Summary

Preface – Since H. G. Bissinger was a young teenager in the Philadelphia suburbs, he has been fascinated by the idea that football holds small towns together. As a newspaper editor in his thirties, he travels to Odessa, Texas in March, 1988. Odessa is located in West Texas. Bissinger has heard that as many as twenty-thousand fans attend the Friday night football games of Permian High School's Panthers. Oil fields along Highway 80 surround the rural working class town. The downtown is largely deserted; the eastern side is suburban, modern, but many of the houses are for sale; and the Southside is largely composed of minorities. Bissinger realizes that his trip to Odessa will be more than about just football, but issues of survival, American values, race, politics, the dreams of residents, and so on. He decides to leave his job at the...