Permian ended the decade of the 1990s with perhaps its most shameful season ever. Under the once-sacred lights of Ratliff, Midland High beat Permian for the first time since 1973 in a 35-3 embarrassment. Hated sister city rival Midland Lee, on its way to a second straight state championship, toyed with the Panthers in a 34-22 victory. Players in the system began to quit at alarming rates. Attendance was down, and the team was in danger of going winless in the district before it beat Odessa High in the last game of the season. Desperate for some measure of relief, coach Mayes called the victory a “great win.” But it wasn’t.
I know Randy Mayes, since he had been an assistant coach at Permian when I was there. I went out to dinner with him and his wife, Cynthia. I saw him teach in the classroom. He is perhaps the biggest critic of Friday Night Lights. Last year in an interview with Texas Monthly, he called it “a novel” and said that I would “do anything to sensationalize.”
Randy Mayes was not only a superb defensive coach when I knew him, but far more important, a superb teacher and husband and man. I hardly felt sorry for him during that final season of the 1990s. The job of head coach brought him singular status in the community. It brought him a base salary of $69,000 a year. He didn’t have to bother with the educational inconvenience of setting foot in the classroom to teach a class, since his only job was football. But I could still imagine what he was going through in 1999 as the legend of Permian turned to bitter memory. I could imagine the pressure and hurt and scornful ridicule heaped on him. Because once upon a time I myself had witnessed the mercilessness of it, not with the clever eyes of a novelist, but the clear eyes of a journalist.
Football may have a slightly different place in the psyche of Odessa than it had a decade ago, but it still holds an iron grip. The sight of a boy, a high school boy, sacrificing himself in the service of team and town on a glowing field is still a powerful intoxicant, just as long as it is accompanied by the intoxicant of winning. So I wasn’t surprised to learn the fate of Randy Mayes under the Friday night lights of Odessa.
He was fired.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people to thank. One of them is Michael Carlisle, whose optimism and guidance became a crucial source of support for me. He is a gifted agent, but far more important than that, he is a wonderful friend. Another is my editor at Addison-Wesley, Jane Isay, whose enthusiasm for the project was infectious, and who aided me immeasurably in the painful process of trying to organize all these swirling thoughts about Odessa and high school football and American life into something coherent. Another is Gene Roberts, the executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who graciously gave me a leave from my job on the paper so I could pursue my journey and move to Odessa.
I could not have written this book without the towns-folk of Odessa. I have never found a group of people more down-to-earth, more honest, more willing to express their opinions without restraint. I am indebted to all of them.
I am also indebted to the Permian Panther football program. I thank Coach Gary Gaines for allowing me to become part of the team for the 1988 season. I also thank the members of his staff, assistant varsity coaches Tam Hollingshead, Mike Belew, Randy Mayes, and Larry Currie, and team trainer Tim “Trapper” O’Connell.
Above all, I thank the players themselves. It is hard for me to express the feelings that I have for them, and as I sit here back in the suburbs, I think about them all the time. I remember the first time I saw them in the field house, with no idea of what they would be like and how they would take to me, or, for that matter, how I would take to them. And I remember how I thought of them at the end, as kids that I adored.
Copyright © 1990 by H. G. Bissinger
Afterword copyright © 2000 by H. G. Bissinger
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