Friday Night Lights It's just a game, right? And everyone loves football? Combined with the recent media examples of parents who get a little bit too worked up about their children's sports, all of these factors might seem to indicate that the setting of H.G. Bissinger's modern sports classic Friday Night Lights is totally arbitrary. But the fact is, this story of the tragedies of a Texas high school football team couldn't happen just anywhere, in any town USA. Instead, Bissinger paints an impressive picture of a 1980's town in Texas where everything revolves around high school football. The town is economically and racially torn. The Panthers are largely white (with some exceptions) and the town, which was once prosperous, is now suffering a bust after a period of boom in the oil industry. People have lost everything they own, with no hopes of getting it back, thus the town's residents focus all of their energy and time upon the game of football and the young men who come to symbolize youth and living for the pleasures of today. People wait...

They are talented, 170-pound guys for the most part, who could, if they worked hard, perhaps play decently at a college level. However, the top college recruiters often show little interest -- these are ordinary athletes, for the most part, but their combined spirit and devotion is what makes them great. Everything that these boys work for is for the moment of the high school games, not the future. The 1980's Texas town on the Permian basin of the state has come not to believe in a future anymore. Students waste time in class, and injured athletes robbed of their glory waste time on the bench. Thus the protagonist of the book might be, not a specific character, but the hopes of the town itself for the boys to win the state championship game. The Panthers lose, but what the town has really lost is the ability to give young people…