Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (58 page)

"I started gettin' afraid that I was gonna die," said Don. "I
was just tired of drinkin' and druggin' and women. I just
needed somethin' else." He turned to religion. He was saved
and then baptized in July 1989.

Don believed he had been on the verge of becoming an alcoholic. The past three years he had spent in Odessa were wild
ones, and he thought it would have been almost impossible to
quit drinking there because of the peer pressure and the need
to maintain his reputation as the ultimate party animal. A further impetus for his reformation came when a former Permian
player he had known killed himself.

He received no scholarship offers and decided to walk on at
East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. The program there
didn't compare to Permian's. The weight room was the size of a
shower stall. The games attracted three hundred fans instead
of the thousands that he was used to. "In high school football
there's a bond," he said. "Here, it's just someone you see every
day. In the field house it was like a family, more family than I
had in three years."

Don sometimes wondered what his life would have been like
if he had stayed put in Oklahoma instead of moving to Odessa
for the sole purpose of playing football for Permian. He had
been a starter on the Blanchard team as a freshman. By the
time he was a senior he would have been the big star, and that
might have put him in a better position to get an athletic
scholarship.

But Don would not have traded his Permian experience for
anything. Like many players, he talked about it as if it had been
a fantastic dream. He missed all of it, the locker room, the
games, the girls who adored him and followed him through the
school corridors. And he also talked about how hard it was to
go back to the locker room after it was over and realize that you
weren't a part of it anymore. Like jerrod McDougal, he couldn't
help but feel like a has-been.

Don made the team at East Central. But in the middle of the
1989 season he had arthroscopic surgery on his knee. Ever
since he had injured it while playing for Permian his senior
year, it hadn't been the same.

Mike Winchell, despite setting career records at Permian for
most yards passing, most passes attempted, most passes completed, and most touchdown passes, was not offered a single
scholarship.

"It's just so frustrating to me that I can't get anything going.
It just bothers me," said Gaines. But he also wondered if the
perspective placed on football in Odessa sometimes created a
false reality.

"We have a unique situation here because football is so im portant," said Gaines. "I guess there's such a thing as just being
a good high school football player. And I guess being a high
school football player doesn't mean you're going to be a good
collegiate player."

When a recruiter from Yale called to see if Permian might
have any potential candidates, Gaines eagerly gave him Winchell's name. He seemed to possess the football skill, and he had
the grades, with a class rank in the top tenth. But his board
scores, although significantly above the Permian average, were
1000. He filled out some forms and did some reading on Yale
to find out where it was and what it was like.

When one of the coaches called, Mike answered the phone
with a mouthful of doughnut, and he became painfully selfconscious of his West Texas twang. He was convinced the coach
thought he was the dumbest hick ever to walk the earth. But,
the accent of the coach sounded foreign to Mike as well.

He heard nothing back from Yale, and it was all for the best
anyway. "I'd never been around nothin' like that," he said. "It
would be too much culture shock. My mind would go berserk
and I wouldn't be able to study. I wouldn't fit in there, that's
what it was."

Mike's brother, Joe Bill, did what he could. He called the
University of Texas coach, David McWilliams, almost a dozen
times, but was always told he was in a meeting and couldn't
come to the phone. He called the University of Nevada-Las
Vegas, but after a flurry of correspondence no one there was
very interested either.

"I knew I wasn't a hot commodity," said Mike, "but I thought
there'd be a little interest." And he felt that most recruiters
viewed him as the typical Permian player-disciplined, well
trained in the technique of the game, with all talent already
drawn from him.

During the summer, while hammering in nails to build a
fence, he thought about himself and his life. He realized that
he agonized over everything all the time, and he admitted that
part of the problem in the Carter game had been his own lack
of belief in his abilities. He knew the reason why he was like this, that it was the price he had paid for carefully watching out
for himself ever since he had been a little boy. "I've never taken
a chance in life," he said. "I need to run in front of traffic bucknaked and get arrested."

