69 pages • 2 hours read
Buzz BissingerFriday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Football: Opportunity or Exploitation?
In Odessa, playing high school football was many Black students’ best chance to earn the respect of their peers and teachers and potentially gain post-secondary opportunities such as football scholarships. Bissinger’s book is critical of this reality and questions how much their participation in football truly serves Black players compared to what they offered the school board, coaches, and town as a whole. By discussing Odessa’s history of explicitly racist policies and attitudes, including segregation, the author provides the reader with the necessary context to understand the extent of anti-Black racism in the town. Bissinger grapples with the fact that football seemed to be the one activity where Black and white people in Odessa had any significant, positive interactions with each other. One white resident remarks, “We don’t have to deal with Blacks here […]. We don’t have to have any contact with them, except on the Permian football team. It’s the only place in Odessa where people interact at all with Blacks” (116).
However, Bissinger does not use this fact to argue that football was a tool for social unification and interracial integration in Odessa. Instead, the author questions to what extent Black players were being used by the white school board and white coaches to further the Permian Panthers program while the Black community remained ostracized and oppressed. After Odessa was forced to integrate their schools racially in 1982, the local school board “gerrymandered” how Black students were integrated into Permian High and Odessa High to ensure that Permian would receive the best football players. As Black player Ivory Christian puts it, “They think you’re a super athlete just because you’re Black” (311).
Nate Hearne, the Permian Panther’s only Black coach, observes that while Black players were treated equally to their white counterparts on the field, they remained ostracized outside of the game. He explains, “We know that we’re equal as athletes. But once we get off the field, we’re not equal” (114). Laurence Hurd, the Black activist who led the campaign for desegregation in Odessa, characterized football teams as having an exploitative relationship with their Black players. According to Hurd,
In the twentieth century, because of football, the real smart people use Blacks just like they would on the farm. And when it’s over, they don’t care about them. Some people say in their mind, that’s all they were good for anyway. Today, instead of the cotton field, it’s the sports arena (117).
These concerns are demonstrated in the case of Boobie Miles, who was sidelined from the team after an injury and eventually quit. While any player with a serious injury would have to be pulled from the starting line-up, the coaching staff and townspeople demonstrated repeated racist behavior in response to Boobie’s injury. Bissinger quotes several white people who questioned if Boobie could contribute to society in any other way, even claiming he may as well die if he could not play football (284). By including Odessa’s historical context, the prioritization of the Permian football program, the coaches’ perceptions of Black students as potential athletes, and Black experiences in football as students, coaches, and observers, Bissinger presents a strong case that the Permian Panthers, and Odessa more broadly, exploited Black players for their skill while continuing to treat them as second-class citizens.
Devotion to Sport
One of Bissinger’s most fascinating themes is his exploration of football’s central role in towns across Texas and the religious-like devotion that most townspeople feel toward the sport. Throughout Friday Night Lights, authority figures prioritized football programs and games over matters such as racial justice, social cohesion, or academic excellence.
The author’s analysis of Odessa’s desegregation shows that the school board was more concerned about the football program’s continued success than Black students’ experiences transitioning into new schools since the school board shut down their own Ector High. His interview with the former school board principal proves that one of the main reasons they fought integration for so long was because of concerns that it would ruin the football program at Permian High. Ironically, the school board later prioritized Permian football by requiring more Black players to be integrated into Permian High since they now perceived Black students as valuable for the football team. Bissinger explains that the sudden willingness to integrate Black students into Permian High “had nothing to do with academic potential. It had everything to do with athletic potential” (113). Vickie Gomez, who once served on the school board, claimed that the way the Southside students were divvied up to either Permian High or Odessa High was not based on social or academic plans but “to ensure Permian had a greater number of Black running backs down the road than its rival” (113). These machinations led to further social divisions within Odessa since they privileged the Permian team over their rivals at Odessa High, causing a rift in the community between those who supported Permian and those who cheered for Odessa.
