Roy Williams, Permian's star wide receiver - he averages an astounding 30 yards a catch - watched his brother, Lloyd Hill, tear up Permian opponents 10 years ago. There are some, however, who believe that the Permian cheerleaders learned a cheer at summer camp containing the phrase "Mojo" and unveiled it at the same game.Įither way, the word "Mojo" permeates everything that is Permian football. But the slurred version that came out sounded more like "Mojo, Mojo, Mojo." The version most people embrace is that old alumni from Permian who were attending the game started cheering "Go Joe, Go Joe, Go Joe" as a Permian player ran down the field. The derivation of "Mojo" comes from a Permian game against Abilene Cooper in the mid '60s.
It is at once intimidating and a potent challenge for the players who wear the black and white of Mojo. The white sign, about 50 feet long, is the resume of four decades of Permian football: six Texas 5-A titles, 11 championship games, more District titles than you can count. Bissinger says he could have written the book about hockey in Minnesota, basketball in Indiana or baseball in California, but he was drawn, for many reasons, to Odessa.īut when the book appeared in 1990, this version of "Friday Night Lights" left deep, deep scars.īack behind Permian High School, looming over the sprawling practice fields, stands the monument to Mojo football. He wrote a book less about sports than the complex sociology of a community dependent on high school football. during 1982.īissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, left newspapers for a year and moved his wife and 5-year-old twin boys to Odessa. Sitting there on a Friday night, you could almost forget that Odessa had the highest murder rate in the U.S. Ratliff Stadium and its 19,800 seats, a pretty fair college facility in some parts of this country, was the town's monument to itself. Four state championships in 20 seasons was a comfortably numbing shot of Jack Daniels in a place that Larry McMurtry's "Texasville" described as "the worst town on earth." The Friday night lights were a symbol of hope, a slim ray of self-esteem in a broken city that went bust right along with the price of crude oil in the early 1980s. "Buzz" Bissinger, followed the 1988 team from the opening practice in mid-August to the mid-December loss in the state semifinals to Carter High School of Dallas. The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.Ī decade ago, Permian and Odessa's fanatical devotion to West Texas "Mojo" football was thrust into the bright lights of national celebrity. Hill, the star wide receiver of the 19 Permian Panthers, rips into Williams, a junior who happens to be the best wide receiver in District 4-AAAAA and, quite probably, this entire, big-ass state. Williams was, inexplicably, standing in the back of the end zone when the arch-rival Rebels' Cedric Benson scored from seven yards out. Permian High School is on the wrong end of a 14-0 score during this late October night at Midland's Lee High School. This is the biggest game of the season for the most famous high school football team in the state of Texas, maybe America.
Ratliff Stadium seated almost 20,000 fans.
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