Friday Night Lights

by H. G. Bissinger

  “I gave everybody his name,” said Gaines in his office one day, obviously discouraged. “Nobody has stepped forward and said they’re real interested.”

  But Mike was in the place of his childhood dreams, and he was at a time in his life when dreams still did come true, when David whipped Goliath, when unexpected pleasures fell from the clouds, when surprises rained down daily, when every feeling seemed like the most important on earth. He was still in high school.

  And who knew what might happen if he had a great game, riddled the nation’s finest high school defense, threw his passes true and straight and on a bead, made the right audibles at the line of scrimmage, didn’t wince once under the blitz that had knocked many a quarterback into terrified submission?

  Maybe the college recruiters in attendance, maybe even one from the University of Texas, would take their eyes off the Carter Cowboys and say silently to themselves that there was something about this Winchell kid, something indescribable, something that was worth taking a shot on. . . .

  The morning of the game, the weather in Austin was cold and rainy. As the starting time drew nearer and nearer, as he walked along the field where the Longhorns played and now he would play, his head became filled by a nagging feeling that he couldn’t get rid of, couldn’t let go of. He grew silent, as he always did on game day, and the familiar strains of agony began to show, the face so tight, the eyes filled not with the glitter of the challenge but the pressure of it, and he imagined a likely scenario for what would happen:

  It was too wet. He would never be able to throw the ball, never be able to get a grip on it. It wouldn’t be a field of dreams at all, but one of nightmares.

  II

  The locker room, laid out the night before by the student trainers and managers, was stunning.

  Each of the uniforms hung from the fourth mesh hole at the top of the locker. Each was turned the same way, with the names of the players across the back in black letters, just like in college, just like in the pros, but better, those uniforms symbolizing something richer, something deeper, because if they lost they would never wear them again.

  Winchell, Christian, Chavez, Billingsley, McDougal, Payne, Sweatt, Dean, Wilkins, Brown, Johnson . . .

  There was a stool in front of each of the lockers. The shoes were propped up against one of the rungs like Cinderella’s slippers. The pants and socks had been placed on top of the stool, each laid out the exact same way. On top of the pants and socks was the helmet, each turned the same way.

  Jerrod McDougal picked up his helmet and gently thumbed it. It wasn’t a corny gesture, but a gesture of awareness.

  “Damn,” he said in a whisper. “It’s here.

  “Win this one and we’re there, where we want to be.”

  Everything followed in the same sequence, as it always did, the ritual sounds of getting dressed that now seemed so automatic, so reflexive. The quick, bloodless tears of tape on the trainer’s table. The rustling sound of pants being pulled to the waist like the fitting of a wedding dress. The clapping sound of shoulder pads transforming a scrawny kid into a larger-than-life football player. The scratchy sounds of the psych-up music from the Walkmans, Bon Jovi for the whites and Public Enemy for the blacks. The fixed, familiar looks of the players, Winchell furtive and nervous; Billingsley tapping his legs up and down, those beautiful eyes alive and electric and darting; McDougal biting down on his lip, wanting to get it on so badly, bring those Carter Cowboy motherfuckers on; Christian trying to remain calm as his stomach boiled and churned, seething like a cauldron; Chavez stony and silently receding into his special, momentary world of violence.

  Outside on the soggy, spongy field, the Carter Cowboys conducted their pre-game warm-ups. They wore bright red uniforms that were the color of blood, and it was obvious just by the physical look of them that Permian hadn’t faced a team like this all year. Their best defensive player, linebacker Jessie Armstead, six two and 205 pounds, would be named national high school player of the year by SuperPrep magazine after the season and would sign a football scholarship with the University of Miami. Six other players on the defense would sign scholarships, with Oklahoma State, Tennessee, Houston, Baylor, and two with North Texas State. On the offense, the Carter line averaged six one and 243 pounds, and two players would sign scholarships, with SMU and Houston.

  With Boobie lost to the team, Permian, if it was blessed, might have one player sign a scholarship with a Division I school. Maybe Winchell. Maybe Ivory Christian. Or it might not have any at all.

  As the Carter Cowboys went through their warm-ups, the Pepettes arrived. They had traveled to Austin in a caravan of buses along with the band. A patrol car had followed them the entire 340-mile trip after the school received a series of phone calls threatening to sabotage the buses.

  The Pepettes arrived in their short skirts and letter jackets, their hair, usually so buoyant, falling in damp strings because of the rain. About five thousand Permian fans were already in the stands even though the game was an hour off, and at the sight of the Pepettes they started yelling their familiar chant.

  “MO-JO! MO-JO! MO-JO! MO-JO!”

  The Carter team, for no apparent reason, edged over to the Permian sideline en masse. They started making low, guttural sounds that sounded like dogs barking or the arfing of seals, then started clapping in unison. Several of them wore dark green visors over their helmets, a new equipment feature that served no obvious purpose other than to make football players look more menacing and killer-like than they already did. They started chanting something, and it was hard to make out what they were saying. Some said it was “Oreo! Oreo!” directed at a Permian teacher who was black. Then they started chanting something else, something that sounded like “Fuck O! Fuck O!”—perhaps a version of “Fuck Mojo! Fuck Mojo!” The Pepettes looked intimidated, scared, as the Carter Cowboys moved closer and closer in their blood red uniforms, the claps getting louder and louder, the chant rhythmic and taunting. When some of the Carter players were asked what they were saying, they just smirked contemptuously through their green death masks and walked away.

