system that it will go bad for the same reason it went bad before. the companies will develop clout, they will push the right galatians and weakening of their oversight and slowly but surely we will end up right back where we were before. i think that's a risk. it's right there. i'm just not sure i can come up with anything better. there's risk of having a big bank be that major source of financing for american mortgage. there's a risk without without having the government in the mortgage market at all that it would be such a radical shock to our economy and that is a fragile economy right now. people do report analysis and say this is what it would look like if we are private capital. no one knows. we pad the the system in place for 80 years. we don't know it what it would look like. we don't know if americans would be able to get mortgages. >> thank you so much for this discussion. i have really enjoyed it. again we been talking with bethany mclean, on shaky ground the strange saga of the u.s. mortgage giants. thank you for your time. >> thank you so much. >> that was afterwards booked to be signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books our interview. watch pass pass afterwards program online at book tv.org. >> book tv continues now with pulitzer prize winner journalist and friday night lights author buzz bissinger. he reports on panthers, the winningest high school for putting the texas history and how the sport overshadows the political and landscape of odessa, texas. >> good afternoon, my name is jim i am a host with book people. welcome to book people. we are pleased to be presenting author buzz bissinger, he is a journalist by trade his writing has appeared in the new york times, sports illustrated, vanity fair, and various others. his previous books include a prayer for the city, three nights in august, shooting stars, and father's day. is the recipient of the pulitzer prize and he is here today on the 25th anniversary of his book, friday night friday night lights. a town, a team and a dream. sports illustrated ranked fourth in a list of 100 best hundred best books on sports and the best book ever on football. yes p.m. called it the best book on sports over the past quarter century. we are very thrilled to have them here with book people, following tonight's event he will take a few questions and then afterwards it will be be signing to my right and everybody's left. so without further do please help me welcome buzz bissinger. [applause]. >> sports illustrated magazine. anyway, it's actually nice to save the best for last. book tours, i've been on a book tour for almost two weeks they are tricky. actually i thought about this, i'm 60 years old as i look at my notes and can't see anything. yes i'm 60 years old and i have written five books, books are hard, this this book has had tremendous success and i'm lucky for that. actually don't know if i have another book within me. it's lonely, it's precarious, i will never sell as many copies as this. and i'm not trying to be dramatic. this may be my last bookstore appearance, i just don't know. i have an idea, but they are hard and it will take five or six years to do. it's interesting, i was thinking about how professions have certain temperaments, certain emotions, if your business i think you're not particularly introspective but hard-working, confidence. if you sell real estate you are tough, you like making the deal no matter what. authors are insecure, hypersensitive, scared, and rejection is hard. yesterday when i was that book 1 million in some crappy mauling grapevine, texas courtesy courtesy of my publisher after begging them not to send me their and you sit there and three people calm, it is not good. it's not. the worst is, and i'm not going to allow any of you to do this, the worst is when people sort of approach year book like it is a mutt at the pound. they sniff at it and paw at it and thumbed through it, and then put it down right in front of your face. that is not a good feeling. but i had a wonderful events at an independent bookstore in houston and i been at book people before and it is a great place. it is a sacred place. i've been thinking about why do we write books. i think it's often easy to lucite of why, is it for money? yes and no, i've had good financial success on friday night lights i have also pissed a lot of it away, a lot. i don't recommend anyone get paid in lump sums of mustard $2 million because you think you're rich, you spend it and then you have nothing left. fame is ridiculous, you you don't get any pain. celebrity is ridiculous, it's not about celebrity, american celebrity is very bizarre today. i know this from personal experience. the celebrities of today are kim kardashian, kylie jenner, and the rest. it hit me though, when it was part of the tour, unannounced really tuesday i was in odessa and a teacher, freshman english teacher e-mailed me and said we are using your book and is there anything possible way you would calm? and i said sure. i didn't really care about selling books, i thought it was need to increment, taxes they are using the book. i went there and i went there with bride chavez who is in the book and we went together. he was one of the players i wrote about. as i was talking and as o'brien was talking, and you see the faces on the kids you realize that books do have an ability to touch a life. to