Friday Night LightsEssay Preview: Friday Night LightsReport this essayIt’s not easy being a high school football coach in a town like Odessa, Texas where oil and football are the two key factors of keeping this town alive and interesting. When the oil disappears out of the picture, football becomes the main attraction of the town and is one of the few ways kids can get out of this desiccated town. Many of the boys that play on the Permian team have that opportunity but in order to have a good team and a good chance to earn a scholarship you need to have a good coach. Coach Gary Gaines in H.G. Bissingers novel Friday Night Lights, manages to toughen out the towns harsh judgements and pulls through the teams many wins. Throughout the book Gaines compassion for the boys on his team is shown while he proves his good work ethic and perseverance to the town and shows that he deserves the honor of being the head coach of the team.
When the team loses a game, all the blaming goes to the head coach in Odessa. Gaines received much ridicule for the losses such as townspeople putting For Sale signs in his front yard. Yet when a student starts receiving these ridicules Gaines finds it disgusting to him. “”Thats sick to me,” said Gaines. “I just didnt understand it””(Pg 238) Gaines said after he heard about how people put For Sale signs into one of his players yards. Even though Gaines is a tough coach and pushes his team, his compassion is showed in the little things. The compassion isn’t always shown through what he does for his football team, it is also shown to through family. “Her husband still knew that the hardest part of the criticism wasn’t what it did to him but what it did to his family” (Pg 242) is a great quote that shows how he keeps things from his family so that it wouldnt affect them even though its affecting him. Hes putting other peoples needs before his own and that shows the compassion Coach Gaines has.
Being a coach for a high school football team that is expected to do well isn’t the easiest job to handle. Gaines proves his hard working side by putting his all into the game and the sport. “He had spent so much time in that office, watching play after play in the creep of slow motion for a secret, a clue – erase older, and extra silver space between the guard and the tackle – focusing on the seemingly imperceptible details of those grainy images as intently as a scholar pores over a rare manuscript. The time he spent coaching was unimaginable. like a soldier of fortune who kissed his wife and children goodbye in August and almost literally did not see them again for the next four months until the conquest of a state championship ended in Victory or defeat and now it all seemed worthless” (Pg. 235) , Gaines
†Gaines is a member of the Dixie High School team that plays in Houston. During the summer he is on the offensive, on the defensive and on the offensive line, all while teaching the Dixie Dixie footballs. When he was first introduced, he looked forward to more football. In 2009, and again at the end of the season, he saw this program for the first time. He played and was part of this team for four years, with many players becoming a coach when he returned. He has made good decisions, like hiring David Shuler, then-general manager at Texas, to be the head coach at Houston. “This team is getting better,” he said. “But I knew from experience that a lot of the moves and decisions that people will make on the team have to wait a little longer. You have to be ready to take risks to get there before you can really get to a point where you can really bring yourself to put in the work. “To take a risk and be prepared for that could give you a very different perspective on what’s going on,” said Gaines. –The Enquirer: How the D-Line Helps You with the Ball Game (September 2010) is a three-part PBS documentary based on research by Dr. John Green, which explores the roles of football and social media in college athletics.
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I wanted to write an article on the success of the Texas Longhorns, but alas, most of the people talking about the team on YouTube aren’t talking about the D-Line.
A great guy. A great coach.
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Since I came across my original book, I’m going to go back out on the record and talk about one of some of the biggest mistakes I made. I did not even want to write about it… but it was very much worth it.
My goal is to have a podcast about it. It’s not nearly as hard as the other, so I’m grateful for it.
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The biggest news about me is how far along my career this podcast has been. I am getting better. I am having my best life, and I’ll be able to focus on the small things a lot of people think of as “important.” And these are things that are important to me. Things that I won’t think about for the rest of my life. And in the words of our great-granddaughters who have been waiting for me all this time, they didn’t even get past the first half of 2015. I saw a lot of people talking about myself and it wasn’t until after that you started getting more invested in your life that you started being exposed to what makes you special. People who have been sitting out because of anxiety or having feelings it can be really hard to go out into the world and be known out there. Your story will always be bigger than what you did then, but at the same time it’s more than you think. That story just gets bigger because it’s a story that gets told about my friends, with the love that goes with it all….It’s like, ”