Wealth, Poverty, and the Boom-Bust Cycle Theme Analysis

Odessa is an oil town. Its wealth derives from oil-drilling in the region, and from industries related to it: pipe-building, construction, distribution. The oil industry, despite its pro-American rhetoric and close ties to the politics of the Texas Republican party, is, as Bissinger points out, highly dependent on other countries in the late-1980s. OPEC—the cartel of Middle Eastern oil-supplying countries—sets prices, for the most part, and because their supply is so much more significant than that of West Texas, what OPEC says becomes the rule. Early in the 1980s, oil is expensive per barrel (the boom), but by the later part of that decade, oil is just over $5 a barrel (the bust). White-collar industries related to oil tend to have a gambler’s ethos—one spends a lot and bets more when one’s up, and when one’s down, one continues spending money to find another winning streak. Other industries in the region—notably banking—are dependent on financing the oil booms, and they, too, get caught up in the busts, meaning that the economy of the region goes from high highs to low lows very quickly, often without much warning.

Because of the cruelty of the boom-bust cycle, divisions between wealthy and poor citizens in Odessa tend to be stark—even though the wealthy can become poor very quickly. Typically, when white-collar families try to make money in the boom, they then spend that money quickly, such that, when the bust comes (and it always does), those families tend to have very little of what they’ve gained. These financial gains tend also to be divided unevenly between parts of town. Thus the Permian part of Odessa—the east side—is far wealthier than the downtown, which in turn is wealthier than the Southside.

Bissinger tracks the relationship between the economic background of players and their lives after football. Some players, like Billingsley, become successful despite disadvantaged backgrounds—they tend to succeed through a combination of hard work, luck, and a system that is skewed toward the success of affable white men in Texas. Some other players, like Boobie, seem more trapped in the economic and ethnic circumstances of the region. Boobie fails out of junior college and does not end up living his dream of a D-1 football scholarship. He has a difficult time “getting ahead,” because the economy of the region overall is so poor, and because Boobie’s time at Permian was so thoroughly dominated by athletic, rather than academic and professional, preparation.