'No Friday Night Lights': Book tells story of football in shrinking small towns

High school football season is in full swing across the country, and along with it, the popular description of Friday Night Lights.

But the newest book from our next guest tells a different kind of story about a high school football team in rural Nevada.

"No Friday Night Lights: Reservation Football on the Edge of America" tells the story of the McDermitt Bulldogs, who play eight on eight football – because that’s as big a team as they can field; typically, football teams have 11 players on a side.

John Glionna is an author and former LA Times foreign and national correspondent; and he spoke more with The Show about what drew him to this story and this community.

Full conversation

JOHN GLIONNA: Well, there's a lot of wide open spaces in America. There, there's wide open spaces across, you know, Arizona and especially certainly Nevada. And I was looking to tell a story about small, the dying of small towns.

And I figured a football team that lived in an isolated area like McDermitt, Nevada, which is right on the Oregon border and next to a Native American Paiute-Shoshone reservation and about their travails of playing high school sports would tell the tale.

And so I reached out to the, to the, you know, the, the educational folks and got in touch with the coach and they were very, very, very anxious to, you know, sort of host me. And so, a couple of years ago, in the, in the late summer, I moved up to this little small town and with about 40 people in it and, and picked out a place to live and went to the football practices and wrote about the kids and the team and sort of about whether they're gonna have a season and who's gonna come out and play. And so that's what my book is about.

MARK BRODIE: Is there something about football that you think helps tell this story? And I kind of asked because you know, the, the name of your book, “No Friday Night Lights,” is of course a play on the book “Friday Night Lights,” which it seems like it kind of told a, a somewhat similar story, but I'm wondering if there's something about football that maybe helps tell that story.

GLIONNA: Well, yeah, football, I mean, I could have done the basketball team, I suppose. There was a town nearby and called Gabs, and their, their mascot is the Tarantulas, which I love the Gabs Tarantulas. And … they couldn't get enough kids to play basketball. So they, they, they joined up the girls team and the boys team went out and played and I kind of really like that, but Gabs didn't, didn't have a, didn't have a team anymore. They really couldn't get it going.

And what drew me to this particular team were the coaches. There are two coaches who are fine men. Both of them have these fascinating backgrounds that are both Shakespearean and “Saturday Night Live.” And, you know, the kids are all just kids who are, you know, the, the latest crop of young boys coming out. And, you know, I was, I was really interested in the coaches quite frankly.

BRODIE: Well, so did you find that they had to adjust maybe the way they coach? I mean, obviously, like playing, you know, eight on eight is different than playing 11 on 11. But I guess given the challenges that some of these kids face in their day to day lives and maybe given some of the challenges that the community faces did, they did that sort of work its way into how these coaches were trying to do their jobs?

GLIONNA: Well, they had to go out and recruit, you know, they were, whether it's college with a, rather with the high school with, you know, or the school with 99 people and, you know, maybe 30 in the high school, they, and, and, you know, some of those being, you know, girls, they had to go out, and they knew who the usual suspects were.

You know, boys who might play, play football. So early on they would, they would, you know, the coaches, if they saw him in the hallway, and Coach Egan told me that, you know, I would go out and sometimes he begged kids to come out and play. And it's in the book about a freshman who decided he wasn't gonna play and without this kid, they didn't have a season.

And there's a moment in the book where they all decide how they're going to get this kid to change their mind, to change his mind, to come out of play. And, and, it, it was really heartbreaking but, you know, it is a full-time recruitment job every year to get to, to get the new season started, you know, right. And in the spring they start, are you coming out?

And, you know, Coach Egan would say that he'd see kids that would dodge him in the hallway and, you know, like, oh, no, here he comes again. He'd walk up to the locker. And, and I, I saw him actually really almost get down on his knees and big kids to play because we, you know, we need you, we need you. We don't without you, we can't play a season.

BRODIE: I can't imagine the kind of pressure that must put on a high school kid to, for a coach to say if you don't play, we don't have a season this year. Like I would imagine that these are kids who are also dealing with probably a lot of other things in their lives and to have that on top of it. I, I just can't imagine the pressure.

GLIONNA: Many of the kids on the reservation are living in below-poverty-level households. Many of them are raised with, you know, they're in, you know, maternal, many of them are raised by their grandmothers, and the kids who, the Caucasian kids who come from, you know, local farms, you know, they've got responsibilities outside football.

There was, there was a story that I was told by, in, in, now this team in the past, the McDermitt Bulldogs, they had a glorious pass in the 1980s and 1990s, they won the state championship. They were good, they were tough, and the town came out and supported them.

And it's only been over the last sort of, you know, you know, since the mine closed, I mean, there's a familiar tale, but that they have been sort of gone into the losing streak, but the former quarterback on, on that one of their winning winning campaigns is now a rancher, and he brought his son out to play and they, they went to an away game. He drove his son out there and they get trounced. And on the way back, his son's got his head down and there, you know, and he, he tried to give his son some encouragement.

He said, son is not about this, it's not about the score. And his son said, then why is there a scoreboard? And his son, you know, said, I wanna, I wanna quit. And the father and him wanted to say, don't quit, you know, that's the father's … he can't quit. Quitting is not the answer.

But he looked at the risk his son was thinking about getting injured by big kids and he, he, he said, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna force you to go back and he, he allowed his son to, you know, quit the team, which was kind of heartbreaking for him and his son.

And, and so there's a lot of pressure on, on kids being afraid that, A, they're going to get hurt, and B, that, you know, why go on and put your heart and soul and time and sweat and energy into something where you're gonna lose. You're going to score 2 points in a season when your competitors score 400. It's, it's really hard. And in the end, what the coaches try to instill is that it's for, you know, it's a cliche to say it's for the love of the game.

But, you know, do you like playing football? Football is fun in a sense for a kid to go out and be part of a team and express themselves and even though they lose, there was camaraderie that were formed between these boys in the season that I was there.

And, and that, that really counts for something, you know, McDermitt is not unique. Throughout the American West, you know, the, the, the big states, the big square states that we have out here, there are a lot of small towns that are just hemorrhaging people, but the people who remain, the parents and the teachers and the business owners, they deserve to have a semblance of American life. And part of that American life, you know, cliche or not is on, on the weekend, your boys in your high school are going out, they're they're putting their helmets on and they're going against the team down the road, and you're proud of them. You want to come out and watch them.

And, and so they shouldn't be deprived of that. And so these coaches are doing their very best to see that. That, that's still a reality out here.