He went to Baylor and joined the team as a walk-on. He practiced but did not make the traveling squad. There were no miracles at Baylor, just the same haunting inconsistency, which
Mike summed up with his own characteristic assessment.

"One day I throw the ball like Roger Staubach, one day like
Roger Rabbit."

Ivory Christian was offered a football scholarship by Texas
Christian University in February.

He was the only player on the Permian team recruited by
a Division I school. He expected to be red-shirted and not
play his freshman year, but because of injuries he saw a great
deal of time at middle linebacker for the Horned Frogs. He
made nearly a dozen tackles against Southwest Conference rival
Texas A & M, and then started against both Southern Mississippi and Southern Methodist. With several games still left in
the 1989 season, he was happy with his performance and playing time. But he found it did not match the feeling of playing
for Permian. Although he had vacillated between loving Permian football and despising it, he found himself missing it
more than he had ever imagined he would, and he said that
playing against the Midland Lee Rebels had been more exciting
than playing against Texas A & M.

He was treated well at TCU and lived in a nice dorm along
with other athletes and had a nice room. Because of TCU, he
had become the first person in his family to go to college. But
it was hard not to feel unsettled. When he looked around the
campus the only blacks he saw were athletes, and sports seemed
to be their only reason for being at the school. And sometimes,
it often felt as if he wasn't playing football so much as working
at it, getting up every day at six to make study hall, then going
to practices and meetings from two in the afternoon to sixthirty in the evening.

But Ivory now knew exactly what he wanted to do. He no
longer preached. He no longer had the aspiration of becoming
the pastor of the biggest Baptist church in California, or getting
a doctorate in theology, or being addressed as "Dr. Christian."
He had also dropped the ambition of majoring in business administration-it seemed like too much work considering the
demands made on him in football. He had decided instead to
major in criminal justice so he could become a policeman if he
couldn't realize his newfound dream of playing pro football.
Although he was a superb athlete, the odds of that happening
seemed remote because of his relatively small size. At five
eleven, he would have to be nothing short of remarkable. But
that was his new aspiration.

At Permian, he had felt a strong sense of comradeship with
those he played with. He missed the magic of those Friday
nights. The wearing of the black and white, as he looked back
on it, had meant something special. At TCU the feelings were
different. "Out here," he said of the life of a major college football player, "it's who can stand out and can make it to the pros."

Boobie Miles moved back home with his uncle a few days before Christmas in 1988.

Although the big-time schools had stopped calling, several
junior colleges in Texas were interested, and L.V. thought
maybe that was better anyway for his nephew. "Boobie ain't
no book genius, and the transition [to a four-year institution]
might be more than he could handle."

Far from becoming soured on football because of what the
two of them had been through, L.V. was as positive as ever. "I
told him what we're gonna do now, we're going to start working
towards the Heisman." Boobie received a scholarship offer
from Ranger Junior College in Ranger, Texas, and accepted it.
He too tried to be as positive as possible.

"I think it kind of teaches me a lesson," he said of the injury
that had ruined his senior year. "I had fame and glory and all
that and the Lord took it away. I kind of had the big head, and
he took it away from me."

But it was still impossible sometimes not to wonder what
would have happened if he hadn't gotten hurt. "We could have
gone to State. I could have had a better scholarship. But right
now, I'm happy with what I've got. I've got a scholarship I
didn't think I was gonna get. If I do good, I could go somewhere in a year."

Most of the Permian coaching staff gave Boobie little chance
of playing effectively again. They figured he would get to
Ranger and quit in a couple of weeks when he wasn't coddled.

After graduating from Permian, he went to Ranger and became the only freshman starter in the backfield.

On a clear November day in 1989, the Ranger Junior College
Rangers took on the Navarro Junior College Bulldogs before a
homecoming crowd of five hundred. The fans sat on a pair of
rickety bleachers. In the press box the announcer, standing up
with a microphone in his hand, gave the players funny nicknames and made up fake scores from the Mexican Hockey
League. A sharp wind came in, past the yellowed grass of the
field, past a little metal fence, past the barracks-style buildings
that comprised the tiny campus.

