Book Report On Friday Night Lights

“Life really ain’t worth livin unless you got a High School football team to support” Bob Rutherford speaks for the entire town of Odessa when he states his opinion on Football. In the small Texas town the Permian Panther football team is all they have, and all anyone cares about. Friday Night Lights is the perfect read for any teen is high school, specifically any high school football athlete. The book shares the story of the Permian Panther football team. The book has various main characters, Bobbie Miles who in the beginning of the book is the hot shot running back that is “too cool for school” however, suffers a career ending ankle injury. There is Mike Winchell who is the teams quarterback who does not have enough confidence in himself,

he dreams of playing college football but does not believe it will ever come true. Winchell is a prime example of the saying “if you think negative, you will have negative outcomes”. Other characters include Brian Chavez who is valedictorian of his class. He is a tight end, and is a role model to the young kids in Odessa. Ivory Christian is a middle linebacker for the team but does not enjoy playing football since he is very religious and believes there is more to life than the game.

Don Billingsley is the running back for the Panthers and is constantly creating problems with the team's authorities he is known for being an alcoholic, criminal, and “womanizer”. The town of Odessa plays a large part in the novel, the author says the following when referring to Odessa on page 33 “A place still rooted in the sweet nostalgia of the fifties and sixties- unsophisticated, basic, raw- a place where anybody could be somebody, a place still clinging to the tenets of the American Dream, however wobbly they had become” The book follows the team throughout the entire season and the characters go through various journeys such as Boobie Miles’s struggle to continue playing the game he loves, as well as Coach Gaine’s struggle to keep his job as the team fails early in the season. The issue of racism is a large topic in the book this is discussed in the chapter “Black and White” it discusses how the schools did not even desegregate until the 1980’s and how the town would take the black athletes and use them for their skills while they were in high school and then abandon them

after. The following quote from page 91 “The American Version of the Berlin Wall the invincible railroad tracks that ran through the town” reiterates the topic.

The main event or climax of the book is the state playoff game which was the Permian Panthers against the Dallas Carter Football team, the game was close and the Panthers were leading however, a bad call leads to a momentum switch and the Panthers fall behind 14-9 with the clock winding down and the final minute remaining, Mike Winchell says in the huddle “This is the last minute of your life” The ball is snapped on the 24 yard line and Mike Winchell threw the pass to Robert brown, the pass was incomplete. The Panthers had lost the playoff game and the season was over, all the hard work and adversity the team had gone through was worth nothing. The chapter ends with the following quote “He (Jerrod McDougal, offensive lineman) lingered by his locker and started to sob again. “That’s why it hurts so much, to lose to someone you know has not worked nearly as hard as you” The quote from page 363 shows how the players were in agony after the loss mostly because they felt that all the hard work was for

nothing. Coach Gaines Although Dallas Carter won the State title game the next week, they would be stripped of it a year later after the football team was caught changing grades of the players so that they would be eligible to play. The book ends discussing what happened to the players after the season, Brian Chavez goes to Harvard but quits the football team and joins rugby, Boobie Miles played for a junior college and Don Billingsley, and Ivory Christian both quit the football team because they missed Panther Football so much. Overall Friday Night Lights is an amazing read for anyone interested in the culture of High School Football in Texas. It allows readers to make a connection to their personal life, for example every high school football team generally has the same type of characters, the hot shot running back, the trouble maker, the talented player who doesn’t believe he is talented, it’s a book I guarantee you will not be able to put down.