The Lights Are Back On at Permian High : Prep football: After being barred in 1990, Odessa’s infamous program resumes success in Texas playoffs.

ODESSA, Tex. —  Reporters from across the nation trooped into this West Texas oil town last year, their interest piqued by the high-powered football program at Odessa’s Permian High, their questions dealing with the same themes:

Academic shortcuts. Improper preseason workouts. Racism.

The 1990 season was not, to put it mildly, a stellar one for the Permian Panthers, the pride of Odessa.

“We took our lumps,” said Gene Buinger, superintendent of the Ector County Independent School District, which includes Permian and the other Odessa schools.

The team and the town were portrayed in an unflattering manner in the best-selling book, “Friday Night Lights,” in which author H.G. (Buzz) Bissinger chronicled Permian’s 1988 season.

And, with the book just off the press, Permian was barred from the 1990 state playoffs after the University Interscholastic League, which governs high school sports in Texas, cited the school for staging supervised workouts before the date set by the league for preseason drills to begin.

The playoff ban made the Panthers ineligible to defend the state championship they had won in 1989.

To a community already reeling from the oil bust of the ‘80s, the Permian football controversy was a civic crisis of massive importance, with enough small-town anguish to draw a crew from “60 Minutes”--yes, that was Mike Wallace in the press box--and the rest of the media swarm.

Lumps, indeed.

A year later, however, a sense of normalcy has returned to the plains.

The Panthers are unbeaten and again ripping through the playoffs, having beaten top-ranked Lamar High of Arlington two weeks ago to advance to the quarterfinals. Last Friday night, the Panthers beat Midland Robert E. Lee, 35-7, to advance to the semifinals. Black-clad Permian fans again are celebrating their team’s success instead of defending themselves against charges of excess.

“Last year, people were a little edgy. You went to booster club meetings to find out what was going wrong,” said Bruce Cherry, an Odessa banker who is president of the 380-member Permian football booster club. “This year, you go to booster club meetings to talk about the last game, which is as it should be.”

Even by Texas standards, Permian has enjoyed uncommon football success. The Panthers have won five state titles since 1965, including three in the ‘80s.

In an isolated town of 100,000 that novelist Larry McMurtry once described as the “worst place on earth,” Permian’s success, achieved primarily without players who dazzle college recruiters, has had a galvanizing effect and earned a special designation: “Mojo.” The word, taken from the title of an old song by Wilson Pickett, is spelled out in huge black letters on the front of the school.

“You go down the street, go to the mall and you see 6-year-olds in ‘Mojo’ letter jackets,” said Lee Buice, a member of the Ector County School Board. “It is the culture.”

Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who left a job as an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer to spend a year living in Odessa, was “in search of the Friday night lights,” as he put it in the preface to his book, when he decided to write about Permian. But he found more than a slice of Americana. He found a case study in lost perspective.

Bissinger wrote of a community in which academics often take a back seat to football, players feel as if their lives end when they can no longer suit up for the Panthers, and racism is common.

In perhaps the book’s most oft-quoted passage, Bissinger wrote of how star tailback James (Boobie) Miles was perceived after suffering a severe knee injury before the start of the 1988 season. Bissinger quoted an anonymous assistant coach as saying that, without football, Miles was nothing more than a “big ol’ dumb (pejorative for black).”

Reaction to “Friday Night Lights,” which sold 125,000 copies in hardback and spent 15 weeks on the New York Times’ best-seller list, was so intense in Odessa last fall that Bissinger had to cancel a trip to the city to promote the book because of threats against him.

While few residents disputed Bissinger’s facts, many thought that the book was slanted, presenting an overly negative view of Permian football. Some felt betrayed by Bissinger, who had been granted complete access to the Permian program.

Adding fuel to the fire was the University Interscholastic League’s ruling regarding the Panthers’ preseason workouts, a matter stemming from allegations raised by Jerry Taylor, then the coach at Permian’s cross-town rival, Odessa High.

Taylor reported receiving several threatening phone calls in the wake of the incident, and he left Odessa after last season to take a high school coaching job in Breckenridge, Tex.

