OTHER INFORMATION

Biography

H. G. "Buzz" Bissinger is an author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He was born November 1, 1954, in New York City, New York.

In 1987, while writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his story on transgressions of Justice in the Philadelphia Court system. He is also the author of the article "Shattered Glass," featured in the magazine Vanity Fair, where he is a contributing editor; the article was later adapted for the 2003 film Shattered Glass.

He is perhaps best known for his book Friday Night Lights, which documents the 1988 season of the football team of Permian High School in Odessa, Texas. This work went on to become a successful movie, which was released in October 2004; a television series inspired by the book and the movie debuted on NBC on October 3, 2006.

Bissinger was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, The University of Pennsylvania, where he was the chief editor of the university paper, and Harvard University. He has written two books in addition to Friday Night Lights: Prayer for the City (1998), which offers insight into the urban political scene of Philadelphia during Mayor (now PA governor) Ed Rendell's term in the 1990's; and Three Nights in August (2005), which chronicles a series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs through the perspective of Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Bissinger is married and has three sons. He divides his time between homes in Philadelphia and the Pacific Northwest.

The Reaction to the Book

The book's release during the 1990 season coincided with the team being under investigation for holding illegal off-season practices, which resulted in the team being declared ineligible for the playoffs and thus not participating in the postseason for only the 2nd time since 1980. Permian's absence from the playoffs allowed San Angelo Central (see below) into the playoffs for only the 3rd time since 1966. The negative reaction to the playoff situation was exacerbated by the book, and many residents of Odessa received the book with responses ranging from mild indignation to threats of physical violence aimed at the books author.

The movie version of Friday Night Lights was released in the United States on October 6, 2004, and starred Billy Bob Thornton as Permian Coach Gary Gaines. The film was a box office and critical success and, in turn, spawned an NBC television series of the same name which began airing in October, 2006.

About Permian High School

Permian High School is a public high school located in Odessa, Texas and is part of the Ector County Independent School District.

The first high school in Odessa was Odessa High School, whose first football team was established in 1923. Odessa schools were segregated, and the school for blacks was Blackshear, a combined junior and senior high school on the south side of town. Ector High School, a combined and segregated junior and senior high school, opened in 1957 on the south side. Permian High school, also segregated, opened in 1959. Desegregation began in 1966, but was not complete until the late 1980's. When Blackshear High closed, the students were transferred to Ector High School, which cost the Blackshear students their school colors and much of their identity. In 1982, as part of the district's desegregation plan, Ector High was converted to a junior high only, and was intended to be primarily black, but in actuality is predominantly hispanic with a handful of whites. Southside high school students were bused to northside high schools.

Blackshear still exists as an elementary school and Ector still exists as a junior high. Odessa High and Permian High remain as the only two high schools. Permian High is named for the Permian Basin, the geological formation in which Odessa is located, which has been the source of vast oil reserves (and oil wealth to the city).

As of 2006 the school principal of Permian High is Bruce Davis. Darren Allman is the campus athletic director.

Football

High school football fever was, and still is, big in Texas. The story of Permian High School's 1988 Permian Panthers team, and their run towards the state championship, was the subject of the best-selling book Friday Night Lights, published in 1990. A movie based on the book was made in 2004 and the NBC television network will host the series starting in the fall of 2006.

The team won the Texas state championship in the 5A classification (the state's largest) in 1965, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1989 and 1991 and was declared the unofficial national champion in 1972 and 1989.

Differences between the movie and actual events

• In the movie some of the players' numbers and positions were changed: Boobie Miles in the movie is #45 and playing tailback, but in the book he is playing fullback (while Don Billingsley was the tailback) and was #35. In the movie, Brian Chavez is the #4 strong safety, while he was actually the #85 tight end. Ivory Christian, in the film, is a defensive end and wears #90, while he was really the #62 middle ("Mike") linebacker. (Note: At the beginning of the film, as the camera pans over Coach Gaines' depth chart, you can see the name 'Miles' listed under the FB tag.)

• In the movie, district play began in week 2. In the real regular season, district play would have begun in week 4.

• In the movie, the footage for that first district game was shot during a 2003 district game, where Abilene High won, 49-6 (this was the score shown during the movie). Inexplicably, however, Abilene fails to tie for the district lead, which means that they would have had to lose at least three other district games — highly unlikely given their dominating performance against a very good Panthers team. In the real regular season, Permian defeated Abilene 49-0.

