Friday Night Lights 2024

I've moved to an inauspicious Texas town with a perennial state contender utilizing an interesting, underdog strategy.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best sports books you’ll ever read. The movie is good as well with a few differences in the telling of the story and less judgment toward the culture depicted in the story. I broke down the book on my old blog once, diving into the football strategy of the Permian Panthers described in its pages and how they fed into the narrative.

One of the interesting components to me in reading the book was the specific strategies of Permian as a run-based team who were also generally the smaller team on the field particularly when competing at the playoff level. The key to their success was the Wing-T offense with its dual running back system, combined with a newfound ability at the turn of the decade to also field a good receiver and quarterback and get some run/pass balance. Prior to that, they were really just running the dang ball.

How are you the toughest and most physical team on the field, running the ball and asserting your will, when you’re also the smallest?

Well, as a new resident of Liberty Hill I’ve started to study the local team, also known as the Panthers, who have made waves at the state level. I’ve found some overlap in their strategies that are pretty interesting.