Buzz Bissinger coming to IUPUI

Years ago, with a board game in front of him and a baseball card in hand, H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger’s sports journalism career began.

He would play Strat-O-Matic, and when he finished, he grabbed a piece of paper and recapped his play-by-play experience, letting his words flow like the swing of a major league bat. He wrote as if he had credentials at the New York Times.

Before long, he became a No. 1 bestseller for the same newspaper with his book about football-crazy Odessa, Texas.

Tim Franklin, director of the National Sports Journalism Center, worked with Bissinger at the Chicago Tribune in the early 1990s, and they have remained friends since. Their friendship is just one reason Franklin asked Bissinger to present a seminar at 7 p.m. today at IUPUI’s Campus Center.

“He is, without question, one of the best journalists — not just sports journalists — of his generation,” Franklin said. “In addition to that, he’s also a thought-provoking speaker. He’s not somebody who’s shy about expressing his opinions about sports, about the state of journalism, about the state of sports journalism.”

Three sports-based books, countless articles and a Pulitzer Prize for investigation later, Bissinger does not consider himself a sports journalist. Even his No. 1 book, despite ballooning into one of the biggest sports movies and television shows of this decade, doesn’t fall into that category, Bissinger said.

“‘Friday Night Lights,’ I really don’t consider a sports book, but much more a book about the kind of sociology of sports,” he said.

Junior Andrew Gaboury is focusing on sports journalism, but he agrees that listening to Bissinger is listening to more than a sports writer.

“It’s a pretty good opportunity, not just if you’re interested in sports, because obviously he can write a good sports book, but he can just tell a good story in general,” Gaboury said. “If you want to be a journalist, you have to tell a good story.”

Whether the stadium lights are on in West Texas or Akron, Ohio, Bissinger has evolved into one of the best narrative journalists, but he’s struggled to get there.

“You’re telling a story, you want to tell something with a beginning, a middle and an end, whether it’s 20 inches or whether it’s 20,000 words,” he said. “You have to be willing to rewrite and you have to really be willing to cut.”

To Bissinger, most books are under-edited and overwritten by writers who hate to outline. Bissinger himself was thrown into the fire when it came to outlining.

He said when he began “Friday Night Lights,” he wrote the first 30,000 words without an outline. He was soon humbled.

“Of those 30,000 words, 25,000 words weren’t very good. My editor said, ‘No offense, but this stinks.’ I had to learn the hard way, but that’s what you have to do in order to succeed,” he said.

Sports Illustrated called “Friday Night Lights” one of the five best sports books in history, and success is not lacking in Bissinger’s biography. He began his career in the Norfolk dugout and built his way up to the Vanity Fair press box, covering the MLB, NBA and high school sports along the way.

From a baseball card to a baseball series, Bissinger has dived into the sports world.

And while an IU basketball story isn’t in his future plans, he said he will always respect the tradition the coach known as The General began.

“I’ve met Bobby Knight,” Bissinger said. “I actually think for all his excesses, he really did care about kids and his players getting an education. I know Indiana basketball is not the same as it has been for quite some time, but I miss it.”