inspire, to open eyes, to open doors, to get kids to think and they were really, really, really good kids and a great teacher. they can make a difference. there is a young woman there, who is very smart, and was asking a lot of good questions. at one point she asked him, what does it take to get into an ivy league school? that is not the type of thing you expect to hear and kermit. when she. when she said that, i found that profound. that this book, that character, brian chavez brian chavez is having an incredible impact on someone to at least see the world that she had never imagined. that there are possibilities out there and if you reach them or not they are still incredible possibilities. we spent two hours there, there's no book signing, there is no nothing but a teacher who really wants her kids to learn, and that is why we have to remind yourself as authors, that is why we write books. you can touch a life. you can change a life. along the book to her it is difficult on some stops where people who said this book changed my life, this is why became a writer, this is why came into journalism. some guy said this is why i came to coach in texas, he was really strange. but you get touch as well as much as you feel sorry for yourself and self-pity which is a problem of the writer as well. kermit was profound. if i had done nothing else but kermit i would have been happy and satisfied and i am really rooting for those kids, as i said the teacher was fantastic. a lot of people, i've got the question a zillion times they say where did you get the idea for this book? where did it come from? the first origins came when i was 13 years old. i grew up in new york city, i love sports and i remember reading an article in sports illustrated about texas named jack milton. it was was written by the great dan jackson back in the age when sportswriters really could write. as opposed to the crap they spent out now. cliché upon cliche, tired sense after tired sentence, those guys could write. the ford, jenkins. 15000 people playing on a friday night, his name was on every church marquee and hotel neon sign and i was mesmerized. how could a kid, not much older than me, three or four years older than me be that famous? the law of texas football hit me and bit me then. i found it fascinating. i found it mythic. so before i even got to friday night lights what struck me was all of these kind of small town names becoming big town legends. ken hall, the sugar land express, jerry rome, jerry rome, american names, ej hollow, chuck mozer, gordon wood, vintage american, 11 syllable first name two syllable last name. that struck me that in the sense, these men were the heart of america. then the towns, wink, waco and lubbock and abilene, santangelo, galveston, where the hell were they? i didn't know but i love the music of them. the sound of them, the, the way they rolled off the taint. the wink wildcats. could any name be more perfect than that? and yes troy 0% is from wink. so i read at a young age about texas football, the myth in the tower. i drove out west in the mid-1980s and 80s and that is when the sub conscious rose to the conscious where the underpinning to the outlines of a book began to take shape. i took the southern roots, you go to the heart of high school country, georgia, alabama, mississippi, louisiana, and ultimately texas. main street was dark and then, a lot of stores were not there, jcpenney was holding up, sears was holding up at there's not much there but you get a few blocks out and you see that high school stadium. beautiful. really beautiful. intimate. water to the hill even if there was a drought. painted shrine. temples. palaces. everyone in life wants to believe in something, hope in something, look forward to something, and i simply knew that high school football and many towns in texas and across this country, maybe it's basketball in indiana, maybe it's hockey in minnesota, you're all looking for something to believe in. i became convinced that a many towns high school football was it. it is a very unique, powerful culture, and we all need those friday night lights. regardless of the degree of how much we do it off the backs of 16, 17, an 18-year-old kids, noble kids who 99 times out of 100 they are not late for college scholarships they are playing for the pride of the team, the town, in the community. that is really, really powerful. plus, i was good at what i did. i had great grounding at the philadelphia choir, it was the most interesting newspaper in the country, i knew how to report i knew how to zig while others say. i think one of the reasons the book was successful is because it was the first, there wasn't any sports book. it was the book about the culture of sports. sportswriters, all of them were riding in that great, heroic myth style, they did no reporting they never tunneled underneath, they never really tried to no with the heartbeat of a place was. i felt like i could do that in odessa. how did i find odessa? it wasn't hard to find then. the football team odessa was absolutely legendary in that time in 1988. they ended up winning three or four state championships in the 80s and what i would argue the most competitive playoff system in the country. then 64 teams vying for the state championship. they are ranked number one in the preseason and what makes the book, it stares on trance storytelling, you want the