‘Friday Night Lights’ Author Furious After School District Pulls Book for ‘​​Depiction of Sex Act’ That Doesn’t Exist

The popular story of a Texas high school football team that went from a book to a movie, and eventual TV series has been pulled from a school district’s library in Iowa.

Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), the book “Friday Night Lights” has been banned from the Mason City School District because of an alleged "depiction of a sex act." 

H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, the book's author, was dumbfounded when he learned his book was pulled for being sexually implicit.

He said there were no sexual instances in the book, which focused on racial and social tensions in the West Texas school.

“This use of AI is ridiculous,” Bissinger told the Cedar Rapids newspaper the Gazette. “There’s no sex at all. I’ve never depicted a sex act. I don’t know what the [expletive] they’re talking about. I purposely stayed away from that."

The nonfiction book about the 1988 team became a New York Times bestseller. Sports Illustrated called it the “Greatest American football book of all time” when it was published in 1990.

The book became a motion picture in 2004, followed by a TV series that ran for five years beginning in 2006.

Bissinger said he still gets messages from fans who love the book.

“My book is being falsely depicted,” Bissinger told the newspaper.

“The tragedy is, this is a great book for kids. It is a great book for teenage males because they don’t like to read anything. But they devour this book, and I know because I’ve had over 30 years of emails telling me that." 

The "idea that this book has been banned is totally against what our society is and should be: freedom of speech and the ability of kids to choose what they want to read. Absolutely tragic. Not just [with] my book, but all the books they cited," he added.

Other books that were either banned or flagged recently by Mason City schools include: Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy,” and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

The iconic "Friday Night Lights"sports book" was deemed irrelevant for the Mason City Community School District because AI supposedly detected a sexual innuendo.

Bridgette Exman, the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the Mason City School District, shrugged off Bissinger's complaints, and the book remains banned.

She said it was “simply not feasible to read every book and filter" them out to meet "these new requirements.” So the district used ChatGPT instead to do the analysis.

The team featured in Bissinger's book, Odessa Permian, was considered a powerhouse, even by Texas high school football standards.

The team lost in the semifinals in 1988 to Dallas Carter, which was considered one of the best high school football teams in history. Carter, which went on to win state the next week, was eventually stripped of its title after an investigation found impropriety in grades for some team members.

Bissinger’s book details Permian's 1988 season, particularly the social and racial aspects of the oil-producing town in West Texas, but includes nothing sexual.

“There are now elements of our society who believe that it’s in their interest to shield kids and to shield readers from anything that puts a certain perspective on the United States,” Bissinger told the Gazette.

“So unless it’s totally glowing, unless the problems of this country are absolutely put under the rug and not acknowledged, it’s going to be banned," he complained.

“Kids should know about racism. It’s not just Odessa, it’s all over the country," Bissinger said.

"Kids should know about what can happen if all your eggs are in high school sports. Kids are supposed to learn —not just learn the classics, but they’re supposed to learn about elements of our society. And by the way, the book is not all negative."

The book does "celebrate the beauty of high school football. And that’s part of the reason for the success of the book. It’s magical," the author noted.