FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

A great read. Because it is not about just football. It is about a people, a community, And a way of life. Gripping.

Bought this for my 14 year old football obsessed son. He finished it in a few days and loved it. So well written and did a great job showing all the ups and downs that come with playing big time HS football.

Wife is on cloud nine havingA book to read before she goes to be at night. Says she loves the book!

Even though I'm a football fan, and even though I'm a Billy Bob Thornton fan, I waited nearly 20 years after it released to finally watch "Friday Night Lights" (FNLM) the movie. I've just seen so many bad sports movies I'm leery of watching another bad one. But I finally decided to watch it November of 2023 and I thought it was really good. I had no idea that people could be such big football fans, especially of high school football. (As a bit of a side note one of my favorite "Christmas movies" ever is "Bad Santa" which stars Mr. Thornton. It is a dark comedy that I found hilarious. Surely not everyone will like it, but I sure did. But I never knew that Santa Claus used such foul language! Or could be so mean!)So afterwards I had to read "Friday Night Lights" (FNLB) the book, written by H. G. Bissinger. I guess the first version of FNLB released in 1990 after Mr. Bissinger spent a year in Odessa, Texas documenting the life of high school football players, their coaches, their families, and even their town. I read an updated version that released in 2015 where it includes at least an additional Epilogue to the story as Mr. Bissinger travelled back to Odessa many years later to interview some of the original characters and maybe "just hang out" with them. I got the sense that he felt a real vested interest in the story and the characters and so he was really interested to know how some of their lives have turned out.Now, I will warn you in advance if you take my very strong recommendation to buy and read FNLB that it does contain some language that some people might find "offensive." Maybe it's not as bad as "Bad Santa" but not for a lack of trying. In particular there is one word that appears more often than in a Dave Chappelle skit. Perhaps Mr. Bissinger uses it a bit too much, but I understand what his motivation was while writing: He wanted to get across to the reader the state of race relations in Texas back in the 1980s. So I took it with a grain of salt while reading.There are some differences between the book and the movie, of course. A film is a different medium and the writer and director have usually maybe two hours to discuss a story; in a book the number of pages that an author can publish is theoretically open-ended although I'm guessing most people get intimidated if a book is longer than, say, 500 pages. So I understand why filmmakers often take liberties when adapting a screenplay from a book. One item that stood out to me: In the book the 1988 Permian Panthers lost during the semi-finals game while I believe in the movie they "lost their MOJO" in the state championship. And I believe that the actual game was played outdoors but in the movie I believe it was filmed in a dome. There are of course many other minor differences, differences that didn't bother me much.But in reality this does suggest that sometimes it might be better to watch a movie first before reading the book on the same topic. I've noticed that when I go with this order I'm more forgiving of the movie because then obviously I don't really yet know the story. Reverse things -- read the book first then watch the movie -- and there's more of a temptation to nitpick. But to me there's another advantage of watching the movie first: I can learn in two hours if the story seems interesting enough for me then to take the time to read the book. After all it usually takes quite a bit longer to read a book than watch a film. Watching the film first is a good weeding-out mechanism, in other words.There are many characters in both the film and the book because football teams generally have around 50 players, plus or minus. And in this story there are many additional characters, too many to list here. I will write that I didn't have too much trouble keeping track of the players in particular and I felt that after reading I had a pretty good idea what they are like as people. Each character has a unique personality and I think the author does a great job here of displaying and explaining those personalities. For example the quarterback was more quiet than you'd usually expect a quarterback to be. It is interesting though how few of the players actually went on to play college football and I believe none of them ever made it to the NFL although there have been members of the Panthers over the years who have gone pro. But it does give evidence that the Panthers are or were a "team" in the truest sense of the word since, to use perhaps an overused expression, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."Not everyone in the story has a truly happy ending as you'd expect. For example, James Earl "Boobie" Miles had quite a few run-ins with the law and I believe that he's back in prison as of 2023. But he was the running back on the 1988 team who supposedly had true NFL potential although that potential was dashed when he had a serious knee injury during just a scrimmage. This must have made it doubly bad for him since it didn't even happen in a game that counted.Well, if you want to read a sports book that's actually really good I highly recommend "Friday Night Lights." Another one that's excellent is "Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game" written by Michael Lewis and it was of course also adapted to an excellent film although I consider "Moneyball" to be more a book about Economics than sports. Read both books and then watch both movies, I say. But since it's nearly Christmas of 2023 I would wrap it up in a bow by watching "Bad Santa" too. Make it a Billy-Bob-Thornton Marathon, in other words.

The book was bought for my elderly mother. There was no large print in the library. She found it very easy to read and enjoyed the story as I did many years ago.

This is a detailed story of Permian football and the Permian Basin, it’s a great read!Seller did a great job sending out quickly and the book was just what I ordered.