  The Permian band came in and began to make its traditional march around the stadium. It played “Grandioso,” with those stirring, rising notes. It moved to the very edge of the Permian side, as if it was a demilitarized zone, and then stopped and came back the other way. The band always went all the way around the stadium—that was a Permian trademark—but a decision had been made not to go over to the Carter side, presumably because of fears of trouble.

  The Carter band came in led by a drum major, the music sweet and jazzy. The Carter crowd, far smaller than the Permian crowd even though they had a much shorter distance to travel, broke into exuberant cries.

  “CARTER! CARTER! CARTER! CARTER!”

  The Carter band moved into the stands and members of the crowd started swaying dreamily back and forth as if they were dancing.

  The stadium filled up with more fans. Some came in through portal 17, right smack in the middle. Occasionally they went in the wrong direction, but they were quickly able to right themselves. In the waning minutes before game time there was a small stream of black passing white to get to the Carter side, and white passing black to get to the Permian side.

  The coaches gave their pre-game speeches in the locker room.

  From Gaines with Winchell, methodically going over the checks and the three-play packages. From Mayes with the linebackers, filling up an entire blackboard with defenses and read responsibilities that looked like an equation for nuclear fusion. From Belew with the running backs and the defensive ends. From Currie with the linemen. From Hollingshead with the receivers and defensive backs.

  “We’re one game away from playing a state football championship game. We deserve it, because we’ve worked our ass off in off-season, worked hard in August, had two-a-days, came up to practice in the morning. You got to have it in your heart that you want it worse than Carter does. It is a team sport, football is a team sport, th
e team that wants it the worst is gonna win this football game.”

  There was no other moment like it, and anyone who had ever played high school football could still recall it with perfect clarity, that emotional peak, that time in life when all energy was concentrated on a single point and everything was crystal clear. Whatever happened afterward, whatever success, or failure, or happiness, or horror, it could not be forgotten.

  Just before the team had left to fly to Austin, a final message of inspiration had been placed on the bulletin board of the field house. It came from Don Meredith, who had been an All-American quarterback at Southern Methodist University and an All-Pro quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys. But the game he felt proudest of took place when he had played quarterback for the Mount Vernon Purple and White Tigers in the homecoming game against Sulphur Spring.

  I knew at that moment I’d given everything I had to give, total commitment. Not holding back anything. Like being truly clean and truly free as far as maximum effort. It’s an emotional feeling, an emotional high that is basically unparalleled.

  There wasn’t a player in that locker room who didn’t innately understand exactly what Don Meredith was talking about. They had felt that feeling before, and they knew in their hearts they would feel it today in the gray drizzle of Memorial Stadium. As they huddled around Gaines, there wasn’t one who didn’t think that Permian, somehow, some way, would win.

  That was their great cutting edge. That’s what made them different. And they would not give it up, not against the Carter Cowboys with their 4.4 flyboys and their All-American hotshots and the wild-eyed fervor of their fans fueled by all those Kafkaesque court battles to stay in the playoffs, not against anyone.

  “There’s four teams left in the state of Texas, and the Permian Panthers are one of those four,” Gaines softly told his players moments before it was time to take to the field. They huddled around him on one knee, their faces so earnest, so filled with nervousness and hope, and they truly did seem like a family, the bunch of brothers that Gaines had talked about so long ago before the Odessa High game. It seemed corny then, the kind of sentiment coaches always tried to invoke. But it didn’t now. They were together, white and black and Hispanic, rich and poor, and they would stay that way for as long as they were a team, as long as they had another game to play.

  “We got to go out with the attitude that we are not going to get beat,” said Gaines. “We are not going to accept anything less than a win. That’s the attitude that we have to have. They’ve played some good football teams but I don’t think they’ve played anybody capable of getting after ’em for forty-eight minutes like we’re capable of getting after ’em.”

  Everything was in place for that to happen. Nothing was absent, not even the painful retching of Ivory Christian.

  His heaves echoed in the locker room as if he was choking, the sounds more horrible and violent than usual, but by now they had become reassuring, an encouraging vital sign.

  It meant that he, like everyone else, had come too far and been through too much not to win it all, not to go to State.

  III

  “Fuck you . . . motherfucker . . . bitch . . . ”

  The words came out of Derric Evans in a frothing torrent, anything he could think of, it didn’t really matter what it was, just as long as he whispered something every time he fell over Mike Winchell, just as long as it was foul and filthy, just as long as he let Winchell know that every time he took the snap from center there would be Derric Evans again, the All-American High School Hit Man, ready to hold him up again and whisper sweet nothings into his ear. It was all part of the rite, all part of the image, all part of the Intimidation Trip.

  “Pussy . . . bitch . . . ”

  It defined the savage spirit of the game.

