Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger

player. But the thought of a serious in to Boobie
gnawed at him. He had been preparing for this season the moment the last one had ended eight months earlier. He was methodical and meticulous about everything, the kind of coach,
the kind of man, who prepared for every possible situation
through tireless work. And now came something he had no
control over.
    Boobie's loss was just the kind of news he did not want to
hear, an omen that the season was tailspinning out of control,
somehow jinxed. If the knee was wrecked, there went the
team's star before a single down had even been played. And
who could possibly take his place? Who could match the physical skill of Boobie? On the bus ride home he hardly said a word
to anyone, the gray shadows of Brownfield and Seagraves and
Seminole and Andrews falling across his face like a fine mist.
Instead he leaned against a railing right behind the bus driver,
gazing at the highway through the bug-splattered windshield,
lost in thought, the tension of a season that hadn't even started
yet reducing him to silence.
    The next day, Boobie came to the field house with a huge
smile creasing his face. A doctor's exam had showed it was more
a sprained ligament than anything else. The doctor told him he
could play again in ten to fourteen days. Boobie might only
miss two or three games of the season.
    But then, almost as abruptly, the dream changed again. A
second examination by another doctor did reveal damage to
the knee. Boobie needed arthroscopic surgery. He would be
out at least a month before he could come back, and there were
some, like Trapper, who believed the road back might take
much longer than that.
    "It's not an impossibility that Boobie can come back. Can he
mentally overcome the injury to come back? Can he be full
speed? You have surgery on your knee, they cut it open, and
then they say, `Fuck, you're okay, go back out there.' It's kind of a gut check. Do you really want to play football? Can you really
come back from it?"

    It meant adjusting to a knee brace. It meant not flinching an
inch when the knee was hit full-speed by a helmet, not succumbing to the perpetual fear of pain, not running with the
slightest tentativeness, which was the edge between a great
player and a mediocre one. And it meant doing all these things
at the age of eighteen.
    In the aftermath of that meaningless scrimmage in the summer twilight in Lubbock, Trapper envisioned a definite fate for
the Boobie Miles who had been the dazzling jewel of the Watermelon Feed.
    "I think he's just gonna drift away."
    With the season opener a week away, the pressure now intensified on everyone else, on Brian Chavez with his metamorphic
ruthlessness and Ivory Christian with his love-hate ambivalence
and Jerrod McDougal with his religious zeal. If Permian was to
go to State, they would have to perform in ways that no one
had ever imagined, rise to heights beyond even the expectations of the fans. But no one would have to have a greater year,
be more superb, than Mike Winchell at quarterback.
    Now, more than ever, it was up to him.

     

THE
SEASON

     

CHAPTER 4

Dreaming
of Heroes
    I
    WHEN HIS FATHER GAZED AT HIM FROM THE HOSPITAL BED
with those sad eyes that had drawn so narrow from the drinking and the smoking and the endless heartache, Mike Winchell
had been thirteen years old. He knew something was wrong
because of the way his father acted with him, peaceful in the
knowledge he didn't have to put up a fight anymore. Mike tried
to joke with him as he always had, but Billy Winchell didn't have
time for playful banter. He was serious now, and he wanted
Mike to listen.
    He brought up Little League and warned Mike that the
pitchers were going to get better now and the hone runs
wouldn't come as easily as they once had. He told him he had
to go to college, there could be no two ways about it. He let him
know it was okay to have it little beer every now and then because the Winchells