reader to turn the page and my hope was that they would get to the playoffs as they were pretty much guaranteed. then there was odessa. not a quintessential small town, it the the feel of a small town because of its isolation, of course the football stadium cost $5.6 million in 1985 and seated 19000 people. well, that that pretty much tells you football is important. so i got permission, i got access, i went down there and lived there for a year. i took my twin boys with me, we went and bought red cowboy boots, i knew the worst thing i could do was to look like a texan so i stayed away from bowties and cowboy boots and wore to the first practice, i think i had a tweed jacket, penny loafers in 99° west texas heat. degrees west texas heat. i look like an idiot basically. the kids looked at me and said who is this guy what is he doing, and then they forgot about me because they are practicing. i found a credible, beautiful power and those friday night lights. spectacle unlike anything i have seen, more exciting then and a fall and afl championship games which i've seen. the ban, the cheerleaders, the cheerleaders, the pageantry, the crying, the laughing, the incredible importance, that stadium i don't know how many of you have seen it, it was some like this incredible rocketship landing on the moonscape of west texas. the the flatness, the wind running across, it was spectacular. but it was too spectacular because those lights were really too bright as they are in many places, i feel firmly that we become warped in the role sports plan our lives since early in our high schools and colleges. too many parents, and this is not me talking this is a recent poll by the foundation of the robert wood johnson foundation, 25% of parents think their kids will make it to the pros. while that is insane. that also explains their obsession with their kids, the pressure the put on kids, the pressure to win at all costs, the pressure to put on coaches. to the degree of too many places, academics is simply an obstacle to be overcome. to be gotten around, to find a loophole. academics of course should be the mainstay of life, it should be the other way around that i think sports and it's not just texas, and not just football, basketball, lacrosse, even squash, or fencing, that has been the coke regal or activity and academics are shunted to the side. we are the only culture in the world that does this. we're the only society, the only country that looks to high school and college for sports entertainment. no other country does that. it has been there at the beginning and i don't how we are going to get rid of it but that is a bizarre thought really. that sports is playing such a consuming role at our schools at a time when we all know there is more competition, more globalization than ever before. you talk to any foreign student whose studies in a foreign country comes to the united states they'll say that high school is basically a joke. the amount of time spent screwing around a pooling round both in high school and college is astounding to them. i think sports is part of that monster we have created. there many characters in the book for this edition, i wrote a new afterword, i was determined to write something real and i wanted to see the six kids and i had written about. i wanted to see part of it was professional to update their lives but part of it was my own personal journey to complete the circle, what have they don't their lives, who are they now, who am i now. we had had such an intimacy between us in 1988, and a credible bound as we went through the war together. their beautiful kids one of the great things about journalism and about going to west texas is that all stereotypes are blown to smithereens. these kids have something that is too rare in america which is complete, total authenticity. they were real, they spoke with their hearts. they did not hold back they were funny they were sharp, they were observant, they were great. whenever pressure was placed upon them they rose above it in an incredibly spectacular ways many high high schools do and in some don't. i will read your little bit from the afterword about what i tried to get it. >> i had taken this route once before at a different time in my life. i was much younger than, i was in my 30s when you could still act impulsively and not permanently suffer for it. i didn't know what to expect then and i don't know what to expect now. there is familiar comfort in the landscape, the sprawl of the dallas metro losing i oil, the refineries in belmont and houston, the hill country dressed in lace and wildflowers. the flatlands of west texas where you step off into eternity and wonder if you are ever find your way back. i am returning, and not just a famous and infamous odessa, the controversy that exploded after the publication of the book in 1990 made 90 made me something of a marked man. i had to cancel my book tour there, the anger was real and it was palpable, if i had learned anything in life is you don't mess with the west texan. i expose the good of odessa because there are many good and hearty people there but i also exposed big bands of racism and misplaced academic and social priorities. i could have done all of this by phone and e-mail and updating the lies of these players, the internet would have been easier and cheaper but i had to see them face-to-face. i had to know if there