Friday Night Lights

It’s not easy being a high school football coach in a town like Odessa, Texas where oil and football are the two key factors of keeping this town alive and interesting. When the oil disappears out of the picture, football becomes the main attraction of the town and is one of the few ways kids can get out of this desiccated town. Many of the boys that play on the Permian team have that opportunity but in order to have a good team and a good chance to earn a scholarship you need to have a good coach. Coach Gary Gaines in H.G. Bissinger's novel Friday Night Lights, manages to toughen out the towns harsh judgements and pulls through the team's many wins. Throughout the book Gaines compassion for the boys on his team is shown while he proves his good work ethic and perseverance to the town and shows that he deserves the honor of being the head coach of the team.

When the team loses a game, all the blaming goes to the head coach in Odessa. Gaines received much ridicule for the losses such as townspeople putting For Sale signs in his front yard. Yet when a student starts receiving these ridicules Gaines finds it disgusting to him. “”Thats sick to me,” said Gaines. “I just didn't understand it””(Pg 238) Gaines said after he heard about how people put For Sale signs into one of his players yards. Even though Gaines is a tough coach and pushes his team, his compassion is showed in the little things. The compassion isn’t always shown through what he does for his football team, it is also shown to through family. “Her husband still knew that the hardest part of the criticism wasn’t what it did to him but what it did to his family” (Pg 242) is a great quote that shows how he keeps things from his family so that it wouldn't affect them even though it's affecting him. He's putting other people's needs before his own and that shows the compassion Coach Gaines has.

Being a coach for a high school football team that is expected to do well isn’t the easiest job to handle. Gaines proves his hard working side by putting his all into the game and the sport. “He had spent so much time in that office, watching play after play in the creep of slow motion for a secret, a clue - erase older, and extra silver space between the guard and the tackle - focusing on the seemingly imperceptible details of those grainy images as intently as a scholar pores over a rare manuscript. The time he spent coaching was unimaginable. like a soldier of fortune who kissed his wife and children goodbye in August and almost literally did not see them again for the next four months until the conquest of a state championship ended in Victory or defeat and now it all seemed worthless” (Pg. 235) , Gaines