Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (26 page)

"I don't mind that it's emphasized," she said of football. "I
just wish our perspective was turned a little bit. I just wish we
could emphasize other things. The thing is, I don't think we
should have to go to the booster club to get books. I don't think
we should have to beg everyone in town for materials."

But that was the reality, and it seemed unlikely to change.
The value of high school football was deeply entrenched. It was
the way the community had chosen to express itself. The value
of high school English was not entrenched. It did not pack the
stands with twenty thousand people on a Friday night; it did
not evoke any particular feelings of pride one way or another.
No one dreamed of being able to write a superb critical analysis
of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake from the age of four on.

LaRue Moore knew that. So did Dorothy Fowler, who fumed
to a visitor one day, "This community doesn't want academic
excellence. It wants a gladiatorial spectacle on a Friday night."
As she made that comment a history class that met a few yards
down the hall did not have a teacher. The instructor was an
assistant football coach. He was one of the best teachers in the
school, dedicated and lively, but because of the legitimate pressures of preparing for a crucial game, he did not have time to go to class. That wasn't to say, however, that the class did not
receive a lesson. They learned about American history that day
by watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundancc Kid on video.

III

When Hugh Hayes became the new superintendent of the
Ector County school system in 1986, he had known exactly
what he was getting into. When he interviewed for the job and
was given a tour of Odessa, one of' the very first sights he was
shown was the football stadium. He was also given a look at the
enormous sign heralding the team's fantastic achievements in
the state playoffs. When he took the job, the only piece of advice he was given by the outgoing superintendent was never to
promise anyone Permian season tickets.

"I felt like not a lot of attention had been paid to acade►n-
ics," he said. "That's not to say they had an inferior program. I
don't think an effort had been made to capitalize on the potential they had in the kids. Whatever you did in academics, you
were going to look pretty good, because there wasn't much going on."

With the backing of a school board dedicated to making improvements, Hayes went to work to boost academic performance in Odessa. He pushed to improve test scores. He raised
the number of honors courses from five to thirty. He started an
advanced placement program and stopped making excuses for
poor academic performance on the basis of a child's socio-eco-
nomic background. A school district this size, with approximately twenty-six thousand students in all grades, should have
eight to ten National Merit Scholars a year, not just one, said
Hayes.

But he also knew there was only so much he could do. As he
put it, "Public schools reflect a community's desires, feelings,
dreams," and nowhere did those dreams unfold more powerfully than they did on a football field.

"It has put Odessa on the map. It has given them a sense of
pride I'm not sure could be achieved any other way. It has created a sense of expectation for the kids that is admirable. I
think it has instilled in these kids that go through Permian a
real sense of confidence.

"If that sort of confidence and attitude could he transferred
into the academic arena, that would he wonderful. I don't see
that transfer."

The effect of creating those values in an academic setting had
been well documented. The most famous example had occurred at Garfield High in Los Angeles, where a teacher named
Jaime Escalante had astounding success in turning Hispanic
students, most of' whom had been labeled delinquent dunces,
into some of the finest calculus students in the country. Escalante, whose efforts were chronicled in the film Stand and Deliver, did it by turning his class into an important symbol of
status. He did it by accepting nothing but the best from students, by forcing therm to sign contracts and to come early to
class. In the classroom he cajoled and badgered and tormented
and loved. A mystique built up around his calculus class-if
you could make it through there, you had truly accomplished
something spectacular, something no one thought you could
do-and success bred more success. Soon almost everybody
wanted to prove that he or she had the stuff to master calculus
with Escalante.

Permian had a program every bit as remarkable, one that
tradition and mystique had made an irresistible symbol everyone coveted, one whose demands were ceaseless, one in which
the instructors cajoled and badgered and tormented and loved.

It was all a matter of values, of priorities.

At Garfield High the priority was calculus, where a student's
mastery could potentially lead to an academic scholarship and
a career in computer science or engineering. At Permian the
priority was football, which beyond the powerful memories and
the wonderful joy it created year after year for the town of
Odessa, rarely led to scholarships or careers. In the history of the program, only two players had gone on to extended careers
in the pros.

"If' we prepared our kids academically as we prepared them
for winning the state championship, there is no telling where
we would be now," said former school board member Vickie
Gomez with typical bluntness. "If we prepared them half as
hard academically, there is no telling where we would be." But
Gomez didn't foresee any great changes.

"Football reigns, football is king," she said. "In Odessa, it's
God, country, and Mojo football."

IV

In his first class of the day, correlated language arts, it class
for students at least two years below their grade level in English, Boobie Miles spent the period working on a short research paper that he called "The Wonderful Life of Zebras."
He thumbed through various basic encyclopedia entries on the
zebra. He ogled at how fast they ran ("Damn, they travel thirty
miles") and was so captivated by a picture of a zebra giving birth
that he showed it to a classmate ("Want to see it have a baby,
man?"). By the end of the class, Boobie produced the following
thesis paragraph:

Zebras are one of the most unusual animals in the world today.
The zebra has many different kind in it nature. The habitat of the zebra
is in wide open plain. Many zebras have viris types o/ relatives.

He then went on to algebra I, a course that the average
college-bound student took in ninth grade and some took
in eighth. Because of his status as it special needs student,
Boobie hadn't taken the course until his senior year. He was
having difficulty with it and his average midway through the
fall was 71.

After lunch it was on to creative writing, where Boobie spent a few minutes playing with a purple plastic gargoyle-looking
monster. He lifted the fingers of the monster so it could pick its
nose, then stuck his own fingers into its mouth. There were five
minutes of instruction that day; students spent the remaining
fifty-odd minutes working on various stories they were writing.
They pretty much could do what they wanted. Boobie wrote a
little and also explained to two blond-haired girls what some
rap terms meant, that "chillin' to the strength," for example,
meant "like cool to the max." Boobie enjoyed this class. It gave
him an unfettered opportunity to express himself, and the
teacher didn't expect much from him. His whole purpose in
life, she felt, was to be a football player. "That's the only thing
kids like that have going for them, is that physical strength,"
she said.

After creative writing it was off to Boobie's favorite class of
the day, biology I, where just about everyone else was a sophomore. He took a seat in the back row of the room. Except for
Boobie, the students had their notebooks open, while the rip
of an envelope and the shuffling of paper floated from his
desk. He was busy reading a mailgram from University of Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne wishing him luck on an upcoming game.

"Okay, phenotype and genotype," said the teacher.

There was the sound of another rip as Boobie opened yet
another letter from the University of Nebraska.

The teacher lectured for about five minutes, and then it was
time to do a worksheet on genetic makeup.

"Where are your notes from yesterday?" she asked Boobie.

"I left 'em," he said with a smile.

"You didn't leave 'em. I watched you. You didn't take any
notes." She shrugged. He smiled some more.

While other students casually worked to complete the worksheet, Boobie ate some candy and left blank the entire second
page, which asked for definitions of certain genetic terms. He
leaned against his book bag and poked his pen into the hair of
the girl sitting in front of him. She smiled at him as if he were a badgering but endearing little brother and he laughed. The
teacher had the students complete some Punnett squares and
then began lecturing again in a straightforward, no-nonsense
style. She obviously wanted to teach the kids something. But
Boobie seemed uninterested.

After a while he gathered up his things and left class ahead
of time. He was being excused a few minutes early so he
wouldn't be a second late for football practice. Off he went
down the empty hallways of Permian High School, happy and
cheerful, the mailgrams from Nebraska tucked safely away in
his knapsack.