is still an emotional connection between us. if any of the power of what we went through still remained. a moment in my life may be the key moment but i wondered about them. i love them then, but love is the most empty and overused word in the english language. twenty-five years earlier i i went in search of the friday night lights. now during a week in april, in texas i went searching for those who have played under them. so that is what i was trying to do and drove 1000 miles, i love driving through texas, my thoughts have never been more cleaner, more pure. i love. i love the sound of the road and going to from west texas to el paso where you can drive 180 miles per hour. so i saw all six kids. when i was younger, i'm now 60 and i was 3434 when the book came out, very judgmental and high standards because they were my own standards. they were the standards you have when you grow up with extreme privilege in new york city. they were great. it's great to see them. and i call them kids they're not kids, they're in the mid- 40s. it was great to see them i no longer judge what their lives were and what they were not, what what they have done and what they have not done. our bond was totally instantaneous, if seen them grown emotionally, i definitely saw them grow physically. they put on a lot of tonnage. they are virtually all bald. so i feel pretty damn good about myself. they really have packed it in. obviously if you read the book one of the players i wrote about, the the mainstay of the book if there was one was a booby miles. he was the best running back in the state of texas that year, that is saying a mouthful, there are a lot of great running backs. he was 6'2", he was tough mean, and he loved to run. i loved to watch him run although it was only a tape. he abandoned the joy, the beauty. of course booby got hurt and in that moment of getting hurt, and i will never forget this, in lovick's texas in the twilight of an august day, in a meaningless play his clique got caught on an artificial field and it kid fell on it and he tore his anterior. in that moment, his life did end. that is not hyperbole, that is not set for the sake of saying nothing interesting or dramatic, his life did end. i want to read, i want to start a bit earlier to view a sense of what he felt, how much he had waited for that senior year, this was his moment. he put too much stock into football so did his uncle, but this was it, this was the crowning season that would get him to college into the pros which was a very dangerous thing. summit kids have this dream because there are a lot of movies out there. it was the watermelon feed, the moment in august while the boosters and fans came together. there were about 600 of them in the school cafeteria. one by one they were announced and then came booby. booby had played the year before but largely in a backup role to another running back, he still gained about 1500 yards including 305305 yards in eight carries against abilene. this was his moment. he wasn't worried about stepping into the role, he knew he could do it, he knew he could tuck it under his arm and do what a football that michael jordan did with the basketball. mike heads turned with the cut so pure, so instinctive that only god could have given it to him. michael jordan can fly down call special ways, i i can run and fate can all special ways said booby. he acknowledged the letter of the crowd like an academy award winner which would undoubtedly be a lifetime of moments. exuberant chance of booby echoed through the room. the world belonged to him. it also belonged to his uncle, the man who had raised him, who had taken him out of the foster home, sat on one of the little cafeteria stools toward the back, wearing a cap that had booby's number, number 35 proudly. on the night of the watermelon feed his nephew walked down the isle with the flush confidence of someone absolutely sure of his destiny. the smile, wonderful and wide, the gate easy and sweet, full of cockiness and a horrendous taste of a big head but there is no one else like him. while the score was so lopsided booby himself pose the question one day, because they only have one booby. he was right. they only had one booby. in two days when he went up north to amarillo to a preseason scrimmage people would get their first real taste of what he was going to do. the season when he, and he alone was the shining star of the panthers. that is what it was like, those were the expectations he had, those, those were the expectations the town had for him. obviously he was african-american and there were many in town who did not like him, they thought his big headache, they thought he was difficult. as long as he played football, as long as he did his job, as long as he didn't -- they will be okay with it. several days later came that scrimmage and i want to read to you what that was like. he moved up the line against the dons and everything was in pulsating motion. the legs thrust high, high, the hip swiveling, the arms pumping. the shoulder pads clapping wildly up-and-down like the incessant beat of a calypso drum. he went for 15 yards and it was only scrimmage but he wanted more, he always wanted more when he had the ball. the sidelines he planned his left leg but the leg got caught in artificial turf and then someone fell on the side of it and when he got up he was limping. he could barely put