekend. If you love football like I do, I would recommend reading this Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger

Recommended by Gene Luen Yang! What more do I really need to say?

Also: really interesting about sports and racial politics.

There are some really interesting sections about the condemnation of football and the institutional racism in a town like Odessa, but it felt loooooooong and could have lost about 50 pages.

I'm glad I bought this at Half Price Books so the author didn't make any money off of me. I always read the forward of any book and this one, the author tells you up front he is looking for a sport to bash to be the next "A Season on the Brink" and Texas makes an easy target. The writer tells you he has an opinion of Texas before he heads south and writes the story based on his preconceived notions, not anything he actually saw in Texas.

The writer finds negative stories about Texas history and writes like we are against educating our children. OK, public education isn't great in Texas but the same can be said for all 50 states.

The writer prints people's responses to his questions as if they came up to him and just started talking. If you read this book, keep in mind it is local people answering a writer's questions after he said he was writing a story about their historic football program. No one knew it was a smear job until the book came out.

The writer only covers athletes he can belittle in some way. For example, he barely mentions the biggest star on the team, Lloyd Hill. Hill only gets mentioned because he makes a big play in a big game. Lloyd Hill was a good kid, from a good family, and going to a big time college the writer never heard of, Texas Tech. But since Lloyd Hill was a good kid with nothing the writer could exploit and not going to a college non football fans knew, he wasn't worth writing about. The writer only focused on people he could mold into his preconceived notion of Texas being backwards and uneducated.

Friday night lights is about a high school football team that doesnt have much size or strenght. Even though they arent the biggest they are always contenders for the national championship. They opened their season up great but they had their star running back come out with a knee injury. The next couple of games were pretty rough without their star running back. Permians biggest game was comming up against Middlen Lee, if they were to win this game they would go to the playoffs and if they lose they would go to a three way tie which would result in a coin toss. Their star running back came back and thought he was ready to go for the big game. The game went on and he finally got in and yet again he got hit hard and his knee was hurt even worse. Permian lost the game by one touchdown and know was headed to the coin toss. Permian won the coin toss and was headed to the playoffs. The team didn't know what to do without there great runningback so they figured out other ways to get to the state title game. Permian played great and skimming by to get to the title game against the undefeated Dallas carter. Dallas carter was bigger, stronger, and faster than Permian but that didnt stop them. Permian fought hard through out the whole game. The 4th quarter was winding down and the referee made a terrible call which gave Dallas the first down. There was only a minute and thirty seconds left on the clock and Permian stomped all the way down the field. Permians running back made a great run to put them on the one yard line, but there was a flag which brought them back fifteen yards. The last play the quarter back scrambled fifteen yards and was stoped short on the one yard line. Dallas won the game 36 to 35. This book just reminds me to never give up no matter what the challenge is. Everyone who plays a sport should read this, this book will inspire you and maybe can even change your life.

Or, “From the Outside Looking In, You Can’t Understand It, but from the Inside Looking Out, You Can’t Explain It.”

This book inspired the movie which then inspired the show. Had seen the movie and the show before (both excellent), but had never read the book.

I don’t know if this guy loves Texas high school football or hates it. But one thing is for sure…he was captivated by it, as many have been for decades. Exquisitely written, this book does capture Texas high school football in all its glory, pageantry, and heart (though I will say, I thought I group up in a ‘Friday Night Lights’ town, but Odessa Permian is a solid 2-3 clicks more extreme!). He helps even the most foreign non-native Texas understand the hold the sport can have on a community, and the beauty and warts that spring up out of it.

Quote: “When I first arrived in Odessa, I anticipated a book very much in the tradition of the film ‘Hoosiers’…It was never written as a diatribe or an exposé. It was written instead with enormous affection and empathy, because as deeply troubling as the overemphasis was on high school football, those games were, and will always be, the most exquisite sporting events that I have ever experienced.” (Afterword)

33rd book of 2020. When Competition is Everything.