“You can find a lot of people who will say a lot of things,” said Buice, a dean at Odessa College, referring to the series of events last fall, “but you won’t find anybody who says, ‘Oh, it was no big deal,’ because it was a big deal in Odessa, Tex. I’ve never seen a town so consumed.

“And then, slowly but surely, we come back. I won’t say we’re back to normal, but we’re getting there.”

The team’s success aside, it is not entirely business as usual in Odessa this year.

Although Permian coaches, claiming they merely were watching voluntary workouts, disputed the University Interscholastic League’s ruling, Ector County school officials did not take the matter lightly.

“The whole football program went through a total reassessment last year,” said Buinger, who came to Odessa from Jenks, Okla., in 1989, “not as a result of the book, but as a result of the UIL (ruling). The UIL requested that we look at the total football program and correct any part that was not in compliance. That (directive) was taken very seriously, just as a college would take a similar message from the NCAA very seriously.”

Indeed, the school district’s investigation discovered that Permian’s football booster club had for years provided cash payments to Permian coaches in violation of UIL rules. According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, the payments, generated by advertising revenue from the coaches’ weekly television show during the state playoffs, were as much as $15,000 a year.

Upon learning of the payments, the school district ordered the practice stopped and instituted a policy requiring all school booster organizations that raise at least $10,000 a year to undergo annual audits.

“I always felt that (the payment scheme) was a greater offense than the practice issue,” Buinger said. “Clearly, that was something that couldn’t be tolerated.”

Buinger says that as a result of its investigation the school district has eliminated most of its football-related problems.

“I can say without any qualms that we have the cleanest high school football program in the state of Texas,” he said. “We’ve looked at everything. We’ve reported everything. Things have changed substantially. I take great pleasure in the fact that the team is back in the playoffs because so many people were saying, ‘The only reason Permian won all those years was because they were cheating.’ ”

Still, the Panthers’ 1991 season has not been without turmoil.

Five varsity football players from Permian were involved in a fight during a junior varsity game in September, and one, running back Lonnie Jones, was indicted on assault and weapons charges.

As a result of that incident, Jones was suspended from Permian and sent to the school district’s Alternate Education Center for a semester, prompting Gene Collins, president of the Odessa chapter of the NAACP, to charge that Jones was “sacrificed” because he is black.

“It’s the Boobie Miles syndrome,” said Collins, referring to the running back whose plight was described in Bissinger’s book.

Buinger, however, disputes Collins’ charge, noting that the disciplinary action taken against Jones is standard school district policy in a weapons matter.

As for Odessans’ feelings toward Bissinger, they remain strained to a degree, as perhaps they always will be.

A year after the fact, Permian Coach Tam Hollingshead’s voice is still tinged with disgust when he talks about the book.

“Very tilted, very one-sided; one man’s opinion,” he said.

Hollingshead, conceded, however, that he has read only portions of the book--an admission that is not uncommon among those critical of Bissinger’s work.

Permian Principal Jerald McClary, for one, said he stopped reading the book because he found it too negative.

Buice, who apparently did read the entire book, said she finds McClary’s attitude toward the book surprising and misguided.

“I have told many people that, regardless of the intent of the book, regardless of how it can be interpreted, anybody dealing with public education needs to read it,” she said. “If they want to read it as a novel, a made-up thing, fine. But they should read it.

“Of course, there were so many people who were so angry about the book, and I guess if I were more ego-involved, I might have been angry, too.”

If nothing else, passions have cooled enough that Bissinger was able to visit Odessa in September as part of a tour to promote the release of the book in paperback. He even spent 45 minutes at the Permian practice field, where he was ignored by some--including Hollingshead--and greeted with at least some civility by others.

Now working as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Bissinger has established a nonprofit corporation, known as the Friday Night Lights Foundation, to provide an annual college scholarship to a football player from either Permian or Odessa High. Bissinger said he will contribute $2,000 to the foundation each year.

“The book has been successful, and I would like to give something back to the community,” he said.

As for the Panthers’ current run, Bissinger said: “Hats off to Permian. I hope they win the state championship. I just hope they do it without the excesses I saw.”