I’m fairly certain that when author Buzz Bissinger moved out to Odessa, TX in 1988 to follow the Permian High School Panthers football team, he didn’t think he’d still be chronicling the same story 24 yrs. later. As the story continues, today April 19th, 2012, Buzz releases After Friday Night Lights, his follow-up to the critically acclaimed, and much adapted Friday Night Lights novel. The novel probed the effects of high school football on the small town of Odessa, and how the town lived on auto-pilot, and only really came alive when their hometown team “turned on” those lights Friday nights at the stadium. The book takes up where the story left off 24 years ago; the all star running back, and highly scouted college prospect Booby Miles’ career has ended with an injury before any recruitment happens, and it follows him through the fall out years of no longer being a star, and the effects having to go to Plan B when you haven’t got a Plan B.
Bissinger said, ” Miles may be “a symbol of everything that was wrong with high school football,” but our friendship is “the most lasting legacy of Friday Night Lights, or at least the legacy I care about most.
”In 1990, Friday Night Lights became a New York Times best seller, and was applauded as serious investigative journalism, by dealing with very heavy topics including race, class and athletics.
The film version of Friday Night Lights was directed by Peter Berg (Buzz’s real-life cousin), and starred Billy Bob Thornton, Tim McGraw, and Connie Britton was released in 2004.
After Friday Nights Lights is available today as an ebook short at Amazon, iTunes, and Barnes & Noble for $2.99.
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