Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (52 page)

Of all the places Permian wanted to play the Carter Cowboys,
the Cotton Bowl was the last. Its location, a little east of downtown Dallas, made it a magnet for the city's black community.
The place would be crawling with them.

"If it's the Cotton Bowl, they'll have the whole black community," said Permian assistant Hollingshead in a private meeting
out of earshot of the Carter contingent.

The two sides finally agreed to play the game at a neutral site
in Austin at Memorial Stadium of the University of Texas. In
the meantime, both coaches agreed that a crew from San Antonio would officiate the game, with the stipulation that at least
two of the officials be black.

When Harris, jotting down conditions of the game that
would have to be written into the contract, heard that, she
blanched a bit. God forbid there was any hint, on paper at least,
that race had been a factor in the negotiations.

"Let's not say black," said Harris. "Let's say mixed ethnic crew."

Finally, the only thing left to decide was the color of the
teams' uniforms. The Carter Cowboys had their sacred red.
The Permian Panthers had their sacred black. But someone
had to wear an away uniform, and in this case, Permian didn't
mind at all giving up black. It wasn't a problem.

They would just wear white instead.

IV

If a curious spectator had walked into courtroom 509 in the
Travis County Courthouse in Austin the next day without
knowing a single detail of the case, it would not have mattered.
One look at the charged, tense atmosphere would have made
the facts abundantly clear.

Obviously, the man on the stand with the soft voice and gray
hair had gone berserk. He had undoubtedly shot someone in a
psychotic rage, maybe a child, maybe a cop, maybe more than
one person. That would explain the jammed courtroom and
why it was almost impossible to find a seat. That would explain
the presence of half a dozen lawyers inside the room solemnly
passing documents back and forth to one another, which they
culled from the filled cartons surrounding them. That would
explain the way he was being grilled on the stand, ominously
reminded by the angry lawyer in front of him that he was under oath, that what he was saying today was different from what
he had said previously.

His denial of his heinous crime would explain the presence
of television and newspaper reporters from Dallas and Austin
and the Associated Press furiously scribbling down his every
word. He was apparently a teacher, so he must have killed
someone in his classroom. That would explain why Dallas
school superintendent Edwards was there in the front row
grimly listening to every word with obvious discomfort. That
would explain why Texas commissioner of education Kirby was
there. That would explain why Dallas school board member
Yvonne Ewell was there. That would explain why parents of
some of the victims were there, having gotten up in the wee
hours of the morning to make the two-hundred-mile drive
from Dallas to Austin.

Clearly, the man on the stand had done something so awful,
so abhorrent, that it must be a death penalty case. But if the
curious spectator stayed around long enough, it would have he come evident that the crime of the man on the witness stand
had nothing to do with murder. It had nothing to do with rape
or robbery or assault or even a parking ticket.

It had to do with a grade in algebra II.

And the curious spectator would have found that the man
on the stand wasn't a murderer, or a child molester, or even
a parking violation scoff-law who had taken a power saw to
a boot.

He was Will Bates the math teacher, and his crime had been
giving a flunking grade to a Carter Cowboy football player who
had a 49 average on his tests, had missed at least one class to
watch football films, and hadn't tried to do all his homework.

The hearing reached absurd, numbing proportions as lawyers tried to ascertain Edwards's algebra grade in a court of law.
Yvonne Ewell sat and tried to calculate the grade as she listened
to hour after hour of testimony from Bates and Russeau and
others. But Ewell gave up. There were just too many numbers-daily grades, weekly grades, grades for participation,
grades for homework, grades for tests-all part of the bewildering Carter grading system under the School Improvement
Plan. The transfer from one teacher to another didn't help either. Nor did the account of the meeting between Bates and
Carter Cowboys defensive coordinator Arvis Vonner in which
they sat down and figured out all the grades that Gary could
possibly merit under the School Improvement Plan, as if the
grade was little more than a tool of barter.

It was too numbing to try to figure out the grade; too exhausting. What did become clear was that, given the Carter
grading plan, it was possible to give Gary Edwards just about
any grade. He could have passed. He could have flunked. Just
about the only question that wasn't asked during the hearing
was whether Gary had actually learned any algebra or not. To
Yvonne Ewell that was a salient issue, but no one seemed the
slightest bit interested in it.

