Bissinger - Friday Night Lights

Nationwide Acclaim for FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

Superb and disturbing.... More than a sports book, its a search for the America of ordinary people.

Newsday

Bears comparison to the brightly illuminating fictional works of Ring Lardner and Jack London.... FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is a book about lust and longing, aspiration and education, sex roles, race relations, economic uncertainty and national identity.

Philadelphia Inquirer

A pressure-cooker of a book, it scalds... Bissinger touches the real boy in American manhood when he writes about game-time Friday night.

Christian Science Monitor

Not only one of the best sports books in recent years, but one of the most revealing looks at Americas small-town valuesgood and badyou are likely to read.

Denver Post

A clear and chilling depiction.... An athletic Common Ground.

Boston Herald

Bissingers book moves far beyond sport, in a telling, damning sociological sketch.

Miami Herald

Penetrating and evocative.... A story that is bigger than Odessa, bigger than Texas for that matter. The undercurrents that shape society are all at play here.

Milwaukee Journal

Moving and troubling.... Engrossing.

Pittsburgh Press

A great job of capturing Odessa as it really is.... Readers who can read the book without applying their own emotions will find times when they want to cry.

Odessa American

Fascinating and colorfully written.

Boston Globe

Riveting.... Reads like a suspense story, a page-turner.

Oakland Tribune

Copyright 1990 by H. G. Bissinger

Afterword copyright 2015 by H. G. Bissinger

The hardcover and trade paperback editions of this book feature photographs by Rob Clark, Jr.

The hardcover gift edition of this book also includes printed endsheets that feature a photograph taken inside Ratliff Stadium by Rob Clark, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

University Press of New England: excerpts from Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright. Copyright 1962 by James Wright. Reprinted from Collected Poems. By permission of the University Press of New England.

PRI Music, Inc.: excerpts from the lyrics to Lay Your Hands on Me by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. Copyright 1988 Bon Jovi Publishing/New Jersey Underground/PRI Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of PRI Music, Inc.

Jalni Publications, Inc. and Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.: excerpts from the lyrics to Somewhere from West Side Story, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein. Copyright 1957 by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed. Used by permission of Jalni Publications, Inc., publisher, and Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., sole agents.

Stonebridge Music: excerpts from the lyrics to Headed for the Future by Neil Diamond, Ton Hensley, and Alan Lindgren. Copyright 1986 by Stonebridge Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Warner/Chappel Music, Inc.: excerpts from the lyrics to Im into Something Good by Gery Goffin and Carole King. Copyright 1964 by Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc., 6255 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90028. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

978-0-306-82422-7 [ebook]

Published by Da Capo Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

www.dacapopress.com

Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

To Howard, whom I miss.

To Sarah, Gerry and Zachary, whom I love.

In the Shreve High football stadium,

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,

And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,

Dreaming of heroes.

FROM Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio, by James Wright

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB CLARK JR.

Contents

M AYBE IT WAS A SUDDENLY ACUTE AWARENESS OF BEING thirtysomething. Maybe it was where I lived, in a suburb of Philadelphia, in a house that looked like all the other ones on the block. Or maybe it was my own past as an addicted sports fan who had spent a shamelessly large part of life watching football and basketball and baseball. I just felt something pulling at me, nagging at me, a soft voice telling me to do it, to see for myself what was out there and make the journey before self-satisfaction crept in for good.

The idea had been rattling in my head since I was thirteen years old, the idea of high school sports keeping a town together, keeping it alive. So I went in search of the Friday night lights, to find a town where they brightly blazed that lay beyond the East Coast and the grip of the big cities, a place that people had to pull out an atlas to find and had seen better times, a real America.

A variety of names came up, but all roads led to West Texas, to a town called Odessa.

It was in the severely depressed belly of the Texas oil patch, with a team in town called the Permian Panthers that played to as many as twenty thousand fans on a Friday night.

Twenty thousand...

I knew I had to go there.

You drive into Odessa the first time and become immersed in a land so vast, so relentless, that something swells up inside, something that makes you feel powerless and insignificant. Pulling onto Highway 80, there is row after row of oil field machinery that no one has use for anymore. Farther on down comes a series of grimy motels that dont have a single car parked in front of them.