The lights around Texas high school football are a bit dim today. We’ve lost a legendary coach.
Gary Gaines passed away at age 73.
Gaines passed away from Alzheimer’s disease on August 22, 2022. He had been diagnosed with the disease in 2017.
BREAKING: Former Permian Coach Gary Gaines, made famous by Friday Night Lights, died this evening according to his family.
Gaines coached the Panthers to the state championship in 1989, the year after the season chronicled in the book and movie. #txhsfb pic.twitter.com/QZBJOHX8nR
— Jakob Brandenburg (@Jakob_BburgTV) August 23, 2022
Gaines came to national fame through the book 1990 book, “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream,” by H.G. Bissinger. The book was about the 1988 Odessa Permian Panthers team and the football culture in Texas. Football was always big in Texas, but the book, and subsequent 2004 movie starring Billy Bob Thorton, shined an ever brighter light on high school football in Texas.
However, long before Billy Bob Thorton was coaching Mike Winchell and Bobbie Miles in a movie, Gaines was already a West Texas Legend.
Gaines started his head coaching career at Petersburg in 1977, 7 years after being the quarterback at Angelo State. He went on to be the head coach at a total of 8 Texas high schools through 2012, with one 5-year span as an assistant at Texas Tech under Spike Dykes.
He found himself as the Odessa Permian coach twice. The first time from 1986-1989, and the second from 2009 until his retirement in 2012. Gaines finished with a 127-93-5 career high school coaching record. While the 1988 Panthers team put Gaines on the national map, his best coaching came the next year in 1989.
In 1989, Gaines led the Panthers to a 16-0 season, winning the 1989 5A State Championship. The team is often mentioned as one of the best 5A high school football teams of all time. Gaines left Permian in 1989 with a 46-7-1 record (before returning in 2009).
Gaines was inducted into the Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor in 2013. He was also inducted into the Angelo State University Hall of Honor in 2019. He leaves behind his wife, Sharon, his two daughters, and five grandchildren.