"This case has taught me two things," said judge Davis in
rendering his decision. "First, that grading is not an exact sci ence. Second, this case has demonstrated amply the absurdity
of setting grades by public hearing."

But Davis ruled that Carter had acted responsibly in determining Edwards's grade and that education commissioner
Kirby had no standing to determine that Edwards was ineligible. Kirby's purview, said Davis, should be educational policy,
not the setting of individual grades.

"The commissioner should have been looking at: did the
school act responsibly? He ought not to be in the business of
establishing an individual grade in an individual six weeks because he will be overwhelmed by students who don't like the
grade they got."

Carter, Judge Davis ruled, would stay in the playoffs. The
game against Permian would go on as scheduled.

There were tears and hugs by Carter supporters at the decision, and in the aftermath, many who supported Carter and
the Dallas school district couldn't help but believe that the
whole issue had been racially motivated.

"I think the issue of race is paramount in it," said Ewell. "If
we had a white superintendent, the commissioner never would
have done such a thing. I think race was an essential component in the whole procedure."

But Kirby said his involvement in the case had nothing to do
with race, or wanting to get Carter or the Dallas school district.
Instead he described Russeau's changing of Edwards's grade as
a "blatant" example of grade-fixing to make sure that a football
team would be eligible for the playoffs. And he said he entered
the case not because he was interested in determining the grade
of an individual student, but because Russeau and Carter had
made a travesty of the no-pass, no-play rule.

It was hogwash, he said, that this case had anything to do
with preserving local control of school districts. It had to do
with one thing and one thing only: keeping the Carter Cowboys
in the hunt for the state championship.

"We have a song down here that says Bob Wills is still the
king," Kirby said. "Well, this decision today says football is still
the king, at least in the [Dallas Independent School District]."

Even Ewell, who did see the court decision as an important
victory for local control of schools, couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by it all.

Had it involved anything else-the educational rights of a
student who was a writer, or a poet, or a merit scholar-Ewell
acknowledged that "it would never have gone to court. It would
not have gone to court. It would not have been up for debate.
We got our goals skewed. That's why I think schools are in a
dilemma all over the United States.

"I just hope we can carry that enthusiasm to the more substantive issues, particularly those schools which serve children
of color," she said. "I'm afraid that when it's over, it will be over
and it will be back to business as usual, and that would be a
tragedy."

Out of the whole saga, there was one substantive change that
was made rather quickly.

Will Bates was drummed out of Carter and reassigned to
teach industrial arts in a middle school. He was given an unsatisfactory evaluation rating, placed on probation for a year, and
had his salary frozen. And, of course, he was forbidden to teach
math to prevent further threats to the sanctity of football.

Fervent supporters of the Cowboys, realizing, perhaps, the
unseemliness of going to court and shelling out thousands of
dollars on legal fees over high school football, said the victory
before Judge Davis could serve as a great civics lesson for black
kids that democracy does work.

But the victory in court, instead of inspiring faith in the system, seemed to inspire the exact opposite. It seemed to fuel the
belief of certain Carter Cowboys to a greater degree than ever
that whatever they did, there would always be someone to rally
around them and protect them, to provide them with a safety
net that would avert the consequences of any act. If anything,
some of the Carter Cowboys felt more than ever that there was
something sacred about them, something invincible.

With the court proceedings out of the way, with Gary Edwards's passing grade in algebra sealed in cement by a state
district court judge, the Carter Cowboys were on their way to State with messianic fervor, ordained and blessed not only inside the school, as they always had been, but now by the entire
black community of Dallas.

Three hundred and fifty miles to the west, there was no need
to find a catalyst for the zeal that could be created by a winning
high school football team. Such zeal was firmly in place, just as
it had been for the past sixty years.

"Between the referees' whistles, I guarantee you, we'll get after their ass," Gaines told his players several days before the two
kingdoms would face each other for the right to go to State. "If
you're not up to it, we'll find a place for you somewhere else."

No one came forward.

I