Friday Night Lights Trivia
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This Friday Night Lights trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers all three versions of the story: Buzz Bissinger's 1990 book about the 1988 Odessa Permian Panthers, Peter Berg's 2004 film with Billy Bob Thornton as Gary Gaines, and above all the 2006-2011 television series set in fictional Dillon, Texas — Eric and Tami Taylor, Jason Street's injury, Matt Saracen, Tim Riggins, Smash, Lyla, Tyra and Landry, Buddy Garrity, the move to East Dillon and the Lions, Vince Howard and the finale 'Always'. It also covers how the show was made and saved: the Austin and Pflugerville locations, the DirecTV co-production, the Peabody, the Emmys and the Explosions in the Sky score. Early questions suit anyone who has binged the show once; later ones reward fans who know which stadium the film's title game was shot in and which cast members carried over from the movie. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which real Texas town, home of the Permian Panthers, gave the fictional Dillon many of its traits?
Odessa
Odessa is where the book and film are set, but for TV Peter Berg invented Dillon so the writers could follow fictional characters into stories the two-hour film had to drop.
Q 02Who plays Coach Eric Taylor?
Kyle Chandler
Kyle Chandler has said that at first neither he nor Peter Berg wanted him as Coach Taylor, and that Berg still teases him: 'I still didn't want you.'
Q 03What is Tami Taylor's job at Dillon High when Friday Night Lights begins?
Guidance counselor
Guidance counselor Tami later becomes principal and then a college dean of admissions, the job her husband finally leaves Dillon for.
Q 04Which Dillon Panther suffers a career-ending spinal injury in the Friday Night Lights pilot?
Jason Street
Jason Street was inspired by David Edwards, a San Antonio high schooler paralysed in a 2003 game that Peter Berg attended.
Q 05Which quiet sophomore becomes the Dillon Panthers' starting quarterback after the star is paralysed in the pilot?
Saracen
Saracen takes over at quarterback while caring alone for his grandmother Lorraine, because his father is away serving in Iraq.
Q 06Who plays hard-drinking fullback Riggins?
Taylor Kitsch
Taylor Kitsch is Canadian and grew up on ice hockey, not football: an injury ended his junior career with the Langley Hornets before he turned to modelling and acting.
Q 07How does Coach Taylor's team motto end: 'Clear eyes, full hearts, …'?
Can't lose
Can't lose: the chant follows Coach Taylor to the end, and in the finale a booster has a sign bearing the full motto put up for the Panthers after he has left Dillon.
Q 08Which actor plays Landry Clarke, the quarterback's best friend?
Jesse Plemons
Jesse Plemons had played high school football in Texas, so when Landry finally joined the Panthers in season two he did his own stunts; a co-star called him the best player in the cast.
Q 09Which season-two Friday Night Lights storyline did critics pan?
The Landry and Tyra murder plot
The Landry and Tyra murder plot has the pair dump an attacker's body in a river, and The Boston Globe called it 'out of sync with the real-life tone of the show'.
Q 10Where is Coach Taylor working when season two begins?
Texas Methodist University in Austin
Texas Methodist University in Austin hires him as an assistant, but he is back in Dillon early in the season after a booster gets his abrasive replacement fired.
Q 11What do the Taylors name the daughter born in the season-two premiere of Friday Night Lights?
Gracie
Gracie Belle arrives when Tami goes into labour in the premiere, which is what brings Eric hurrying home from his new job out of town.
Q 12Which team does Coach Taylor lead in the last two seasons of Friday Night Lights?
The East Dillon Lions
The East Dillon Lions are a disbanded team he has to rebuild from nothing once his Panthers contract is not renewed, and within two seasons they are state champions.
Q 13Which future Black Panther star joined Friday Night Lights in season four as quarterback Vince Howard?
Michael B. Jordan
Q 21What is the title of the Friday Night Lights series finale?
Always
Always ends the title game on a last-second Hail Mary, cuts away with the ball still in the air, and only a flash-forward shows that Coach Taylor's team won.