Boobie wore number 3 and looked gorgeous and powerful.
But he was buried mercilessly by the Bulldogs, the numberone-rated junior college team in the country. He juked and
spun and did all the things that L.V. had taught him, but without much success.

"Com'on!" yelled a teammate from the sideline. "Lower your
shoulder and run over his ass! Stop jukin!"'

L.V. watched silently from the bleachers. He had gotten off
the late shift at the Exxon station where he was working and
had made the two-hundred-mile trip to Ranger from Odessa
with some friends. "Couple of years of this, he'll be ready," said
L.V. as he watched Boobie get battered by the Navarro defense
on the way to a 31-0 loss.

Navarro was a strong team, but Boobie clearly wasn't the
same runner he had once been. He was as fearless as ever, but
his knee was still weak and swelled up easily with fluid. Because
of the protective braces that he wore on both knees to prevent further injury, he no longer had the breakaway speed that the
big-time college recruiters had once upon a time found so
enticing.

A person like me can't be stopped. IfI put it in my mind, they can't
stop me ... ain't gonna stop me.

See if I can get a first down. Keep pumping my legs up, spin out of
it, go for a touchdown, go as far as I can.

Those words were just a memory now.

"I've never seen that burst of speed," said the head coach of
Ranger, Joe Crousen. "I don't know how many times he got
caught from behind.

"It's hard when you have greatness and it's taken from you
and you just can't get it back in your hands."

Boobie seemed frustrated and discouraged after the Navarro
game. But L.V., as always, was there to console him and give
him support and keep the dream alive. He told him that his
offensive line had been just about hopeless and there wasn't
much a running back could do if the people in front of him
didn't know how to block.

They stood together, talking softly, sometimes not talking at
all, but drawing strength from one another in the absence of
anyone else. In the fading afternoon light of Ranger, Texas,
with that bitter wind blowing across the field, flanked by the
malarial yellow of the dormitory where Boobie lived, they
looked quite beautiful.

The city of Odessa moved forward with some signs of economic
relief. The price of oil itself hovered around $20 a barrel for
much of 1989, an improvement of roughly $5 a barrel over
1988, and there were even predictions that a worldwide shortage might push the price of oil even higher. People in Odessa
had been burned so many times by predictions that they tended
not to pay much attention to them, but there was a belief that
at least things could not get worse.

Whatever happened, it seemed clear that the fate of Odessa
lay in the hands of others. Like the automobile industry, and
the steel industry, and the semiconductor industry, the domestic oil industry had become a follower on the world market.
The decline in U.S. oil production in 1989, 6.8 percent, was the
largest drop ever in any single year. Imports rose to 46 percent,
their highest level in twelve years, and OPEC's noose around
the West Texas oil patch was as tight as it had ever been.

Outside of the economic news, there wasn't much change in
other areas. A new quality-of-life study came out in the fall of
1989, and as usual, Odessa distinguished itself. The revised volume of the Places Rated Almanac rated Odessa the second worst
place to live in the country out of the 333 that were studied.
Odessa, according to the almanac, had the worst health care in
the country and ranked in the bottom twenty-five in the categories of transportation, jobs, and recreation. Some folks were
upset with the ranking, but after a few outbursts life went
on as normal, and people latched on to the same things they
always had.

The speeches were the same, and so were the looks on the
faces. It could have been Brian Chavez, or Jerrod McDougal,
or Mike Winchell, or Ivory Christian, or Boobie Miles. But it
was December of 1989 now instead of December of 1988 and
the names were Arvey Villa and Kevin Mannix and Chris
Comer and Stony Case and Johnny Celey and Jeff Garrett. Otherwise, everything seemed untouched, a cycle destined to repeat itself forever, an interchangeable set of boys all captive to
the same dream. Goin' to State.