any pressure on it at all. the team dr. ran his fingers up and down the leg feeling for broken bones and then he moved to the knee. booby watch the trail of those fingers, his his eyes ablaze in his mouth slightly open. with a tiny voice of a child he asked butler, how serious it was, how long he would be out? the dr. kept staring at his knee , you might be out six or eight weeks he said quietly. almost in a whisper. booby jolted upright as if he was wincing from the force of a shot, no man. we won't know until we x-ray it, it may be worse if you don't stop moving that leg. >> menu can be serious man you're full of it's been butler said nothing. >> man i know you're not talking about any six to eight weeks. >> booby was placed on the bench behind the sideline in this hightops are untied. his leg was placed in a baked filled with ice to help stop the swelling. he turned to the trainer, trapper. is it going to scrap my season? he asked in a terrified whisper. >> i sure hope not said trapper. but trapper knew that it would. >> dreams die very hard in sports, too hard. nothing is more idolizing the great athlete and nothing is forgot more quickly than the x athlete. we idolize athletes as i do. as i did when i was a kid. we we put them on a pedestal. we give them brakes, we pass them through, as adults which tell them over and over how great they can be and how great they are. until they get hurt. until someone comes along who is better. that happened to booby, both of those things happen. when that happened, he was done. because this happens all the time, more than we want to know, particularly with minority athletes and inner-city kids, and and black kids in rural places. booby was treated as a football animal in high school, there ain't no doubt about that, and animal. and animal whose only thing he could do was play football. he cannot be educated so he was not educated. he was pastor everything, he had a tutor tutor would give him the answer to test the day before just to make sure he would be passing under no pass no play. he got money to play. a booster who i guess he thought he was doing the right thing, as a junior every monday booby we get to his locker and there would be an unmarked white envelope with as many dollars as yards he gained the previous friday night. now when you're a kid, and i'm trying to be dismissive, who lives in something little more than a shack, when you are kid from the south side of odessa, the black side across the tracks, i'm not a physicist or mathematician but i can figure out that if you gain 305 yards you'll get 305 bucks. if he gained 1500 yards for the season you're going to get 1500 bucks which is a hell a hell of a lot of money to a kid. it goes beyond that, if you're getting money, if you're getting answers, if you're getting pushed through, if they say don't worry about educating the kid just passing through, you're not going to study. you're not going to think you need academics. i think it could be argued that kids like booby are the kids who need care, feeding, and academics the most. he is not stupid. it is an insult to say he was stupid. it. it is an insult to stay at as a coach that i remember asking him, i said it was a faraway question journalists journalist asked them all the time, what would booby be without football? he looked at me and he said to me without football he would be a big dumb old maker. he was a kid, 18 years old at a texas high school. being describe that way. are the boosters, once they knew there's someone better, a great kid and was a new they didn't have to worry about booby anymore, they're on the sideline they were laughing and joking, having a good time, they're on the moves of a play up and they said maybe booby should do to himself what a horse does when it pulls up lane, in in other words he should shoot himself in the head. eighteen years old. what was his sin, to get hurt? that was his sin. that's how you are treated. now i've been having this little private war with odessa for 25 years, people are gracious, once gracious, once the movie came out because it was soft such a soft porn version of the book, they were relieved, the movie people made a deal with the town of odessa and in return for shooting it in ode to said they promised not to delve into the heavy themes of the book. i understand that. i resent, i am so tired of odessa acting as if none of this happen. i am really tired of them blaming the messenger when every word in this book was true and none of this was embellished. i am really tired of them somehow not coming to grips with the fact of how they treated that kid. there are parts of odessa that i like a lot and i will never, ever forgive them for that, never, ever and no one should. when time is past i know it's a more diverse place, change place, football is not as important as it was. but that does not erase the past. i can tell you if you don't have an education, more than education one of the problems with athletes, the way we treat them and it starts now as young as five or six, go check out aau basketball. nine, 10, 11-year-old kids be imparted by coaches in the name of amateurism making half $1 million half a million dollars per year, selling kids, making deals with parents, shoe deals. the problem is, among other things they never learn adversity. never. until it is too late. success is much easier to handle than adversity. ever