Friday Night Lights: Chapter 14–Epilogue

But there was still something magical about getting one, and dozens of hands reached out to touch it, to feel its smooth, gleaming surface and draw sustenance from it, to keep the wonderful moment going forever, to join the illustrious pantheon of those who had actually made it, who had gone to State.

It was a way of getting back there, just as his parents still kept his room filled with memorabilia — a picture of the championship team, a statue of a black panther that he had carefully put back together after it had been broken, a framed article and picture given to him by the booster club, a collage made for him by his Pepette.

The rule, which had been signed into law in 1984, was designed primarily to force football players to have some accountability in the classroom as well as the athletic field and rekindle the notion that the purpose of going to high school was to learn something besides the intricacies of defending against the option offense.

Suits would be filed over it. Hearings would be held over it. Depositions would be taken over it. Emergency injunctions would be sought over it.

He had a notoriously high failure rate, which of course made him the anathema of Carter High School.

Russeau transferred Gary Edwards out of the course to one with another teacher. And he reported Bates, who had a doctorate and thirty-five years’ teaching experience, to the school administration for not being in compliance with the so-called School Improvement Plan.

The motivation for him to change his mind, they felt, was a desire to appease a constituency whipped into a frenzy over high school football.

“The secretary of education spoke here in Austin on Monday and decried the academic achievement of American children when compared with other industrialized countries. We ranked thirteenth out of thirteen in science,” Kirby noted before beginning the hearing.

After saying that, Kirby then plunged into the morass. It seemed a trivial thing for the state’s highest education official to spend time doing, but Kirby felt compelled to uphold the integrity of the no-pass, no-play rule.

But a few minutes later they indicated it wasn’t noise from the band they were worried about at all, but the ramifications of putting white supporters of Permian next to black supporters of Carter.

In the meantime, both coaches agreed that a crew from San Antonio would officiate the game, with the stipulation that at least two of the officials be black.

Kirby’s purview, said Davis, should be educational policy, not the setting of individual grades.

With the court proceedings out of the way, with Gary Edwards’s passing grade in algebra sealed in cement by a state district court judge, the Carter Cowboys were on their way to State with messianic fervor, ordained and blessed not only inside the school, as they always had been, but now by the entire black community of Dallas.

Among the team members he was almost never mentioned anymore, as if all record of him had been expunged; there was no trace of who he was, and what he had done unless you had witnessed it.

And there had been the effusion of the post-game ritual, screams and catcalls followed by eager plans for the glorious remainder of Friday night.