  The Carter defense was every bit as good as the college scouts said it would be. Slivers of space closed instantaneously. Comer was buried under by five, six, seven Carter Cowboys as he tried to cut up to the outside. Billingsley, despite a noble effort, looked like a Lilliputian trying to block defensive ends and linebackers who were seven inches taller and forty pounds heavier. They were too big, too quick, too fast as he dove in front of them, flinging his body in a vain effort to stop them. Sometimes he got a piece of them, but most of the time they just sidestepped him like toreadors or pushed him away as though he was a bothersome younger cousin.

  Winchell was having tremendous difficulty throwing the ball, and it was hard to know why—the rain, or the nervousness of playing in Memorial Stadium, or his own silent prophecy of failure. The ball skittered off his hand, under-thrown, overthrown, nowhere near its intended target.

  For the first time all season, Permian was having trouble moving the ball at all, punting on three of its first four possessions. But so was Carter.

  Compared to Carter, the Permian defense had no individual talent at all except for Ivory Christian at middle linebacker and Hill at safety. But that didn’t matter. Like an exquisite machine, the defense fell for nothing, not the play fakes, not the flea flicker, not the three receiver-side formations or any of the other seventy-odd formations that Carter had run during the course of the season. The Permian players had been trained and molded to perfection, every ounce of skill extracted and made into something, and it showed stunningly.

  It was going to be a football game after all, a mean, relentless, thudding fight in the gray and the rain.

  With about three minutes left in the second quarter and the game scoreless, Permian faced a second and thirteen from the Carter 31. Comer got the ball on a pitch and moved around the right side. McDougal hung up the defensive end with a good block. Billingsley, using his entire body, momentarily wrapped up Derric Evans. Comer had daylight to the outside with Hill and Winchell running interference ahead of him. Hill got a piece of one defensive back. Winchell dove into another one and wiped him out. Comer was off now, the legs pumping, in full stride, furious, strong.

  A Carter player came from behind and lunged, grabbing hold of his jersey. Comer refused to go down, dragging the player along for several yards to the 15. The grip finally came loose, the player slipping to the ground as if he was sinking into a swamp, and Comer broke off into the end zone.

  The extra point was no good, but that was all right, because each of the Permian fans who had driven on icy, dangerous roads to come to Austin knew at that very moment that the only thing in the world better than the vaunted Carter Cowboy defense was the magic of Mojo. The Carter side fell silent, pulling out umbrellas to ward off the miserable rain that now started falling again. The only sounds came from the band, not spirited or militaristic, but an almost mournful wail.

  The Cowboys came right back, moving fifty-eight yards in a minute to tie the score, the touchdown coming on a seventeen-yard pass from quarterback Robert Hall to flanker Marcus Grant.

  The Cowboys’ extra point was good, giving them a 7-6 lead, and the Carter side reverberated with newly discovered enthusiasm:

  “MO-JO! YOU GOT TO GO! MO-JO! YOU GOT TO GO! MO-JO! YOU GOT TO GO!”

  Permian got the ball back at its own 20. Aided by a twenty-five yard scramble on third down by Winchell and an interference penalty against Carter, it moved down to the Carter 14 with four seconds left before the half.

  Alan Wyles, a talented kicker who absolutely hated to kick, came in to try a thirty-one-yard field goal. The kick reflected his angst. It fluttered painfully, like something in slow motion, taking forever to reach the crossbar. Finally, the referees gave the signal. It was wide to the left.

  Permian was down by a point with two periods left to play.

  McDougal walked through the locker room at halftime with an almost frantic look on his face.

  “This is it!” he yelled, angry, his eyes ablaze, filled with a mixture of venom and fear. “You want your last game to be here? These punks are just askin’ to be rocked! Let’s rock ’em and go home! What else do you have to do over Christmas holidays?”

  “Play football,”
several players answered back.

  The defense had performed wonderfully, holding Carter to 14 yards on the ground and 117 passing. On offense, Comer had already gained 109 yards. But Winchell was only 2 of 16 passing for 42 yards and 1 interception. He was losing the struggle to the old, familiar demons.

  Right before the second half began, Gaines gathered the players around him once again, his voice rising as he spoke.

  “We gotta hammer ’em. We gotta keep hammerin’ at ’em. Our conditioning’s gotta pay off for us. Our discipline’s gotta pay off for us. Our mental toughness has to pay off for us.

  “Keep diggin’! Keep scratchin’! Keep clawin’! Give a fanatical effort this second half! That’s what it’s gonna take! A fanatical effort! Better than you’ve ever given in your entire life! You all understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Comer fumbled to begin the second half. The Cowboys took over at the Permian 49 but couldn’t move the ball and had to punt.

  The kick was blocked by Steve Womack.

  Permian had a first down at the Carter 17.

  “MO-JO! MO-JO! MO-JO! MO-JO!”

  The cries from the soaked-to-the bone fans carried to the heavens.

  But the Permian drive sputtered and it was time for Wyles to agonize his way through another field goal, this one from the 30 instead of the 31.

  The kick fluttered painfully, just like the last one. It took forever to reach the crossbar, just like the last one. But it was good.