city means you have to bounce back and you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself, i'm not very good at that. diversity means to let go and it means to fight 100 times harder. booby had no education and he did not know how to handle adversity. when he stop playing, they they let him play and by the way they let him play even though actually he torn his interior ligaments. they let him play and they you used him as a guinea pig. you try running without injury, you can't do it. it just lead to humility and humiliation on booby's part. ipods, because it is just appalling. so afterward and this came as apsley no surprise to me, i kept in touch with the booby sense the book. we are very close in some ways he became a surrogate sent to me particularly after his uncle died. his uncle was the only person booby new truly loved him after being abandoned by his mother and being beaten by an electrical cord by his father stepmom. he had no buddy, no no want to rely on, no underpinnings. yes, booby needs to accept responsibility for the way he and his life. but i was not surprised at all bite when i took that trip to texas where i interviewed him, and and i'm going to read from that. >> when booby was playing for permian, he he got 80s, 90s on his report card. today before a test he had a tutor who gave him all the answers. >> as long as i can play football i got a's. when you got any kid at 15, 16, 17 years old of course they will accept that. i am here to tell you, don't accept that. it's hard to, but don't accept it. look what happened. you get hurt. and they don't care no more. which is probably why he suddenly had 50s and 60s on his report card after the injury. which was shocking enough but paled in enough but paled to being compared to a big old dumb nagger. twenty-five years of time will never, ever excuse those words. booby's son goes to high school in texas, he will be a sophomore this fall and he got picked for a nike football camp. football camp. he is a running back like his dad. booby's smile smile comes to life when he comes and talks about his son be the spitting image of him on the field. booby wears a uniform now, a white prison uniform. his serving ten years for aggravated assault, eligible for parole in 2017 in a state in a state that does not like to give parole. prison is not a good place to offer fatherly advice. booby rights and talks to him on the phone as much as he can to make sure, or or try to make sure, he listens to the message that booby never heard. and thousands of others like him never here as well. if you don't have football you have to have something. i don't want my son to turn out like i turned out. that's my worst fear. i don't want my son to go through what i went through, it was horrible. i don't want that for him. booby has found introspective in his time in prison, his self-awareness is a wonderful thing. but i have heard that before. but still, watching someone find that introspection in prison will break anyone's heart. it is time to leave, booby and i have had more than an hour together and the guard is getting a little restless. booby and i clasp hands and then we embrace, there is a lot left to say but maybe there is nothing except this. i love you man. i love you too. i watch him leave, i hovered near the waiting room entrance looking into a window into an empty corridor. everything is still an empty. there is a flash of another memory, it is that one of booby at the watermelon feed walking through a narrow aisle to a cheering crowd, and a big smile on his face, when he was young, handsome, strong, and immortal. thank you very much. [applause]. we're happy to take some questions if you have questions. about anything and everything. let me put on my glasses. did you have a question, sure. >> 21 years ago i actually film jacked in oklahoma, i actually saw saw the players a few years ago. i heard he died, he was that the main character so i did not follow them afterwards. among folks who have read your stuff, there are a lot of political people that think prayer for the city was one of the best books written about public policy. i am running running you wrote that book over a number of years, these are people who are living in city you lived in, then you go to odessa and worrying about the lives of a people of a city you are not from. is it different for you at all at least personally. >> it's an interesting question because in writing friday night lights i started writing it in odessa. it's pretty terrible, i had written a book before, i wasn't using an outline which was insane, but i was a author cited nino sticking outline. my editor read 30,000 words and said i had come to new york immediately and said at the rate this is going it is going to be there longest book ever. the point is, i had to get it done. i was was moving to wisconsin for various reasons and it was when i got distance that i was able to write the things i had to say. i wonder if maybe i should've done that in the city if i needed some distance. i don't know. i really appreciate what you say about the prayer for city, it was about urban america through the eyes of ed rendell who is america philadelphia. it took five years and was big chunk of my life. it was respectable sales by book standards, we sold 50,000. it doesn't compared to friday night lights which have sold somewhere the range of 2 million. i'm