H.G. Bissinger, in Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and A Dream, uses high school football as a window through which we can study the soul of a Texas town. It is clear that Bissinger's study is meant to shine a light on the problems of American society in general, because the social and economic troubles of Odessa, Texas, are the troubles of the country as a whole. The book must be seen as a pessimistic one, because the problems of the town are not faced honestly and courageously, but are instead buried in the town's obsession with football, just as an addict would bury his troubles in his obsession with drugs.
The book might be seen as an academic, judgmental indictment from on high, the product of a writer from the big city who comes to the little town to study the inhabitants like a scientist studying rats. But it is clear that that is not what Bissinger means to do. In fact, he is not sure what is going to happen when he goes to the town. What does happen is that he becomes very close to the people and the football players of Odessa:
I could not have written this book without the townsfolk of Odessa. I have never found a group of people more down-to-earth , more honest, more willing to express their opinions without restraint. I am indebted to all of them. . . . Above all, I thank the players themselves. It is hard for me to express the feelings that I have for them. . . . I remember how I thought of them at the end, as kids that I adored (364).
Bissinger comes to admire and even love the people of Odessa, so we cannot say that he judges them in his book. However, it is clear that he is judging the system which produces a society whose priorities are as askew as Odessa's. As the author writes, Odessa "was in the severely depressed belly of the Texas oil patch, with a team in town called the Permian Panthers that played to as many as twenty thousand fans on a Friday night" (xi).
The main point of the book is ...