Friday Night Lights Book Report

In this book H.G. Bissinger tells the story of Odessa, a football obsessed Texas town, all the way back to its conception. In the book not only do we get a great picture of what the people of Odessa, and more specifically Permian High School are like, Bissinger does a great job of explaining the football obsession that plagues the town and the economic troubles and racial and political blunders that play into this town’s unhealthy lifestyle. This implied, and not straight to the point, unveiling of Odessa’s flaws gives the book a nice feel that Bissinger isn’t for or against the towns ways, he is only pointing them out to inform and instigate change. This book is in the non-fiction sports genre. Friday Night Lights starts off in the thick of a football game, which is where most of the focus lies throughtout the book. It’s a playoff game, and thousands of football craving fans adorned in black are shouting mojo at the Permian football team. But just as quickly as Bissinger shows you the glory of the football program in Odessa, he shows you the not so glorious history of Odessa. This chapter, and two others, is where Bissinger lays down a lot of the ground work for his revealing of the racial issues, …show more content…
And oil’s gone. But we still got football, so fuck the rest of you” (247). This seems to be the mentality of the entire town, and we get this idea from Bissinger over and over again without him just blatantly saying it. He also shows us the political factors, that add fuel to the football flame, in a chapter where George H.W. Bush speaks in front of the town. He talks about football and feeds them what they want, because he wants the votes. Once again Bissinger doesn’t outright tell the readers that that people of Odessa eat, sleep, and breathe football, but we can assume so because a presidential candidate talks about football when there are obivously bigger issues at