Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (9 page)

Allen knew Phillip was something special in eighth grade,
when he had broken his arm during the first defensive series
of a game. Rather than come out, he managed to set it in the
defensive huddle and played both ways the entire first half. By
that time the arm had swelled up considerably, to the point that
the forearm pads he wore had to be cut off, and unwillingly he
went to the hospital. Allen said he was not proud of the incident, but he told the story freely, for it showed that his son had
the ingredients to wear the black and white.

And certainly he wasn't the only one to have learned the
much-admired lesson of no pain, no gain. In seasons past playing for Permian had involved other sacrifices. It had meant the
loss of a testicle to a sophomore player when no one bothered
to make sure he was thoroughly examined after he had injured
his groin several hours earlier during an away game. Subse quently the testicle swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, and
by the time the doctor saw him it was too late; it had to be
removed. His mother was livid at what had happened, but the
player pleaded with her not to push it because he feared it
might interfere with his career at Permian and be held against
him. He lost the testicle but he did make All-State.

In seasons past, playing for Permian had meant routinely
vomiting during the grueling off-season workouts inside the
hot and sweaty weight room. It had meant playing with a broken ankle that wasn't x-rayed because, if it had been known that
it was broken, the player would have had to sit out the next
game. It had meant playing with broken hands. It had meant a
shot of novocaine during halftime to mask the pain of a deep
ankle sprain or a hip pointer. It had meant popping painkillers
and getting shots of Valium.

But few in the community blanched at any of these things
or even questioned them. Because of such an attitude, Permian had established itself as perhaps the most successful football dynasty in the country-pro, college, or high school. Few
brands of sport were more competitive than Class AAAAA
Texas high school football, the division for the biggest schools
in the state.

Odessa was hardly the only town that nurtured football and
cherished it and went crazy over it. But no one came close to
matching the performance of Permian. Since 1964 it had won
four state championships, been to the state finals a record eight
times, and made the playoffs fifteen times. Its worst record in
any season over that time span had been seven and two, and its
winning percentage overall, .825, was by far the best of any
team in the entire state in the modern era of the game dating
back to 1951.

All this wasn't accomplished with kids who weighed 250
pounds and were automatic major-college prospects, but with
kids who often weighed 160 or 170 or even less. They had no
special athletic prowess. They weren't especially fast or espe cially strong. But they were fearless and relentlessly coached
and from the time they were able to walk they had only one
certain goal in their lives in Odessa, Texas. Whatever it took,
they would play for Permian.

Behind the rows of stools stood the stars of the show, the members of the 1988 Permian Panther high school football team.
Dressed in their black game jersies, they laughed and teased
one another like privileged children of royalty.

Directly in front of them, dressed in white jersies and forming a little protective phalanx, were the Pepettes, a select group
of senior girls who made up the school spirit squad. The Pepettes supported all teams, but it was the football team they supported most. The number on the white jersey each girl wore
corresponded to that of the player she had been assigned for
the football season. With that assignment came various timehonored responsibilities.

As part of the tradition, each Pepette brought some type of
sweet for her player every week before the game. She didn't
necessarily have to make something from scratch, but there was
indirect pressure to because of not-so-private grousing from
players who tired quickly of bags of candy and not so discreetly
let it be known that they much preferred something freshbaked. If she had to buy something store-bought, it might as
well be beer, and at least one player was able to negotiate such
an arrangement with his Pepette during the season. Instead of
getting a bag of cookies, he got a six-pack of beer.

In addition, each Pepette also had to make a large sign for
her player that went in his front yard and stayed there the entire season as a notice to the community that he played football
for Permian. Previously the making of these yard signs, which
looked like miniature Broadway marquees, had become quite
competitive. Some of the Pepettes spent as much as $100 of
their own money to make an individual sign, decorating it with
twinkling lights and other attention-getting devices. It became a rather serious game of can-you-top-this, and finally a dictum
was handed down that all the signs must be made the same way,
without any neon.

A Pepette also had responsibility for making smaller posters,
which went up in the school halls at the beginning of each week
and were transferred to the gym for the mandatory Friday
morning pep rally. The making of these signs could be quite
laborious as well, and one Pepette during the season broke
down in tears because she had had to stay up until the wee
hours of the morning trying to keep up with the other Pepettes
and make a fancy hall sign that her player never even thanked
her for.

These were the basic Pepette requirements, but some girls
went beyond in their show of spirit.

They might embroider the map of Texas on towels and then
spell out MOIo in the borders. Or they might make MoJo pillowcases that the players could take with them (luring road trips.
Or they might place their fresh-baked cookies in tins elaborately decorated in the Permian colors of' black and white. In
previous years Pepettes had made scrapbooks for their players,
including one with the cover made of lacquered wood and
modeled on Disney's Jungle Book. The book had clippings, cut
out in ninety-degree angles as square and true as in an architectural rendering, of every story written about the Permian
team that year. It also had beautiful illustrations and captions
that tried to capture what it meant to be a Pepette.

