Buzz Bissinger is an investigative journalist most famously known for his nonfiction book, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. Bissinger began his research for the book by moving to Odessa, Texas home of the Permian Panthers. Friday Night Lights focuses on the school’s football team, the winningest high-school football team in Texas history, and the relationship it had with the town. Bissinger fully immersed himself in the culture and dynamic of Odessa, spending a year there, even enrolling his kids in school there. He had not only interviewed over 100 people from the town, but he had spent countless hours with the kids and the team that was a part of the 1988 season. Friday Night Lights was originally published in 1990, and has since been turned into a film and a TV series.
Summary “There was the rose-colored images of innocence and valor and healthy competition, attributes that we continue to insist upon from
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Millions of dollars are being spent on high school programs. Booster clubs, school boards, and private sponsors are paying all of this money for coaches, facilities, travel fees, and equipment and excusing it as perfectly acceptable because it supposedly helps the community and other school sports. The author struggles to justify spending that much money on high school sports when educational resources are shrinking. High school sports are also being professionalized more, and athletes are often exploited as a result. High school coaches are recruiting eighth graders, and making empty promises. Steroid abuse is an issue for high schoolers trying to get ahead. Though many realize these things are issues, people cling to the supposed character building sports provide, and the glorified stories of a lucky few. Bissinger feels that high school athletics will continue to devolve and ruin all of their positive