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High School Teachers and College Professors High School Teachers “Friday Night Lights is a wonderful book. I've had great success recommending the book to a variety of people from students who are reluctant readers to fellow teachers and coaches who are perhaps more reluctant. The book appeals to them because many in my community recognize the conflicts and issues in the book as very relevant to their own lives. "As a teacher in a state and a high school where football plays an important role in the development of a shared identity, the book Friday Night Lights is an interesting and relevant commentary on both the positives and negatives that come with the formation of such an identity. "The book is able to grab a certain type of reader: one who has an emotional investment in football similar to the players, coaches, parents and community members mentioned in the book. The reader then establishes his or her own connection to the book through the shared experiences and feelings. "But what the book also does that I think is more important is it allows the reader to gain an understanding of all the different emotions and perspectives that are happening in those around them. For example, high school football players can share and feel the disappointment of Boobie Miles or the nervousness and anticipation of Mike Winchell because they have or are experiencing the same things in their own lives. However, the emotions that the parents in the book feel become recognizable in their own parents and community. "This really is a rare book then. One that allows the reader to connect with characters who have experiences similar to their own, but at the same time it allows the reader to gain perspective on those experiences which could not be seen because they were occurring at the same time parallel to their own.
“Friday Night Lights was chosen as a book suitable for the West Springfield High School's summer reading list for a variety of reasons. First, the topic appeals to the majority of young male adults, a population that is least likely to pick up a book over the summer. The use of first person brings an intimacy that our high school seniors find appealing. The actions and experiences that the young men in the book are involved in bring a level of enlightenment and curiosity to the readers. The raw and realistic language validate the honesty of the experiences that are described by Bissinger. On of our students, Mike Keller, observed, ‘Most books don't tell the true story behind high school football such as puking your guts out in the lockeroom. It showed the highs and lows of the football season.’ Our students who play football identified with the threat of career-ending injuries and the seriousness of not playing for whatever reason. Unfortunately, the arrogance and false sense of security that some of the football players exhibited were not recognized as a cautionary tale. This and many other issues invite spirited and strongly-opinionated discussions that involve the whole class. This books works on all levels for our summer reading list.”
“For five years we have included this book on our summer reading list for tenth graders. We put it on the list because the philosophy of that program is to offer books we think students will love reading. And they love this one. It shows life as they know it—intense and gritty, revolving around sports, small communities, and dreams of getting out. Yet it is, at the same time, an intensely moral book, one which questions the values of the world it so powerfully evokes.”
“Friday Night Lights speaks of human experience. It is a poignant book for it deals with the most basic of all human endeavors, self-discovery. I recommended this book for inclusion in our systems "book list" because it details the struggle of adolescents defining themselves.The vehicle for self-discovery in Bissinger's Friday Night Lights is high school football. As both a high school English teacher and football coach I have recommended Friday Night Lights to numerous students, given it to several of my players and have requested my school library to acquire a copy. "Students, whether athletes or not can relate to the struggles of the players from Permian High School. These young men face pressure from themselves, from their teammates, their peers and their town to win football games. For some players the experience is fulfilling and rewarding while for others it is painful and traumatic. Reading about these experiences provide a fantastic springboard for discussions concerning self-image, persona and the importance setting and accomplishing goals.”
“Friday Night Lights is not just a book, it is Americana. Baseball may be the national past time, but any high school student can tell you that football is king in America's high schools. High school students who are required to read enduring favorites such as Catcher in the Rye and Paradise Lost should be encouraged to read Friday Night Lights. The story is inspirational, at time hard to believe, often depressing, but also humorous. Through the effective writing of H.G. Bissinger, you will find that football is not only a game, but football is a religion with Odessa, Texas. The story is a story of heroes, villains, dreams, and lost opportunities. Football is portrayed as a vehicle where students allow parents to relive their glory days of the past. We learn that football is more valuable than gold, an education, and often life itself! "Friday Night Lights speaks to students, not just the football players or the jocks. It speaks to them in a way that many other books can not or will not. I highly recommend that high school students read Friday Night Lights to prepare them for the "real world" of American Society.”