"The countryside was filled with loyal and happy subjects
serving their chosen panther," said a caption in a chapter entitled "Joy," and next to it was a picture of 'a little girl with Rowers in her hand going up to a panther, the Permian mascot,
roaring under a tree.

The Watermelon Feed began with a prayer by one of the pastors at Temple Baptist Church, the biggest church in Odessa.
The sign in front of the church in previous years had con tamed such inspirational messages as HOW DO YOU SPELL DEFENSE? MOJO.

"We thank you for the joy the athletes bring to our hearts
and lives," the pastor said.

Following the prayer, a video was shown of highlights from
the past season in 1987. Since the team had gone to the semifinals of the state playoffs before losing to the eventual champion, Plano, it had been considered not a great year but at least
a pretty good one.

There were sporadic yells of Molo! but the crowd in the cafeteria didn't become animated until the screen showed running
back Shawn Crow breaking tackle after tackle in the quarterfinal playoff game against Arlington.

At one point Permian trailed in the game 28-7. But then the
team put on a miraculous comeback, rallying around the example of one player who got in his stance, vomited through his
helmet because he had just taken a hit in the stomach, and then
took his defender down with a crushing block. The performance of Crow was also inspiring. Late in the fourth quarter
he scored his fourth touchdown of the game to make it 35-33,
and then he scored the two-point conversion to tie it up even
though everyone in the stadium knew he was going to get the
ball. The game ultimately ended in a 35-35 tie, and Permian
advanced to the semifinals of the playoffs based on a tiebreaker
rule that provided that the team with more first downs advance
to the next round.

Everyone seemed mesmerized as they watched Crow on
a small screen in the front of the cafeteria, the memories of
it, the absolute magic of it, suddenly flooding back. The oil
economy could go to hell. The country could go to hell. But,
thanks to Shawn Crow, never, ever Permian football.

It would be hard anywhere in sports to find athletic feats
more courageous than his. On play after play, each like a dizzying rerun, he had headed down the sidelines, running so low
to the ground that it sometimes seemed as if his helmet skidded the turf, retaining remarkable balance, sending would-be tacklers flying and dragging others for four or five yards before
finally going down. It was the kind of performance that only
occurred in high school, for no adult would have had the willingness to sacrifice his body as Shawn Crow had done that
night, for his family and his team and his town. It was also a
moment, a time in his life, that seemed impossible to repeat.

"If that won't get you excited, I can't believe you can get excited," said booster club president Doug Hendrick.

When the highlight film showed Crow scoring the two-point
conversion, the crowd rose to its feet and gave the former hero
a standing ovation. He was in the audience and gave no reaction, as if he was slightly embarrassed and wished he were
someplace else.

He was supposed to have been at Texas Christian University
in Fort Worth, the only Division I school that had actively recruited him after a senior season in which he gained 2,288
yards and made first team All-State. But during the high school
all-star football game in July at the Astrodome between players
from the north regions of Texas and ones from the south, he
had felt an intense pain in his back.

No one thought it was serious, particularly since he had a
reputation for whimpering, and one coach at Permian who
knew Crow well said that the best way to "shut him up" was just
to give him the ball. "I can't run, man," he told Tim O'Connell,
the Permian trainer who was nicknamed "Trapper" and was the
trainer [for the north] during the all-star game. Crow's voice,
high-pitched and laced with pain, made him sound almost
scared.

"Why don't you just try," said Trapper, who examined him
and could find no discernible injury.

Crow continued to play in the game, biting down on his
mouthpiece as hard as he could on each play to fight through
the pain. After the game it turned out that Crow had not been
whimpering. He was diagnosed with a herniated disc, and the
TCU coaches told him not to come to school until January, af ter he had had a chance to rehabilitate. There was no point in
coming to school just to go to class.

Injuries were nothing new to Crow. In seventh grade he had
broken his leg in practice. In eighth grade he had torn ligaments in his thumb. In ninth grade his arm, already injured
from an incident involving an all-terrain vehicle, had been shattered when he tried to throw a block. Off the field he was an
endearing, friendly kid, quiet and shy and respectful. On the
field, his toughness was almost incomprehensible; his head, as
one teammate put it, seemed to be "made of steel." But it was
hard not to wonder if his body could endure the physical punishment of the game.

The standing ovation that he received at the Watermelon
Feed wasn't particularly surprising. Just as he was used to football injuries, he was also used to lavish attention, as was every
former Permian player who had once been ordained a star. So
many people had come up to him when he was a senior that he
couldn't keep track of their names, and it seemed weird how
much they knew about him when he knew absolutely nothing
about them. During the playoffs, when he had suffered a bruise
on his thigh that looked as if it might keep him out of the game
the following week, a hundred people called the trainer's office
to ask about his condition. It got to the point that Trapper, halfjoking, half-serious, posted updates on Crow outside the trainer's office.