A Much Buzzed-About Tuesday Debut

Tonight is the premiere of Friday Night Lights — yeah, on a Tuesday — the new NBC show based on the movie and book by writer Buzz Bissinger.

Last month, Bissinger talked with Dan Gross and expressed his pleasure at the show, as well as his displeasure with a few other high school football teams on screen:

H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger says he loved the pilot for NBC’s upcoming series “Friday Night Lights,” based on his book about high school football in Texas, but the Chestnut Hill author refuses to watch MTV’s “Two-A-Days.”

He feels the reality series, about an Alabama high school football team, ripped off his book. He also never saw “Varsity Blues,” a football film that he also felt had been taken from his work.

Indeed. You see, Varsity Blues had a coach who didn’t like the black kid, and Buzz invented high school football racism in Friday Night Lights.

However, it appears Bissinger is not being all that truthful. You see, there are rampant similarities between Friday Night Lights and Matt Christopher’s 1984 novel The Great Quarterback Switch.

There is nothing that really separates the books. One is about the a Texas town and its football team and the other is about a paralyzed twin who manages to use ESP to switch with his brother on the football field. Nothing different.

Bissinger loves and snubs [Daily News]