Friday Night Lights

town with an alarmingly rising crime rate and such bleak prospects that Money magazine rated it the fifth worst place to live in the United States. Football, Permian High football, was what held the town together. And hold it did, with crowds of 20,000 flocking to see games on Friday nights, and thousands watching every practice and internalizing every success and failure of the team.

The Permian Panthers was no ordinary high school football team. Its win-loss record was unrivalled in the state, and the team had won five state championships. The ultimate honor for every boy in town was to play football for the Panthers. For every girl it was to become a Pepette, a cheerleader who baked cookies for the players during off days and dazzled the crowd to the tune of the school fight song on game days. In Odessa, everybody defined themselves in terms of the school football team and lived vicariously through it. So obsessed were the townspeople that they hardly raised an eyebrow when the football team chartered