69 pages • 2 hours read
Buzz BissingerFriday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 16 and EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Field of Dreams”
Mike arrives at Memorial Stadium, where he would play against the Carter Cowboys, and reminisces about a childhood trip there with his brother Joe Bill. While Mike had an excellent season, he did not attract interest from college recruiters due to his smaller size. Walking through Memorial Stadium on game day, he worries that the wet weather will prevent him from playing well in the semifinal.
Before the game, the high tension between the teams is evident, as the Carter Team taunts the Pepettes, who had been escorted to the game by the police after receiving threats. Permian fans vastly outnumber Carter supporters in the stadium, and the Permian team is convinced that they will win. Both teams struggle to move the ball in the wet weather at the beginning of the game, and neither team can easily outwit the other. The teams are neck and neck throughout the game as the weather worsens. Both teams are “fidgety, nervous, rattled” (348), but the Permian Panthers players are competently defending against the considerably larger Carter players.
Amid the account of the game, there is a discussion of the various fans who are closely watching the game from the stands or listening on the radio from afar, including familiar characters such as Boobie and Sharon. Though the score is close, the Panthers lose the game to the Carter Cowboys, devastating the Permian players and fans.
Epilogue Summary
Carter High ultimately wins the state championship a week later, which leads to their best players, Gary Edwards and Derric Evans, being recruited by various colleges across the US. Trying to lure the best talent to their schools, some college recruiters go so far as sending limousines to players’ houses to pick them up, flying them for free for campus visits, taking them to strip clubs, and providing them with shopping trips where they pick out things for themselves and their families. Gary and Derric accept scholarships and become celebrities in their local Black communities, where they are asked for autographs and eat at restaurants for free.
However, before they begin their college football careers, they collaborate with another former Carter Cowboy to commit seven armed robberies within a month. Both players came from comfortable homes and had scholarships waiting for them; they commit the robberies merely for fun. Derric and Gary are given lengthy jail sentences and lose their opportunity to play college football. The players had enjoyed so much privilege at their school that it blinded them to real-life consequences and responsibilities.
The epilogue provides updates on what some Permian Panthers players do after graduation. Brian goes to Harvard but decides not to play football there since it does not have the same culture around the sport. Jerrod struggles to let go of his obsession with football and regrets not studying harder. He works for his father’s company locally and still attends some Permian games. Don leaves his father’s house to live with his mother, where he drinks heavily until converting to Christianity. Mike is not offered any college scholarships, but Ivory plays for Texas Christian University, where he studies criminology in the hopes of becoming a police officer if he cannot play professional football. Boobie reconciles with L. V. and plays for Ranger Junior College, but his knee injury continues to hamper his performance.
The epilogue also provides a final look at conditions in Odessa. In 1989, the price of oil increases, benefitting the oil industry in Odessa and raising hopes that it could become prosperous once again. The town continues to have a reputation as gritty and deprived, with the Places Rated Almanac rating it 332 out of 333 places to live in America with poor health care, transportation, recreation, and job opportunities. The focus of the townspeople remains on football, and their loyalty pays off when the Permian Panthers team of 1989 wins the Texas State Championship.
Chapter 16 and Epilogue Analysis
Bissinger’s final chapter examines the connection between Texas’s escapist devotion to football and the creation of football heroes through whom the townspeople live vicariously. The most talented Carter Cowboys players, Derric and Gary, are worshiped by their peers, teachers, coaches, and townspeople in Dallas and revered as local celebrities. The privilege they experienced as students and players left them ignorant of real-world rules and consequences, which they face after committing several armed robberies together merely for fun. Derric says that he was not concerned that he would be punished for these crimes, as he thought he would be bailed out and let go. Instead, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while Gary was sentenced to 16 years.
The case’s prosecutor Marshall Gandy attributes the teens’ actions to the way they were idolized in their school, saying, “You look how we treat them in high school, and how we treat them in college, and everyone asks why they act like children […]. How would you expect them to act in any other way?” (369). The judge who sentenced them also referenced their success as players, observing that “the typical American male lives vicariously on Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter through the lives of football heroes. However, when it comes to violating the law, at the courthouse it simply doesn’t matter if you can run the football” (368). By including quotes from Gary, Derric, and the professionals involved in their case, Bissinger demonstrates how the privileges these young men experienced in their local football culture removed them from reality and, in some ways, set them up for failure in their adult lives.
Bissinger also raises the theme of the game’s rough subculture in these chapters, recounting how Derric continually insults his Permian counterpart, Mike, every time he tackles him. The author calls this verbal abuse a typical part of “the savage spirit of the game” (345). Indeed, the “savage spirit” is not limited to the language the players use but also refers to the physical sacrifices they must make. For example, Brian played one game with a broken ankle. The coaching staff intentionally did not X-ray it because he would have missed the game if they had confirmed it was broken. Instead, they taped his ankle and gave him painkillers before and during the game.