“As a boarding school teacher and coach for some 20 years, the constant struggle to balance the academic and athletic dimensions of the educational process has not been an easy task. H G Bissinger's evocative, cautionary tale Friday Night Nights lays this conflict bare in the stark terms of Texas school boy football completing dominating the academic curriculum, indeed dominating the very life of Odessa, Texas. Perhaps the full blown madness of Texas football is the extreme, but these tensions exist, to some degree, in each high school community, from the staid boarding schools of New England to the supposedly laid back suburban schools of Southern California. "We are a society literally entranced by the pursuit of the elusive perfect game, the heroic championship season; we are fatally attracted to the absolute commitment and purity of those Texas teenagers sweating through the pre-season all the way to the memorable final game. And yet we recognize the absurd excess of it all, the physical, emotional and educational damage that comes along with the heroics. Like no other author, Bissinger has allowed us a fascinating glimpse at the olympian heights of schoolboy athletics and the prices paid by the entire community for this single-minded obsession. One student at my school, Panos Voulgaris, a working class "post graduate" noted with reverence, "I read the book each year before I begin the football season." H G Bissinger stokes his love affair for the gridiron, and reminds him to keep this passion in check, at arms' length. We all dream of those Friday Night Lights, as well we should. The author has done a great service by showing how those dreams can often turn absurd and indeed nightmarish.
“We chose Friday Night Lights as a summer reading book a few years ago. Since then it has become of the favorites for our juniors. The book works on several levels: a view into a football world undreampt by most Easterners; a commentary on diversity and tolerance and intolerance; an insight into a peculiarly male dominated society; a consideration of what is considered of value and the lengths people are willing to go to attain that value. It is a wonderful book, combining readability, exciting action and troubling observations. We applaud your effort!”
“I regularly teach H. G. Bissinger's, Friday Night Lights in my American Studies courses to both undergraduates and high school students. It continues to be one of those rare books which can speak to every kind of student because it addresses issues central to American life in a setting with which they are all familiar. But this is not just a book about high school football. Even students who initially approach — Friday Night Lights — as a “sports book,” quickly discover that this text goes far beyond sports, exploring issues of community, culture, race, politics, equity, and citizenship, in compelling and often uncomfortable ways. It forces readers to ask important questions about living in a pluralistic society and balancing the things which we say we value as Americans-education, equality, fairness-with our equally zealous passions for winning at all costs and our adulation of athletics and athletes. Bissinger pushes far beyond our mania for sport and entertainment in this text, holding a mirror up to contemporary American culture to reveal a complicated and contradictory image. "As a teacher and as a coach, I have read few books which better explore contemporary American culture than Friday Night Lights. This text disturbs, enlightens, amuses, and amazes—sometimes all in one chapter. It is a riveting and transformative book for students, one which forces them to ask significant questions about their country and its values. No students finishes Friday Night Lights unchanged, and every student finishes it with questions — important questions — about the world in which she or he lives and what it means to be an American.”
College Professors “Friday Night Lights is an ideal book for many academic courses because Bissinger uses this story of a high school football season as a means to address important social issues -- the role of sports in American society, race relations, sex roles, social class divisions, and the quality of public education. He details the allure of sports, the adulation and near god-like status of players and the price they pay for this brief moment of glory in their lives. He does it in a way that students find absolutely riveting. Friday Night Lights is one of those rare books that they read from cover to cover because there is so much they can relate to based on their own high school experiences.”
"I have used Friday Night Lights twice now, to open my doctoral course on the cultural context of education, required of all students in Purdue’s innovative cohort program in educational administration. My students, seasoned teachers and school administrators, aspire to be superintendents. The book generates intense interest as we discuss the complex and interrelated issues of race, sport and society, and schooling present in its pages. Bissinger’s portraits of Permian High School and the community of Odessa, Texas engage the mind, but also grip the heart. My students nearing the end of their program still mention to me how valuable the book is as a means to learn about and interpret the cultural context of education. And, we all want to know what has now happened to Boobie Miles, Brian Chavez, Don Billingsley, and the rest of the unforgettable cast that grace the pages of this memorable book!”
"Friday Night Lights remains one of the richest community studies focused on youth. Its effort to use a window on high school athletics to examine a vital array of social institutions and relationships is fresh and revealing. Practitioners and policy-makers alike can benefit from a sharper understanding of the way in which school children attempt to shape their own "educational" experiences based upon their unique perspective on adult culture. Friday Night Lights accomplishes this through an appealing presentation that moves across individuals, groups, and organizations. The adolescents in this study of an athletically ambitious west Texas town use the resources available to them, including their own classrooms,school corridors, and playing fields, to serve their own developing aspirations, a strategy that eventually reshapes all of these institutions inunanticipated directions. It is an engaging study that resonates with readers from high school through graduate school by providing vivid examples of the ways in which schools, their students and faculty, are deeply embedded in larger communities.”
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