Friday Night Lights: Chapter 15: The Algebraic Equation Summary & Analysis

Before he gets to the semifinal game, Bissinger describes Carter High School in Dallas—in particular, its peculiar academic reputation. During the fall ’88 season, Carter had become famous state- and nationwide for its academic troubles, related, of all things, to the Algebra II grade earner by a football player named Gary Edwards. Edwards, like other Carter players, was basically required to do very little schoolwork—sometimes he and teammate Derric Evans would sit down to take tests and find their exam papers with answers already on them, provided by the teachers. Evans and Edwards needed only to keep a state minimum grade in all subjects to maintain athletic eligibility, and to help Carter win a state championship.

In Algebra II, Will Bates, Edwards’ teacher, had given him a non-passing grade, below 70, for the semester, before Edwards, at the football coach’s insistence, was switched to an easier algebra class. But Edwards grade was “reevaluated” by his teachers, who felt that the new, easier algebra grades, including “participation,” had counted for too much. Thus the superintendent of Dallas schools, brought on to review Edwards’ eligibility, changed Edwards’ grade back to a 68.75, not high enough to pass. Edwards was kept off the football team, and three victories were forfeit for Carter, keeping them out of the playoffs.

But this was not to be the last word in Carter’s football saga, for the ’88 season. For, after much criticism in the local press, Dallas’s school superintendent changed Edwards’ grade back to a 72, after “reevaluating” again Edwards’ participation and homework scores. A grade above 70 meant that the team’s victories were reinstated, and Carter was back in the playoffs, where it beat Plano. The superintendent had accidentally waded into a quagmire, angering nearly everyone in Dallas: white families, who believed he was helping a largely black school (Carter) to succeed; black families, who believed the superintendent had unfairly targeted Edwards from the beginning; and other schools, who believed they, not Carter, should be playing in the state playoffs.

As Bissinger reports, the issue was resolved in a state legal case, broadcast by the media across Texas—as Carter continued to play in the playoffs (since Edwards had been reinstated to the team under the superintendent’s direction). A first court case, in a lower regional court, saw a judge order that Edwards had, in fact, failed Algebra II, and that the Dallas superintendent was wrong to interfere in the grading process. But Carter supporters petitioned for, and were granted, a stay from a higher court, allowing Carter to remain in the playoffs, where they beat Marshall High in the quarters and setting up a showdown with Permian in the state semis. As John Wilkins, the Ector County athletic director, arranged for the playoff game with Carter, Carter supporters awaited a state court decision on whether Carter and Edwards were eligible to play.

As Bissinger points out, the state judge ruled, finally, that Carter was eligible, that Edwards’ grade was as open to interpretation as anything else, and that it was up to the discretion of the school and its superintendent to set that grade. The state court judge also argued that it was “absurd” to try to set grades by statute in order to guarantee football eligibility. Carter rejoiced and prepared for its game against Permian. And, as Bissinger concludes, only one person had serious consequences for his behavior: Will Bates, whose “salary was frozen,” and who was moved into an industrial-arts classroom in a Dallas middle school, where his grading could no longer affect football players’ careers.