It Turns Out We Have Ernie Adams to Thank for the Existence of 'Friday Night Lights'
You can not only make a case that Friday Night Lights is among the most successful and beloved fictional sports franchises of all time. After all, it's done the impossible in that it's worked as a bestselling book, a movie, and a TV series that lasted five seasons.
Personally, I'm partial to the TV show. But I won't fight anyone who prefers the film. As a matter of fact, if everyone agrees not to tell the bride and groom at the wedding I officiated last year or the one I've got coming up in the fall, I've worked parts of the Billy Bob Thornton locker room speech into the ceremony:
I'm not joking.
Little did I or anyone else know that we have one man to thank for the entire literary, cinematic and televisual universe that is FNL. The Patriots own International Man of Mystery Ernie Adams gave this gift to the world. Because of course he did.
"Buzz Bissinger, who wrote the book, was a year behind Bill [Belichick, der] and me at Phillips Academy in Andover. … Friday Night Lights wasn't his intro to high school football; it was covering Bill and me.
"So Buzz goes on to be a writer, and his agent in the late 1980s was my dearest friend in the world, Michael Carlyle. So Buzz calls me up and Buzz says, 'I'm thinking about going out to western Pennsylvania and writing a book about high school football and the team and the town, because I know they're really into it.'
"And I know Buzzy has never been west of Philadelphia in his life, so I'm going to have some fun with him. So I say, 'Buzzy, if you're going to do this, get your ass out to west Texas where they take their football seriously."
So Ernie proceeds to give Bissinger the name of an area scout for UCLA he was friends with. Bissinger connect with the guy who points him in the direction of the Permian Panthers. And the rest, as they say, is book/movie/television history.
All of which would not exist in the form we all know and love were it not for Ernie Adams. We wouldn't have Eric and Tammy Taylor, arguably the most appealing married couple in TV history. No Tim Riggins, who had a more interesting personal and romantic life as a 17-year-old with a fake ID than I've ever had as an adult. No character arcs for Matt Saracen, Smash Williams or Jason Street. No Landry Clarke, perhaps the only character Jesse Plemons has ever played who wasn't a quietly menacing, terrifying creepshow.
No Tyra Collette:
No Lyla Garrity:
None of those few episodes where Tim was boning Alicia Witt, seen here in her new career as the romantic lead in Hallmark Christmas movies:
It should come as a surprise to none of us that the great Ernie Adams was the reason all this exists. He didn't write the book. But he was the Obi Wan to Buzz Bissinger's Luke. The wise hermit with the magical powers to send him on his hero's journey. Giving birth to a beloved piece of American culture in the same way he gave the people of New England six banners and a million indelible moments that will live forever.
Clear eyes. Pink Stripes. Can't lose.