Friday Night Lights

[Heaven_Bound]

I know most people in Texas has heard of Odessa Permian a.ka. the Mojo. This movie is about a high school football team in Texas that was very dominant in the 80's and early 90's. The whole town basically closes down when a football game is in progress to watch the game in the their 20,000 capacity turf stadium.

The only cast I am familiar with is

Billy Bob Thornton as the Head Coach (perfect choice)
Tim McGraw

It is scheduled to be released October 8, 2004

I remember we played these guys in a regional playoff game and we were slaughtered somewhere in the 70-0 range. So if it shows a regional playoff game against Hanks high school years of 90-91 look for the left tackle.

 

[Islander]

The movie is concerned with the 1988 season.

When I saw the ads during the Olympics the ads turned my stomach. To make a movie glorifying such scum is hideous and advertising during the Olympics shows that Hollywood is as lacking morals and ethics as 1988 Odessa. For anybody not familiar with the story the movie is based upon the 1990 book Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Odessa Permian High School wanted to win games at all costs and found ways to do that. What they are most known for is recruiting the best football players from other schools and paying their families to either move into the district or pretend they lived in the district. There was a lot of criticism for that but since people in the community were offering jobs and property at discounted prices to the families instead the school paying those people to move there nothing could be done to stop it. Finally in the early 90's (I think 1992 but I may be wrong) their wins were forfeited when it was discovered one of their main players didn't actually live in the district but was just pretending to live there.

Among many other unethical tactics is rewarding players with sex from pom pom girls and violation of no pass no play. Shortly before this season Texas became the first state to pass a no pass no play law giving strict requirements calling for athletes to get all a's and b's before joining the team but the school ignored this by giving the athletes far easier tests to insure they would get great grades.