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Analysis Of Friday Night Lights By Jay Coakley

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What can be described as “A subdiscipline of sociology and physical education that studies sports as social phenomena,” sociology of sport can be applied to most any sport today (Coakley, 2015, pg. 9), especially football. Football is a perfect example to showcase most of the concepts within the field of sport sociology. These concepts are greatly detailed in Jay Coakley’s textbook, Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (2015) and provides a solid base to understanding them. Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger (1990) provides the perfect football story to outline Coakley’s concepts, especially since it is a recollection of what happened in real-life to the 1988 Permian Panther football team from Odessa, TX. Friday Night Lights is mentioned within Coakley’s textbook (Coakley, 2015; pgs. 470-471) and even Bissinger himself asked important sociological questions that lie within Coakley’s textbook (Bissinger, 2015; pg. xiii). General implications, school spirit, race, social class, politics, and …show more content…

This can be contributed to the “selection-in process” that Coakley (2015) describes on page 466 of his book. These students choose to participate, excel at tryouts, and are selected to be part of the team. In Friday Night Lights (2015), the entire town of Odessa knows and expects this from the football team and gives them status in town because of it. Being part of the cheerleading squad, the Pepettes, was a revered position as well (pg. 150). Mike Winchell, the Permian quarterback indicated it “…gave him a certain status, because just about everybody in town knew who the quarterback was… (pg. 8)” and Don Billingsley felt that as a player, it gave him special status among his peers, “regardless of how he performed in class (pg. 147).” Even a classmate noted that the football players had a “glorious identity (pg.

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Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger, follows the Permian Panthers, a successful high school football team in Texas, while they do everything in their power to win the state championship. Near the beginning of the book, we learn about the star running back on the Panthers, Boobie Miles, and how he has college coaches all over the state who are offering him scholarships to come and play for them. Unfortunately for both Boobie and Permian, Miles injures his knee before the season even starts which forces the team to fall back on the second string running back. Boobie’s knee injury was not the only thing that bothered him, he deals with a lot of racial discrimination also. “The black population in Odessa was quite small- about 5 percent” (102).

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Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights” paints a perfect picture of the culture of Texas in the 1980’s. It illustrates just how much football played in a role in the lives of everyone in the community, as well as the ideals these people had. Football was all that they cared about, and the people sacrificed other aspects of their life for it. With all of the money going towards football, education in the state suffered. The classrooms in high schools were outdated, and teachers were underpaid, ultimately compromising the quality of the student’s education.

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As a result of the football fanfare, gender roles support deviant behavior within Odessa’s community. The females throughout the book play a small traditional role within the masculine community. Females that attend Permian high school dream of one day becoming a Pepette. A Pepette is a cheerleader devoted to a specific football player. Pepettes act as servants for their designated player; they bake football themed desserts, decorate signs, carry their books and even get paid for sex.

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The sun illuminates countless all-American names, with the occasional Coke or Papa John’s sponsor signs. The play clock ticks down to zero, and the stadium is finally filled to maximum capacity. Kickoff commences, players scramble across the field, and suddenly the only problems in the world hinge on if the Nike plastered football is past the downs marker. There are the elite suites high above the stadium cloaked in shade, but the majority are cramped and blisteringly hot. We are all united as one, cheering our team to victory, and thriving on the culture that is modern day sports.

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Bissinger emphasizes this point to persuade the readers to understand how detrimental pouring large amounts of money and energy towards the high school football team severely impact the future of all the students in Permian High. The small pond these children are living in disrupts their academic success, and the adults fail to recognize this notion. A teacher of thirty-one years, Jane Franks explains that they are now “deadened to themselves and to the world around them” because of their constant lack of effort in class (133). Bissinger includes her views on the effects of the obsession with football, and how the football players are encouraged to only focus on the sport. Franks describes them as ‘deadened’ to the outside world, further examining how unprepared these young adults are for the real world.

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