• In the movie, Permian defeats "North Shore Galena" in a mid-season (presumably district) game. In reality, North Shore High School is located in Galena Park, a suburb of Houston, over 500 miles (800 km) southeast of Odessa. Although North Shore and Permian have both been 5A football powerhouses, they have never played.

• Since 1982, the UIL Class 5A football playoffs have had six rounds (though a second, parallel playoff bracket of five rounds was added in 1990, later also expanded to six rounds in 2006), so while Permian did play Dallas Carter in the fifth round, in reality it was a semi-final and not a final. In the Texas playoffs, a team from North or Western Texas always plays a team from Southern Texas in the final. So the Carter vs Permian final would not have been possible. The actual final featured Carter versus Judson High School of the San Antonio suburb of Converse.

• The Carter-Permian game was played in front of 10,000 people in a heavy downpour at The University of Texas at Austin's Memorial Stadium, not in front of 55,000 in the Astrodome in Houston.

• While the game in the movie was a high-scoring affair, the score of the actual game was 14-9 in favor of Carter.

• In the movie, it is said that Carter was the state's top-ranked team, when Carter was never ranked higher than No. 3 in the Associated Press poll.

• The fact that Carter's state championship was revoked following their use of an academically-ineligible player is never mentioned, nor is the prolonged legal battle that Carter went through to enable them to play in the playoffs at all. Officially, the 1988 state champions were Converse Judson. (Deleted Scenes on the DVD release show Carter being removed from the competition, and later Coach Gaines receiving a telephone call informing him the Supreme Court has overturned the decision.)

• Permian's first opponent in the playoffs was Amarillo Tascosa and not Dallas Jesuit as in the movie. In fact, in 1988 Texas public schools (such as Permian, Carter, and Tascosa) and private schools (such as Jesuit) competed in separate leagues with separate playoffs. Jesuit was not allowed to join the previously all-public school University Interscholastic League (UIL) until 2003, starting football competition in 2004. Dallas Jesuit and Strake Jesuit of Houston are currently the only private schools who play in the UIL, the rest competing in leagues such as TAPPS and the SPC. Also, given the district setup at that time, it would have been impossible for Permian to play a team from the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex until the third round for the playoffs. Now, however, Permian would play Fort Worth-area teams in the first round of the playoffs, but still could not play Jesuit until round 3. Permian did play Dallas Jesuit in Odessa during the regular season in 1988, winning 48-2. Jesuit's only points came on a missed-PAT runback, which was a new rule instituted that year. Also, Jesuit's helmet is shown as white and orange with a sort of wildcat's head logo on it: in actuality, the Jesuit Rangers' football helmets are solid gold, with no logo on them.

• Permian was also depicted as playing "San Angelo" in the quarterfinal round. There are actually two high schools in the San Angelo Independent School District; San Angelo Central High School (the district's only 5A school) had, until 1998, been in the same district for football as Permian (having since been transferred, for football only, to the district with Lubbock and Amarillo schools), and could only have played Permian in the quarterfinal round (owing to the structure of UIL playoffs) if they had qualified. However, Central finished 5th in the district that year, and as only two teams from each district qualified in 1988, Permian and Central did not play in the 1988 playoffs.

• In the movie, the top-ranked Permian Panthers defeated the hapless Marshall Bulldogs in a non-district game. In real life, the third-ranked Marshall Mavericks (whose colors are red and white, not purple and gold) won the game over fourth-ranked Permian 13-12. In the movie, the game is played on a Friday night in Odessa. In real life, it was played at Maverick Stadium in Marshall on a Saturday afternoon. Permian's football team chartered a jet for the 500+ mile trip from Odessa to Marshall, spawning controversy on the cost of the trip. Played before a crowd of more than 12,000 fans at Maverick Stadium, the game was on a searing September afternoon where the temperature topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38°C). The footage shown in the movie is from a game against the Midland High Bulldogs, who weren't mentioned in the movie. Permian defeated the Dawgs 42-0 in district play, but the two teams ended up in a three-way tie along with Midland Lee for the district title.