glad i did it. i think it was my best book. i think reading friday night lights it was a wonderful exuberance in language that i think captured the exuberance of those kids. it is interesting how books have the right tone for the right time and the right characters. >> one of the books you talk about at the end is the influence it has given to kids when a lot of it is provided for them throw their educational experience, even starting at a but very young and early age. as someone who follows college football scene, one big aspect people are concerned about is the recruiting process and how kids are getting recruited younger and younger. one example took as a joke at first and then realize it was serious when ohio state offered lebron's james son of all ride when his eight years old. so for the kids that make it, the very few that make it through and play big-time college football, basketball, baseball, what would you say would be more corrupting or dangerous influence on them in that process, either the recruiting process from the colleges where they are treated like gods among young men or does it start early at the high school level where their basic day-to-day things are taken care for them? >> i think it's about cycle all the way around. one of the interesting things, one of the worst sport in terms of doing that is lacrosse. lacrosse, routinely in the east has kids commit as young as ninth-grade. routinely. yes it is the great ivy league which trust me cares about sports as much is in school does. the problem is, when kids commit that young, kids are still growing, they are still maturing so a lot of these kids who commit, they made the commit because the schools no longer want them and there's just no guarantee. there a few times, you could tell lebron james that his dad was going to be a great player and six grade but that is very few and far between. the thing is, it starts now at the age of five or six. particularly in basketball though i ran into a gentleman who said his son was going to play tackle pee wee at five. there is an idiotic show called ride a night tykes, of course they should pay me for that title. if i had trademarks friday night lights i could buy -- but i didn't. but it's funny, i'm rambling round a a little bit but i get amused when sportswriters say, you know it's high school football is big today as it was then. well, this is the saturday dallas news, let's see. one, you can count off with me, to, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight pages. why are they doing it because they think they can make money on it. you have high school programs, not every that are basically college programs that are on tv all the time, espn all the time, comcast all the time. u.s. trinity played lasalle, is lake notre dame play in southern california. $60 million stadium, it says a lot about the community value. i should point out they also built some beautiful performing our facilities and katie passed a bond issue that caused -- eight pages in the news says it all. you're saying these are both coast-to-coast powers, you can pretty much identify the schools. they are semi pro team and the other thing is in the suburbs, the rich suburbs which are feeling very good teams they can all look for private trainers. they can have the best and equipment and in facilities. i think college football offensive and here's why. notwithstanding that kid missing that extra point for texas last night, that was offensive. although i feel really sorry for but man he should've made that. that was bizarre. what i find offensive is the savings in the urban meyer's, the average salary for football coaches $2 million per year. sabin probably with extras probably makes 10. urban ten. urban meyer probably makes close to ten. kids don't get a dime. i don't wanna hurt nick sabin's feelings, he doesn't when the games, those kids when the games. same with urban meyer's if you don't have the talent you're not going to win. i'm an advocate and it can be done, i think kids coming out of high school should be free agents and go to the highest bidder. they deserve that money. they deserve it. you could do it. what would happen actually schools would have to spend more on these kids and less on coaches and then the sellers of the football coaches would go down. people would say well it's good to be the haves and have-nots, well it's the haves and have-nots now. but why is it fair, we may like johnny manzella not like johnny manzo, how many millions of johnny manzella make for an m? how much money did ken newton make for auburn? what happens if they get hurt? i know seniors seniors they take out insurance policy to try to get guard against that of their high draft pick. what if you get hurt as a sophomore or junior, and why is it fair for schools to reap tens or millions and then they finally stopped it. they were licensing kids names, on uniforms. because they are not there for scholarship. they are not there for scholarship. if you want to scholarship you would have to take $50000 of the money guy, if you got more than that you apply to a scholarship. with that also means is kids will do that if they really want an education. to expect college kids because the pressures on them, them, it's a year-round job, to eon.et them to study, take care except for the most motivated kids and i know there are exceptions that's absurd. when i see nick