A high-school football scoreboard photographed powered down, shot from the top of the stands

The 2004 film

Peter Berg took the camera back to Ratliff Stadium

Universal released it on 8 October 2004. Billy Bob Thornton played Gary Gaines, and the production shot in Odessa and in Houston — inside the stadium the Ector County district had built in 1982.

Photo: Siarhei Nester / Pexels

19,302Seats at Ratliff Stadium, per Ector County ISD

$5.6mConstruction cost, opened 1982

$61mDomestic gross, 2004 release (Box Office Mojo)

2006–2011Five seasons of the NBC and DirecTV series

The 2004 Friday Night Lights film one-sheet, photographed flat on a light surface at poster scale

A book about one season, filmed in the town it was written in

H. G. Bissinger spent the 1988 season with the Permian Panthers and published in 1990. Fourteen years later his cousin Peter Berg directed the film for Universal, with Brian Grazer producing for Imagine Entertainment. It took about $61 million at the domestic box office.

8 Oct2004 theatrical release

2Production centres: Odessa and Houston

0Stand-in stadiums used

Berg is Bissinger's cousin. The book was published in 1990; the film reached cinemas in 2004.

Billy Bob Thornton as Gary Gaines on the sideline in a production still from the 2004 film

The Film

Six pieces on how it was made

Peter Berg's 2004 adaptation: production, cast, score, locations, and the $61 million domestic result.

All of The Film ↗

The 1990 Friday Night Lights book jacket by H. G. Bissinger lying on a wooden table, photographed from above

The Book, 1990

Odessa read it and did not thank him for it

Bissinger moved to Odessa for the 1988 season and reported the programme from inside it. The access he was granted, and the verdict he delivered, are the two halves of the argument the town had with the book.

How the book was reported

Sports Illustrated placed it fourth on its 2002 list of the hundred best sports books, and the National Book Critics Circle nomination came earlier; the 25th-anniversary afterword returned to the record.

What came back to him

All of The Book ↗

Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler, who played Tami and Eric Taylor across five seasons

The Series

Five seasons in a town that does not exist

Jason Katims's NBC/DirecTV series (2006–2011): fictional Dillon, the Taylors, the handheld method, and the survival deal.

3Emmys won by the series

66Episodes across five seasons

Empty Ratliff Stadium at dusk, seen from the west stands with floodlights beyond the field

Odessa

The town the price of oil built, and twice unbuilt

The real Odessa: oil booms, Ratliff Stadium, Permian's state titles, and the integration record the book made part of the story.

Photo: Ratliff stadium · Wikimedia Commons

The championship record

1965First state title, six years after the school opened
1972Second, mid-boom
1980Third, at the peak
1984Fourth, two years after Ratliff opened
1989Fifth, the season after Bissinger’s year
1991Sixth, after the bust

19,302 Seats for $5.6 Million

Ratliff Stadium's construction in 1982 — the cost, the capacity, the moment in Odessa's oil economy when the money was voted, and what the stadium looked like by the time Bissinger arrived in 1988 and Berg's crew arrived in 2003.

The Five State Titles and What They Were Built On

Permian's UIL state championship seasons — 1965, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1989, and 1991 — framed as a factual record and set against the school's enrollment, classification, and the oil economy's cycles that funded the program.

The Town the Price of Oil Built, and Twice Unbuilt

The relationship between Odessa's petroleum economy and the Permian program's fortunes — the boom that funded Ratliff Stadium, the bust that Bissinger arrived during in 1988, and how the cycle shaped the community's investment in high-school football as civic identity.