Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: This book was an excellent read. As someone who works with part of a college football team that has a winning tradition, I found this book to be extremely insightful. I found the characters to be enjoyable and very relatable to those that I work with. I found myself cheering for the boys of Odesa and feeling sorry for them when they were low. I couldn't put this book down. I read it in 24 hours it was so powerful. As an author I can only hope that I can some day write this well and with such emotion.

Rating:
Summary: You are better off watching the movie
Review: I was an English major in college and later taught it. I'm loathe to ever push a movie over a book, but that is the case here. (However, the movie departs from the book in a lot of ways, and is actually much different than the book)

This book is severely tedious at times, with overly-long descriptions about the dust, sweat and oil that inhabit Odessa, Texas. Bissinger goes into too much detail about the characters at times; he loses them by trying to explain every facet of their life, including the pulls and opinions of their friends and families.

There are some great passages in the book, but they are few and far between the book's 400 + pages. I found the most interesting part of the book to be the obsession that the town had with the team, and the fact that the players go from 18 year old Gods to 19 year old has-beens in Odessa.

Rating:
Summary: The Friday Night Life
Review: Friday Night Lights is a very interesting book that keeps you reading until you make it to the back cover. It is book mainly focused towards high school teens and talks about racial difference problems, school rivalries, and the fight to take the Texas State Championship trophy. It shows the pressure given by the fans and relatives to take it all. The Panthers seem to carry the whole town's moral on their shoulders when they step on to the field. I highly recommend that all reading this should read H.G. Bissinger's award-winning Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Lights will take you to the little town of Odessa to one town, the Permian football team, and their dream.

Rating:
Summary: An illuminating - and fascinating! - social commentary
Review: What an incredible book. Bissinger does an terrific job in this account of the small town Odessa, located in Texas, and its obsession with high school football. You begin to see how distorted the town's cultural values are when you see what low priority is given to education, and how much money, time and energy is spent on football. Football players are revered when they do well, but then forgotten as soon as they are no longer playing. The book gives you insights into many other conflicts and tensions within the town that are brought out by the obsession with football - race, socioeconomic differences, values. It is just about the dynamics of the town itself, as it is about football.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: Adolesence is perhaps the most important part of eye, it's where the mind and body learn and grow. In the book "Friday Night Lights" that idea is prevalent from beginning to end. Although, in the case of the people in the book they have to faster more then the common person. A whole team, young league boys that have the power to control the emotions of a town. The coach who is under heavy scrutiny and pressure to be nothing short of perfect. The book has the QB who has conflicting issues with responsibilities of being captain. A linebacker with a love-hate relationship for the game, the team must be perfect they can't lose and with every loss comes disappointment for the town. These boys are treated like celebrities, and some bask in the glory while others shun it. A very strong bond is established, and the players live and play for each other.

Being a football player I can't help but relate to the book, but I write thi opinion not as an athlete but as a kid going through life. Furthermore, this book reaches more than just athletes and the problems and emotions expressed are things all kids can relate too. As teenagers we tend to worry constantly about "What If's", but this book has taught me to live in the now and sieze the day.

Rating:
Summary: An eye-opening social commentary
Review: "Friday Night Lights" is more of a social commentary on the culture of small-town, football-mad Texas than it is a straight story about a football team between the lines in a given season. Bissinger weaves accounts of the 1988 Permian HS season into the broader concept of the book - the history and culture of Odessa, TX and its relationship with its Permian Panthers - and he does it skillfully. The writing is great and the actual football scenes and commentary, although not a dominant part of the book as many may expect, are descriptive and absorbing. And it's a credit to Bissinger's work that he can put together such a page-turner in spite of the lack of a single fully likable character and such occasionally disturbing content.

The people of Odessa have an obsessive relationship with Permian football (which escalates to hostile obsession during losing times), and as a result, the Permian players are treated like kings - until their careers are over, that is. These people are so blinded by the "Friday Night Lights" that such trivialities like rampant racism, a lack of any semblance of an education for Permian's "student"-athletes, god-like treatment and social shortcuts for 16-18 year-old boys, parental misguidance and so on get none of the attention issues like these warrant. Not surprisingly, once the short careers of Permian's players come to an end, rarely do any of them have the social skills or perspective to operate in the real world. And this isn't confined to Odessa - in Dallas' Carter HS, the idea of misguided priorities is taken to new heights, and the manner in which several of Carter's finest players blew their entire futures will leave you shaking your head, but it won't shock you, and you'll know exactly who and what is to blame.

