The 80-Yard Run

Over the course of a single football season, author Theron Hopkins travels from summer practice to a row of state championships, culminating in the Texas 5A state title game in San Antonio's Alamodome. On the way, he discovers a world wreathed with Friday night lights that offers a miraculous spectacle of hope and drama in such far-flung locales as Hillsborough, North Carolina, Valentine, Nebraska, and Sutter, California. He also finds that the blinding halogen glare is only a part—and maybe not even the best part—of what makes high school football so irresistible and so important to the people who watch it, coach it, and play it.