Friday Night Lights

January 1, 1990
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bissinger spent 1988 with his wife and children in Odessa, Tex., principally following the high-school football team, but also observing life in this dusty, unsophisticated town. This is his superb, if disquieting, portrait of heartland America as he found it. For Odessa residents, the Permian Panthers, consistently contenders--and sometimes victors--in the state championship tournament for 30 years have become a virtual religion, although most of the townspeople are also bona fide churchgoers. After graduation, the teenagers on the team, most of whom are not well enough endowed to go on to college or pro ball, take their place among the other good ole boys at the Boosters Club, where they can recall their glory days together. 75,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo.

August 1, 1990
In 1988, Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer editor, left his job to spend a year with a high school sports team. The sport he picked was football, the location, the depressed West Texas oil town of Odessa, called by Larry McMurtry "the worst town on earth." Here 20,000 fans turn out regularly to watch their Permian Panthers win. Here there is no high-blown talk of playing the game well; just the raw need to win at all costs. In this atmosphere, players vomit from nervousness before each game and often play with injuries. On the few occasions when the team suffers a loss, the coach's front lawn sprouts "For Sale" signs. Bissinger makes you feel the tensions of the kids, who are not just playing a game, but literally fighting for the honor of their town. He also accomplishes the more difficult feat of making the team's rabid fans sympathetic. His language sometimes verges on the overblown, but it does echo the mythical proportions of the game and a season that will render the rest of the players' lives a dull denouement. Fascinating even for those, or maybe especially for those, with no interest in football.-- Nora Rawlinson, "Library Journal"

Copyright 1990 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.