No Friday Night Lights

Winner of the 2025 Spur AwardFinalist for the 2024 American Writing AwardsNo Friday Night Lights is the story of a rural Nevada high school football team that never wins. Veteran reporter John M. Glionna examines the 2022 season in which the McDermitt Bulldogs practiced for weeks in the summer only to learn once again that they had come up short of the necessary players due to the dwindling population on the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation on the Nevada-Oregon border. Eight-man football helps give the coaches and kids a sense of community—despite a lack of wins, and despite their home’s status as one of the most remote locations for a public school in the West. Glionna’s relationships with coaches, players, parents—and even those McDermitt residents remotely connected to high school football—provide telling insights into local lives, many of them from the Paiute and Shoshone tribes of Fort McDermitt. Although victory and recognition elude the players, Glionna illuminates their hard work and dedication—leaving the reader with glimpses of life on the ground in “flyover” country.