Reading through Friday Night Lights, I couldn't help but marvel at twin formative experiences growing up:

First is my own experience with high school competition. In my last year at high school, I missed more than a third of school days, and slept through the remainder I attended. I remember flying to tournaments, scouting opponents in preparation for state competition, and even fearing the elite Texas schools who took competition to a whole new level.

Second was teaching SAT prep for a star high school football player: he tried hard, but by a large margin he struggled more than any of the hundreds of students I had taught. He was certainly not helped by the periodic spotty vision or even near blackouts, presumably from concussions while playing football, that would periodically interrupt lessons.

Looking back on it, I was lucky - I wasn’t great at sports and found myself enmeshed in a high school dynasty focused on debate rather than football. Had it been switched, I certainly would have loved to be out on that field. The rest is just happy dividends from getting swept up in competition that benefitted the players far more than the spectators.

Friday Night Lights reads like a silent critique of how Football brings short term glory and other transient benefits to spectators, but such competition leaves a string of wrecked players in its wake. The players are “young enough to dream, not old enough to know that most dreams do not come true”, and when the community wants to vicariously live through a group of players and a handful of wins, the repercussions can be immense.

Is this book that the TV series was drawn from? I think so. So far it seems readable enough, though the author would be better served if he'd chosen a more straightforward and less sensational prose style. The subject matter is pretty compelling. I played high school football and a bit in college, but that was in prep school(Loomis) and college(Yale) in Connecticut. Texas is another world - football-wise. I do remember scrimmaging in the fall of '63 against the two high schools in West Hartford(Conard and Hall) and observing that those high school kids hit harder than we did.

Moving on and finding this to be a pretty compelling read. America! Weird and wonderful ... The author is taking his time to present the microcosm(player's individual stories) and the macro (social)history of Odessa. NOT a pretty picture, particularly in its race relations. The ecstatic/manic, unquestioning love of(obsession with) football is depressing. Neither Odessa nor Texas have an exclusive hold on that "condition" however. I admit to having a bit of it myself.

And now finished with this spot on depiction of a football-crazed town in Texas. I have to admit that I do sort of "love" football. It's one of many distractions our culture affords to those(like me) searching for such. My participation is now all vicarious(Pats fan, fantasy football "manager/owner"). My playing days ended in my mid-thirties with some pretty high-level flag football in Boulder, Colorado. Plenty of ex-college and pro players in the Boulder city leagues. Brian Chavez himself wound up playing club football at Harvard after observing that Harvard(serious enough in itself) varsity football was lacking in "seriousness"(or SOMEthing ... intensity might be a better word). Compared to Permian MOJO!

As for the undermining of real-world high school(and college) educational outcomes that this love of football engenders, the author gives us a pretty telling picture of that as well. Despite the mostly negative reaction the book received in Odessa, in the long run it helped the educational powers that be do a lot of improving and reforming of educational priorities in the town.

- 3* for the somewhat overbearing/underwhelming prose, 5* for the right-on content = 4*

Bissinger, a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, chronicles a year in the life of Odessa Texas, and more particularly the Permian High School Panther football team, the social nexus of this third rate town. It follows the stories of players for the team, present and past, as well as a look at some of the opposition, the events surrounding the season, the history and economics of the town, and finds a microcosm of the larger world. It is very interesting reading.

P 230
[Odessa is an oil boom and bust town] “After all,” one oilman reasoned, “we’re just another Middle East war away from another boom.”

An amazing, captivating read!!

Fantastic book! You truly feel like you know the cast of characters and feel for them in every moment - at the same time, it’s a complete portrait of the insanity of the football in a way that explains it but doesn’t excuse certain aspects of it

Friday night lights by H.G. Bissinger is about the 1988 Permian high school football team and their journey to hopefully another state championship.

I thought this was one of the most vividly descriptive books I've finished. The author really captured the atmosphere and what everyone was going through. I was impressed by the overall account from everyone's point of view and even from opposing teams.

I found Friday night lights to be a great story about high school football in Texas and I enjoyed just the history of the town and families there.