Read Online Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger - Free Book Online

won the state
championship. Allen readily admitted that Phillip was not a
gifted athlete, but he had the fire and desire that came innately
in a town that drank as deeply from the chalice of high school
football as Odessa.
    Allen knew Phillip was something special in eighth grade,
when he had broken his arm during the first defensive series
of a game. Rather than come out, he managed to set it in the
defensive huddle and played both ways the entire first half. By
that time the arm had swelled up considerably, to the point that
the forearm pads he wore had to be cut off, and unwillingly he
went to the hospital. Allen said he was not proud of the incident, but he told the story freely, for it showed that his son had
the ingredients to wear the black and white.
    And certainly he wasn't the only one to have learned the
much-admired lesson of no pain, no gain. In seasons past playing for Permian had involved other sacrifices. It had meant the
loss of a testicle to a sophomore player when no one bothered
to make sure he was thoroughly examined after he had injured
his groin several hours earlier during an away game. Subse quently the testicle swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, and
by the time the doctor saw him it was too late; it had to be
removed. His mother was livid at what had happened, but the
player pleaded with her not to push it because he feared it
might interfere with his career at Permian and be held against
him. He lost the testicle but he did make All-State.

    In seasons past, playing for Permian had meant routinely
vomiting during the grueling off-season workouts inside the
hot and sweaty weight room. It had meant playing with a broken ankle that wasn't x-rayed because, if it had been known that
it was broken, the player would have had to sit out the next
game. It had meant playing with broken hands. It had meant a
shot of novocaine during halftime to mask the pain of a deep
ankle sprain or a hip pointer. It had meant popping painkillers
and getting shots of Valium.
    But few in the community blanched at any of these things
or even questioned them. Because of such an attitude, Permian had established itself as perhaps the most successful football dynasty in the country-pro, college, or high school. Few
brands of sport were more competitive than Class AAAAA
Texas high school football, the division for the biggest schools
in the state.
    Odessa was hardly the only town that nurtured football and
cherished it and went crazy over it. But no one came close to
matching the performance of Permian. Since 1964 it had won
four state championships, been to the state finals a record eight
times, and made the playoffs fifteen times. Its worst record in
any season over that time span had been seven and two, and its
winning percentage overall, .825, was by far the best of any
team in the entire state in the modern era of the game dating
back to 1951.
    All this wasn't accomplished with kids who weighed 250
pounds and were automatic major-college prospects, but with
kids who often weighed 160 or 170 or even less. They had no
special athletic prowess. They weren't especially fast or espe cially strong. But they were fearless and relentlessly coached
and from the time they were able to walk they had only one
certain goal in their lives in Odessa, Texas. Whatever it took,
they would play for Permian.

    Behind the rows of stools stood the stars of the show, the members of the 1988 Permian Panther high school football team.
Dressed in their black game jersies, they laughed and teased
one another like privileged children of royalty.
    Directly in front of them, dressed in white jersies and forming a little protective phalanx, were the Pepettes, a select group
of senior girls who made up the school spirit squad. The Pepettes supported all teams, but it was the football team they supported most. The number on the white jersey each girl wore
corresponded to that of the player she had been