A View from the Inside: Analyzing Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights is a good view of how football envelops the live of everyone in the Texas town of Odessa. While it does use football as a main theme, I don’t believe it is a book mainly about sports. The story is mostly about the people in a town that has nothing to look forward to except football. The story chronicles the lives of a few players and their parents. The author describes their background, characteristics, and reactions to football and life in general in Odessa. The story seemingly focuses on football because football is the focus of everybody’s life. During the fall months the residents did nothing but live and breathe Permian football. The town was full of people like Ken Scates who went to the first Permian practice and “hadn’t missed any games, except for the time he had heart bypass surgery in Houston (41). The school would do anything to make sure the football team had anything it needed. In 1988 Permian spent $70,000 to charter jets for away games (146). At most any other school such a thing would be considered unthinkable. Pretty much any other sport could have substituted football in the book. Football is obviously the main sport in Texas, but if the setting were changed to a small farming town in Iowa, a sport like wrestling could easily be used instead of football.

The story of the Permian football team was full of racism. Racism seemed to not only exist in Odessa, but also everywhere in Texas in the late 80s. Odessa wasn’t even integrated until the early 1980s. Even after it was integrated, the district lines were drawn so that Permian would get most of the black students and Odessa High would get the Mexicans students (105). Even with Permian getting the majority of African Americans, there were only six black players on the team. Of those six, five of them started and one of them was injured (107). The black players at Permian were usually regarded as the best on the field. Even so, most coaches still considered them a lower class. Even Nate Hearne, a black coach that usually dealt with the black players, described Boobie as just another dumb nigger if he couldn’t carry a football under his arm (18).” The racism wasn’t just within the town and the team, it was affected other teams Permian played. When it came time to play the Carter Cowboys in the quarterfinals, a meeting had to be set up to discuss the terms of the game. This was mostly due to racism since over 90% of the Carter school was African American. The Permian coaches argued over where the game would be held. A neutral location was chosen for the safety of the fans. After the final pass of the game, player Clint Duncan knew it was incomplete when he looked up and “saw a bunch of cocky niggers jumping up and down (334).”

Male figures dominated Permian mostly for the fact that they were football players. Most of the players described in this story were the manly jock stereotypes that everyone reads about. They all loved football, partying, and fighting. Most of the players were known for their hard hits on and off of the field. If someone