• In reality, the three teams tied for best district record were Permian, Midland Lee, and Midland High, all with 5-1 district records. In the movie, Permian and Lee are joined not by Midland but by Abilene Cooper, and each team has two district losses. The tiebreaking coin flip was held at a truck stop outside of Midland, and Midland High lost (Cooper in the movie), so Permian and Lee went on. Midland High's missing the playoffs was particularly poignant as it had not been to the playoffs since 1951 and would not get to go on to post-season play until 2002.

• Permian is portrayed in the movie as a single large high school in a small, one-horse town in West Texas. In reality, Odessa was a city of nearly 100,000 people at the time of the events portrayed in the movie, and is part of a metropolitan area of nearly 250,000 combining the populations of Midland and Ector counties. (The quaint downtown shown in the trailer for the movie is actually Manhattan, Kansas.) Also, Permian was (and still is) only one of two large Class 5A high schools in Odessa. The other and first high school in the city, Odessa High School (mascot: the Bronchos), was never mentioned in any way in the movie, despite the fact that they have always played Permian every year, as the two schools have been in the same UIL district since Permian opened in 1959 as well as sharing Ratliff Stadium with Permian. An entire chapter in the book is devoted to the "Civil War" between the schools.

• In the movie, Odessa is portrayed as being a mostly Anglo town with a sizeable African-American population and virtually no Hispanics. In 1988, out of the almost 100,000 people that lived in Odessa, one-third were Hispanic while African-Americans made up only 5% of the population.

• Ratliff Stadium is depicted as the location for Permian football practices. In reality, the team mostly practices on campus, and the stadium (which both Permian and Odessa High use) is on the outskirts of town in a fairly unpopulated area and about three miles (five km) away from the Permian High campus. It is also unlikely that children would be playing touch football near the stadium, as depicted in the movie, as few houses were nearby at that time. The area around the stadium has grown dramatically since then (which caused an anachronism in the movie — the houses you see near the stadium weren't there then!).

• Also, while Ratliff Stadium has had artificial turf since its opening, in 1988 it had the original AstroTurf, not the modern FieldTurf surface seen on the stadium in the film.

• The team is depicted as practicing in full pads and with full contact on the first day of practice. Under UIL rules, teams cannot use pads or hit until the 4th day of practice.

• Boobie Miles, in the book, injured his leg by getting his foot caught on the astroturf during a pre-season scrimmage against Amarillo Palo Duro at Jones Stadium in Lubbock. In the movie he is tackled by two players at the knee during a blowout non-district game at Ratliff Stadium.

• Don Billingsley's father Charlie is depicted in the movie as having won a state championship. In reality, his Permian team lost in the state finals.

• Carter is depicted playing "Hays" High School in the playoffs. Hays High is depicted as wearing green and white and nicknamed the Rams. The real Jack C. Hays High School, located 15 minutes south of Austin in Buda, instead uses red, white, and blue as its colors, and its nickname is Rebels. Hays was a Class 4A school in 1988 and did not become 5A until 2000. Hays was in the movie because the makers filmed crowd shots at Hays High during a Rebels home game against the Austin Westlake Chaparrals, another team depicted as being a Permian playoff victim.

• The players are shown wearing Under Armour clothing. The company was not founded until 1995; in 1988, founder Kevin Plank was attending high school in the Washington, D.C. area.

• At the end of the movie as Coach Gaines picks up Winchell's name, you can see the name "Case" in the third string quarterback position on the depth chart. This refers to former NFL quarterback Stoney Case.

• In the film you see a team playing with a quarterback wearing a Riddell Revolution helmet however, the Revolution style helmet did not come out until 2002.

• In the movie Boobie makes a reference to backup running back Chris Comer's white Adidas cleats. Booby claims that the only shoe that matters is the black Nike land sharks. When in fact the classic white Adidas cleats are the actual shoes the Panthers wore in the late 80's. The Nike cleats the players wear in the movie did not come out until 2002.

• In the movie, before the final game against Dallas Carter, many of the players from Carter can be seen wearing an Oakley protective eyeshield on his helmet. The Oakley eyeshield did not come around to the Football trend until the 2002-2003 season. However, the Carter players did wear green tinted eyeshields on their helmets during the actual Carter-Permian game.

• The actor who portrayed Ivory Christian, Lee Jackson, now plays football for the Austin Wrangler (an AFL team) and previously played for the Texas Longhorns.

• There were those who were extremely offended by the portrayal of Dallas Carter's coach Freddie James as a villianous coach. He was actually a well-respected coach in the city of Dallas with legendary stature.

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