By Rex Huffman
The Times-Reporter
Posted Oct 16, 2009 @ 12:00 AM
NEW PHILADELPHIA, OH —
The Times-Reporter
Posted Oct 16, 2009 @ 12:00 AM
NEW PHILADELPHIA, OH —
A trip West with a college friend provided H.G. Bissinger with the ins
piration to write “Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team and a Dream,” a book that would become a New York Times best-seller, a motion picture and an NBC television series. Tuesday, Bissinger will discuss his acclaimed book during a program beginning at 7 in Founders Hall auditorium on the Tuscarawas Campus of Kent State University at New Philadelphia. The event, co-sponsored by the Kent State Tuscarawas Artist/Lecture Series and the public libraries of Tuscarawas County, concludes the One Book One Community initiative.“I was in my early 30s and had just competed an academic year at Harvard where I had a Neiman Fellowship (an award given to mid-career journalists),” said Bissinger, during a telephone interview Tuesday. “A friend and I decided to take a trip West before I returned to work at the Philadelphia Inquirer (as a sports writer),” Bissinger continued. “We took a Southern route, and I soon began to notice that nearly every Main St. of the towns we drove through was obliterated. However, as we drove out of these towns, we would see a beautiful high school football stadium. “These stadiums were more like temples to peoples’ hopes and dreams on a Friday night,” said Bissinger. It was through these observations that Bissinger decided to write a book about high school football. Bissinger said he originally considered basing his book on Massillon, O., before finally deciding on the town of Odessa, Texas, and the Permian High Panthers.
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