XMASTIME: Friday Night Lights

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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Friday Night Lights

Buzz Bissinger is putting out a follow-up to his awesome Friday Night Lights; in a depressingly non-surprise to anyone, Boobie Miles is now a 315-pound diabetic and has been haunted by an assistant coach who called him a "big ol' dumb n---er," whose identity Bissinger reveals after 22 years:

I never named the coach in the book because I liked him. This was also the price of access. I realize now that this was a mistake, because of the devastating impact his comment has had on Boobie. His name was Mike Belew. He coached the running backs, and he was otherwise affable and self-deprecating. He later married an African American woman, hardly the actions of a racist. It may have been ignorance speaking, but it doesn't matter. Belew's anonymous words, which Boobie came across in the book, scarred him forever.

As we drive to Monahans and sift through the cold ashes of Boobie's Permian experience, he asks me who called him "a big ol' dumb n-----." I tell him. I think he has known for a long time anyway. "I could not believe he would say that shit about me," Boobie says. "That hurt for real when he said that. I could not get that shit out of my mind. He actually called me that, bro."

When I put Belew's words in the book, the intent was to show the virulence of the racism expressed against Boobie once he got hurt. But several years later, we were talking about the book when Boobie railed against what the then-unnamed coach had said about him: "Do you have any fucking idea of how it feels to see this stuff said about you and know it's goin' to be there forever?"

He was right. In my mind, I had been protecting Boobie by using the anonymous quote. But the only person I was protecting was the coach who said it. If I exposed Boobie to the sentiments of that coach, I should have exposed Belew at the same time. So 22 years later, I am correcting the mistake. Maybe too much time has passed and maybe the decision is wrong. But I owe it to Boobie to set the record straight.

I'm hoping Minka Kelly writes the forward.

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