Shockingly realistic!

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2005)

As someone who grew up in Odessa in the midst of this crazy Permian football era, I was surprised at the reality of this movie. I had read the book before they made the movie and, like the rest of Odessa, I was very apprehensive as to the content of the movie. The book was extremely unflattering and exaggerated in many aspects. Yes, this town is incredibly focused on football, but the town does have other things going on. Odessa is a town with 90,000 residents and at the time, the population was about 80,000. There is another 5-A high school in the town, Odessa High School, though they have never made much of an impression for itself in the name of football. However, at this time when the oil boom had gone bust and the town was struggling to find itself among the ruins of it's money-soaked past, this team was a winner and it made everyone else feel like a winner when they watched Permian high school play football. There are oil derricks everywhere, but not in the middle of town, and Permian practices at the high school, not at Ratliff stadium which is on the southern edge of town. It would have taken Boobie Miles about two hours to jog to practice at Ratliff and about an hour and a half to get to the high school.
What I need to realize is that this is a movie and is fictional in many aspects. The book, however, is very questionable in many of it major points. Another thing to remember, after the season of 1989, Permian has not won a championship and has repeatedly failed to qualify for playoffs for the last few years. I did have the opportunity to see the 1989 Permian High School State Championship game at Texas Stadium that year. Those winning years of Permian high school will live with everyone in Odessa for decades to come. We may not all root for Permian, but those were also years that brought attention to a smaller oil town with not much to be overly proud of. Now, with the movie, maybe we will have a place in cinematic history as well as football history.
Now, millions of people across the world will know what we mean and think of Permian high school and Odessa, Texas whenever they hear the chant, "Mojo!"