sabin, i get made. i get mad at our culture. this is america the land of free opportunity in free enterprise, free premarket. baseball players, high school and they make millions. in the nba you'll only have to stance a freshman in college and i don't think that's right. i think any one should have the right tolegnow at any time. in football it's a scam. it's a scam by the nfl. this is nothing less than the farm system because they don't pay a dime for it. it's the 100 top high school recruits in the country would say were not signing with anyone until we get money or the nfl kicks and then something would happen. if they banded together something would happen because the nfl should contribute 200 or $300 million hundred million dollars per year into a general scholarship fund. we all know tuition is going up for the average student. fees are going up, colleges harder and harder to afford. yet you have urban meyer and then sabin and i could name 35 other researchers making obscene money. that is a rotten system. [applause]. trust me, if the 50 biggest said we are not signing, something would change. >> you went back to odessa, back to permian high school a few weeks ago, what is your take away about the status now? >> these are surface impressions, my takeaways that it has changed. i met with met with the principal. i was impressed by think i hit he has his priorities in order. symbol of soribolism is importat but you see banners hanging in where the colleges they went to. i think that soribolizes that's what we want kids to think about. i was impressed by him, and look, what breeds fanaticism is winning. and when since 1995 permian has not been the same. so the reason the fanaticism and it's a different place, you have to remember when i got this book there's no social med5 , no facebook, no twitter solegids have other interests. permian is pretty good this year. they have a smart coach, they are fast as the dickens. so what will happen as more fans go and as you reach the level of fanaticiorib, but i thiges they learned their lesson. i think think they were embarrassed by the book. i thiges they made chahe pes ani may no ill will against what happened to booby. frank the one of the reason it attracted me was the myth of a west texas team that was undersized and not very big but because of dedication, teamwork and sacrifice, and a brutal off-season program, whipping up on the bigger kids from the metro. that is much harder to do now because that is going to be hard. returning to the fanaticism of the past would be a mistake but i was ismressed by the coach. i think there on the right track. >> man you let me step into that but i answered it pretty well. i was ismressed by him as a man and the way he ran practices. he is not a yellow or a screamer. they are good. no wonder you are wearing a suit. citizens citizens arrest or something. i will take two more questions. .. >> >> it wasn't look -- like i was looking for what happened as a guide deeper into the book it was clear these things were happening. why would i? i was there as a journalist but i was there for that and i was able to witness it. >> i recently graduated at i can attest to some of the things you're saying with a college system not as many injuries as the ball but the only outlet for these kids is athletics but all the academic programs are terrible. so how do you fix that cycle? >> women's sports do much better. s statistics how they use with track and swimming so keeps women. basically doing a story on a program called harlem lacrosse a program instituted near harlem were a middle school kids love lacrosse mostly single pair of homes and come from the biggest housing projects in new york city. they believe in sports. not as the tool of winning the intervention. they believe lacrosse is in harlem that the using across -- and has done kids to stay in school with mandatory study hall and the program directors are in the schools so they know everything that is going on. everything. academically come on the field, parents. think of it as intervention. practices are hardy and they want to win but it is a tool of intervention the best model program i have ever seen because the roughest kids are staying in school and they want to excel. and they never take lacrosse away because then you take away what they love as a last resort. people want to help those kids. they make partnerships with perhaps schools all over the east and colleges now some burgoyne's the finest part schools then going to call before bates. the also take them on field trips to harvard and though lacrosse coaches meet bendigo by golf courses the their horizons open they say i can get out of harlem. i want to be with a beautiful houses are. that is power for a least they have a vision that is not so narrow. now they push it up through the high-school six programs it is not cheap. given the opportunity they can excel. started by the 23 year-old kid from teach america went to frederick douglass in today's before the principal said the teacher had a nervous breakdown and you're taking over specialized map. he said he would fear for his life and death of desperation came up with this idea. it has had amazing success. there is a way. is about balance. athletics and the right conditions teaches teamwork teamwork, comradeship and togetherness, a competition.

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