Bissinger also demonstrates how similar problems were present in Dallas, Texas, where the Carter Cowboys players were frequently enabled by their teachers and principals to meet their required 70% grade in their classes. Black students were provided with answers to tests, not given homework, or simply had their grades falsely inflated. However, when an anonymous phone call revealed Carter Cowboys football star Gary Edward’s math grade to be below passing, different school boards and education agencies in Texas came to varying conclusions about whether or not Carter High could continue to participate in the playoffs. The Plano school board, representing the school of Plano East, which was next in line for the playoffs, launched a suit to prevent Carter High from playing.
While many educational decisions in the state went unobserved, this hearing was crowded with impassioned Texans from both sides of the controversy. When Texas Education Commissioner William Kirby opened the hearing on the matter, he noted that Texan students ranked well below other American students on standardized tests and that the state’s families and educators needed to become more invested in building their academic ability. He expressed concern that the state’s academics were being badly neglected since Texans were more interested in football than school subjects. Kirby spoke to an unusually crowded and passionate room at the hearing and asked the attendees,
Yes, football and extracurricular activities are important, but shouldn’t we also concern ourselves with science, and math, and reading, and writing? [...] Put some of your time and effort and attention and energy on improving academics and on emphasizing academics (326).
At the end of the long legal saga, Carter High algebra teacher Will Bates, who had refused to inflate his students’ scores or privilege football players over other students, was removed from Carter High and had his salary frozen. He was prevented from teaching Math in his new position, Bissinger says, to “prevent further threats to the sanctity of football” (335). Dallas school board member Yvonne Ewell lamented that other school issues would never have been given the same amount of public or media attention as the Carter Cowboys playoffs controversy, saying, “We got our goals skewed. That’s why I think schools are in a dilemma all over the United States” (334).
Paternal Relationships
In exploring the family history of the Permian Panthers’ most prominent players, Bissinger focused on father-son relationships and paternal influences. He helped the reader understand the different family dynamics that informed each player’s personality, worldview, and aspirations. For example, recounting Mike Winchell’s father Billy’s passing helps the reader to understand why Mike was a serious and sometimes somber young man who largely kept to himself. After Billy’s death, Mike’s older brother Joe Bill plays a paternal role in Mike’s life and encourages him to channel his energies into playing for the Permian Panthers. Indeed, without Joe Bill’s influence and Mike’s lifelong dream of playing for Permian, he may have left town altogether. Similarly, Boobie Miles also did not have a father present in his life but instead was raised by his Uncle L. V. His uncle, who grew up in strictly segregated Crane, Texas, did not have the opportunity to play football as a young Black man, so it was important to him to help Boobie make the most of his football opportunity. He admitted that he lived vicariously through Boobie’s success as an athlete and had high hopes that he would go on to play college football.
In contrast to Mike’s and Boobie’s experiences, Brian Chavez’s father, Tony Chavez, was very involved in Brian’s life and “had become as faithful a devotee of the Permian football program as anyone” (196). Tony also “admitted that he was to some extent living vicariously through his son” (196) by supporting his passion for football. However, Tony was also extremely hardworking and had served as a soldier, police officer, and detective before becoming a successful lawyer. Similarly, Brian also applied himself academically and graduated as class valedictorian before being accepted to Harvard University.
Ivory Christian was also influenced by his father, Ivory Sr., who had played football for the “Negro League” in 1960s Odessa. In those years, players like Ivory Sr. could only participate on all-Black teams, competing against each other in stadiums separate from white residents. Bissinger writes that while Ivory Sr. was proud of Ivory Jr, he did not pressure him into a career in football but allowed him to make up his own mind. Ivory Jr. eventually did accept a football scholarship and played for Texas Christian University. By including details of the players’ family lives and paternal influences, the author adds depth to their characters and helps the reader understand how their fathers or father figures helped them become invested in football. He demonstrates how sports, a predominantly male endeavor in 1980s Texas, was an important pillar for father-son bonding in Odessa.
