Skip to main content

Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Texas. Nick Eatman.

 



Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Texas.    Nick Eatman

A Year in the life of Lone Star Football, from High School to College to the Cowboys.

It is a challenge for authors to cover a team during a season.    It is more difficult to cover two different teams in that same season.   It may even be unprecedented to cover three teams in the very same season.   But that is what author Nick Eatman did and wrote in his book, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Texas.  

Eatman, who has covered the Dallas Cowboys for more than 20 years, took advantage of his connections to follow and write about the seasons for a local high school, university and professional football team.   The high school is Plano, of Plano, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas.   The college is Baylor University located ninety minutes south in Waco, Texas.   The professional team is obviously the Dallas Cowboys, the franchise that Eatman follows daily.  

The stories are well written for each team.   An insightful new theme is introduced from one week to the next.   Eatman was inspired by the way the popular TV show, Modern Family, was arranged for each episode cutting from one of three featured families.    Each chapter reviews the games that took place on Friday, Saturday and then Sunday.   Of course, the coaches were the main characters for each team along with some of the assistants.    The insight of the coaches and the performance of the players drive the story from one week to the next—even when they are not playing on their normally scheduled date or at all. 

It is compelling reading about the team’s struggle, strategy and mind-set heading into the next week.   The author skillfully sets the tone for each new week in each chapter.    Unfortunately, a downside to committing to a season could be the team’s performance and success or lack there-of on the field.    Two of the three teams chronicled did not meet expectations and thus experience disappointing seasons.    Of course, this cannot be controlled by the author.  On the other hand, it was intriguing to read about how the team faces adversity and strives to persevere for the next game.

The book is decidedly regional although that was likely the intention.    A reader will certainly get a heavy dose of Texas football culture but will have to endure reading through the adversity of less than stellar play---on more than one occasion all three featured teams lost in the same weekend.   The author may have considered adding more history for each program of the sport in general.    “Whether it’s a Friday, Saturday or Sunday in the fall, the passion of football never stops.”    Why is the game of football and having success so important to their culture and Texans personally?  “In Texas the fans might make football king, but they also look to their teams to produce seasons and people that are worthy of their adoration.   Simply loving the sports is no longer enough.   The reality of Texas football has grown more complicated.”  Perhaps a chapter that provided more insight on this regional philosophy would have helped to address this widely held narrative.     

Despite some unexpected and uncontrollable foibles, Eatman delivers a captivating story of some success and some failures of the 2015 football season in north Texas.    As the season grew older the chapters began to highlight more off the field transactions making the story more intriguing than the weekly game details.    Although the book is a little on the lengthy side, 333 pages, much of the story is easy to process, traverse and enjoy.  

  • You might like this book if you read about Texas High School football teams
  • You might like this book if you like to read about Baylor or Texas college football.
  • You might like to read this book if you like to read about the Dallas Cowboys.
  • You might like to read this book if you are a high school, college or professional football fan.
  • You might like to read this book if you read about north Texas culture.

Read more about the author on Twitter:   https://twitter.com/nickeatman

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football. Chuck Klosterman.

Football.  Chuck Klosterman. Football has maintained a dominance over America and its culture for three quarters of a century. The game has changed considerably over time and continues to do so now particularly at the collegiate level.     All of the transactions may get one to ponder how long football can maintain its seemingly unbreakable hold as the most popular sport in the United States.      One author has done just that, Chuck Klosterman, and we can find out what he thinks and predicts in his latest book, Football .    Yes, this is the title.    It is blunt, concise and bland all at the same time.    However, content inside very likely belies the understated book heading.     Klosterman, an accomplished magazine writer and book author of more than 10 publications, expresses his vast knowledge of the sport and how his life was shaped and influenced at an early age by all that the game has to off...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Magnificent Seven. Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiber II.

The Magnificent Seven.    College Basketball’s Blue Bloods.    Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiber II.    It seems fitting to have finished reading about seven different prominent college basketball programs on the eve of another march madness (March of 2026).     The Magnificent Seven , authored by Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiber II, argues their list of blue blood basketball programs and provides a rich history and culture of each school along with how they ascended to be considered among the elite programs. The opening section of the book discusses several criterions supporting their choices.    Readers will note that all schools chronicled here won at least four NCAA basketball championships.     Of course, some were more recent successes than others such as Kansas and Connecticut while others have not won a championship for several decades like Indiana or UCLA.    In any case, beyond the wins the total package in...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Chuck Cooper Story. David Finoli and Chuck Cooper III

  The Chuck Cooper Story.   David Finoli and Chuck Cooper III Breaking Barriers.   As a mostly lifelong resident of the Pittsburgh area and a sports fan for just about all of those years it is not hard to come across many athletic stars in a variety of sports from one generation to the next.      When it comes to college basketball the region features three division one schools with plenty of history and great players that traversed the hardwoods of those programs.  One such program was Duquesne University; a school located on the bluff just outside the downtown Pittsburgh area.     The school has produced many notable players over the past 80 years but one in particular was a bit off of the radar that recently came to my attention.     In the book, The Chuck Cooper Story, his unique and interesting story is explained via the quality writing style of long-time western Pennsylvania author David...
Post a Comment
Read more