Q 22In which city is Eric Taylor coaching when Friday Night Lights ends?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is where he coaches a high school team, the Pemberton Pioneers, having turned down the Panthers so that Tami can take the dean's job she was offered there.
Q 23Peter Berg developed Friday Night Lights, but which showrunner won the 2011 writing Emmy for its final episode?
Jason Katims
Jason Katims won for writing the last episode, so the show's biggest Emmy night, with a lead-actor win as well, came only after it had left the air.
Michael B. Jordan's Vince has never played football and joins the team only to stay out of juvenile detention, yet he ends up as its star quarterback.
Q 14Which character, played by Jurnee Smollett, shadows Coach Taylor because she wants to coach football herself?
Jess Merriweather
Jess Merriweather gets her wish: the finale's flash-forward shows her on the coaching staff of a high school team in Dallas.
Q 15Which car dealer is the Dillon Panthers' most powerful booster in the early seasons of Friday Night Lights?
Buddy Garrity
Buddy Garrity later changes sides: when Coach Taylor is forced out he follows him to the rival school across town, then sells the dealership and opens a bar.
Q 16Which company saved Friday Night Lights from cancellation in 2008 by sharing its costs and airing new episodes first?
DirecTV
DirecTV premiered every later season on its own 101 Network, and the broadcast network that had launched the show reran each season months later.
Q 17In and around which city was Friday Night Lights actually filmed, far from the oil country where it is set?
Austin
Austin nearly lost the show before season two: Texas had not paid the rebates it promised, and Arizona and New Mexico offered incentives until the money was settled.
Q 18Dillon's Panthers are modelled on Permian's, but which real school lent Friday Night Lights its uniforms, cheerleaders and stadium?
Pflugerville
Pflugerville lent more than its look: producers taped the school's real games and spliced that footage in with shots of the actors running choreographed plays.
Q 19Which Texas Longhorns head coach of the time has a brief cameo in the Friday Night Lights pilot?
Mack Brown
Mack Brown worked without a script: Peter Berg told him he had listened to players' fathers for more than 30 years, so he already knew what to say.
Q 20Which band scored the 2004 film Friday Night Lights?
Explosions in the Sky
Explosions in the Sky refused to give the TV series a song for its theme, a call their guitarist came to regret; the theme is a cue by series composer W. G. Snuffy Walden, whose score was based on their sound.
Q 24Which of these awards did Friday Night Lights win for its first season?
A Peabody Award
A Peabody Award went to the first season because, the judges said, it spoke to viewers about community 'beyond the confines of Los Angeles, of back lots, of urban canyons'.
Q 25To which city does Julie Taylor's boyfriend move in season four of Friday Night Lights, without saying goodbye?
Chicago
Chicago draws him to art school, and by the finale Julie has followed him there: she accepts his proposal and the two are living in the city together.
Q 26Which Friday Night Lights character rents a trailer on Becky's mother's property in season four?
Tim
Tim ends that season by taking the blame alone for the chop shop run from the brothers' garage, going to jail so that Billy can stay with his new family.
Q 27Which Friday Night Lights newcomer in the final season, played by Grey Damon, is a basketball player turned receiver?
Hastings Ruckle
Hastings Ruckle is spotted in a pickup basketball game and at first dismisses football as a celebration of violence, before Coach Taylor and his players talk him round.
Q 28Who wrote Friday Night Lights, the 1990 book that the film and TV series are based on?
H.G. Bissinger
H.G. Bissinger, known as Buzz, stayed close to the book's fallen star Boobie Miles for decades, helping him with money, and told that story in a 2012 sequel.
Q 29Which Good Will Hunting star played the quarterback in Against the Grain, a 1993 drama inspired by the book Friday Night Lights?
Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck played quarterback Joe Willie Clemons in a show made because its network could not buy the rights to the book itself; it was cancelled after eight episodes.
Q 30Who plays Coach Gary Gaines in the 2004 film Friday Night Lights?
Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton's coach loses the big game on screen, but the closing text notes that the real Gaines won an unbeaten state championship the very next season.