Blame, as well as prejudice, are rampant in the book and are what prevents almost all of the characters (except for a few players) from being completely likable and worthy of sympathy. If one of the townspeople has anything positive or enlightening to say, it is usually negated by some type of racial comment or unfair generality - such as when one of them suggested that Boobie Miles be put out of his misery like a crippled horse once his football career ends. As badly as you feel for the coaches at times, the occasional maltreatment and characterization of the players is enough to wipe much of the sympathy away. Bissinger's lone failure in my mind is that the players he focused on weren't examined deeply enough, leaving the reader with only a few snapshots of each. But whether you watch them selfishly brooding and quitting the team, or outwardly blaming the coach and announcing a sudden lack of respect for him after a tough loss, it's not hard to grow impatient with the players either. One of the few people with their priorities straight in this book is the Algebra teacher at Carter HS, and you'll see what happens to him. And in most cases, any "injustices" are attributed to the works of the opposite color.

If this were a fictional story, I'd give it 1 or 2 stars, mainly because it would be hard to fathom real people acting so irrationally and irresponsibly.. But since it's non-fiction, Bissinger deserves a great deal of credit for stumbling upon such a broad story and then, as he states in his afterword, chronicling the season and the town that supports it through "the clear eyes of a journalist." As for the claims of sensationalism and exaggeration, it's hard to believe Bissinger set out for Odessa looking to defame anybody. The only criticism I have is that the players should have been focused on a little more closely, perhaps given some of the space used on the overly-long timeline of the oil boom/bust.


Rating:
Summary: Odessa Football
Review: This book i thought was good but was also boring at times. The setting takes place in Odessa, Texas. It's about a struggling High School football team who are expected to win but find it kind of hard. There are many characters in the book who mean something and one of those characters is Boobie. He is the heart and the soul of the team and he knows he's great and so does his team and his coaches. He gets hurt i think that was the downfall of the team. The book goes beyond football and gives the reader a lesson of the history of a smalltown in Texas who love football. the book is about having big dreams and having them come true.

I thought the book could have been better but no book is perfect. I thought it was intresting to see how one parent in the book hated his son because he wasn't like him when he played football. He wanted his to live the dream he got to live, but he didn't realize he had to let him have his own dreams. I would reccomend this book to most high school kids who play football. It's a good book and i learned more than just about football i also learned about the smalltown of Odessa.

Rating:
Summary: A Football Story
Review: Friday Night Lights is a book about a high school football team in a small town. Everyone in the small town of Odessa is all about Permian High School Football. Permian High School football team was a good football team. Their goal was to with the state championship. The team's best player was probably Boobie. Boobie wasn't from Odessa, he moved to Odessa when he was adopted by his uncle LV. When Boobie lived with his father, his father used to beat him with extension cords. One day at school the school officials saw that Boobie had been beaten, and they wouldn't let him go home. When they finally went to court, Boobie was placed in his uncle LV's care. That is when Boobie had to move to Odessa. When he moved to Odessa, he started playing football for his uncles pop warner team. When he started playing football for Permian High School, there were many colleges in the United States that wanted him to come play football for them. Boobie was a major part of the football team, until he got injured in a scrimmage game. That knee injury basically ended Boobies football career. Even though the team's star player was injured, the team went on to go far in the playoffs.

Friday Night Lights is a good book that I enjoyed reading. I liked this book because it showed how a team was able to come together after losing one of their best players, and almost win a state championship. I also like how things turned out good for Boobie when he had to move to Odessa with his Uncle. When he moved to Odessa, many top colleges wanted him. When Boobie got injured, it showed that a simple injury can change just about your whole future. Friday Night Lights is a good book and I recommend it to everyone who enjoys reading about sports.

Rating:
Summary: I think I missed the point
Review: Growing up, most evenings - especially in the summer - we would go to bed before dark. Every Friday, however, we stayed up a little later and adjourned well after dark. On these special evenings and to calm little imaginations, we used our Friday night lights.

For this reason I was especially excited to read this book. I expected a sentimental story, dealing with the dilemmas of childhood. I wanted a tale addressing the no-mans-land between no longer being a small child but not yet an adolescent. What I got was an inane book about high school football.

Note to all prospective readers: the title refers to stadium lighting, not to small room lights used on certain days of the week.

Sometimes, I fear, I just don't get it.


Rating:
Summary: The Lights Are On In Texas
Review: Odessa is known to be a big place on dream. This story shows the light of the people who live in Odessa Texas. A high school team called the Permian Panthers play every Friday night September through December. The Permian Panthers are the "winningest" team in Texas. Odessa, a town that is rated third for most murders, doesn't stop the Permian Panthers from winning. Bobbie the running back is the best player on the team. In preseason Bobbie gets a mild injury that takes him out for six weeks. Instead of staying out for six weeks he goes back in three weeks. Bobbie has a mild knee injury he is playing on. Bobbie gets a bone-crushing hit that takes him out for the season. Mark Winchell the quarter back for the Panthers has a dad that is very hard on him because he won State. Every year the panthers have gone to State. This year they need to go and win. I recommend this book to anyone who likes football.

Avery, Davis, Travis