The two started off as story subject and author. Now they are more like father and son.

One became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, while the other survived the worst that our educational system had to offer an athlete, and he is at peace with himself.

While they were getting to know one another, H.G. Bissinger and James “Boobie” Miles learned some harsh lessons about life, about the ugly side of humanity.

“You have no idea what it feels like to read in a book read by hundreds of thousands of people, that a coach who you thought loved you thought of you like that,” Miles says.

He’s referring to a former assistant football coach at Odessa Permian High School, one who told Bissinger that if Miles didn’t have football to fall back on, he’d be just another “dumb (epithet).”

“I ate dinner at this man’s house. I played with his kids!” Miles says angrily.

Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights, a seminal work of sports journalism, was in Mansfield on April 26 as part of Mansfield Reads!, an annual program sponsored by the Friends of the Mansfield Library that encourages each member of the community to read one book and then discuss it with the author.

Bissinger thanked the Friends’ Paula Highfill and said Mansfield Reads! is a model program.

Bissinger, who goes by “Buzz,” was accompanied by Miles, whose story forms the emotional centerpiece of the book, which was made into a successful movie and NBC television series that has just been renewed for a third season.

In Mansfield, Bissinger and Miles enthrall a large crowd for more than an hour. They are in turn light and jokey one minute and deadly serious the next.

It’s plain that these men, who started out as reporter and source, are devoted to one another.

Most people know the story: Bissinger chronicled one season of football and life at Permian, arguably the most famous high school football program in the country.

He moved his family to Odessa for a year. He made friends, got to know coaches, players, parents and teachers only to see many of them (except the players) turn on him once the book was published.

Bissinger exposed deep divides in the West Texas city, divides of race, gender and class. Rather than a feel-good salute to the Panthers, what Permian supporters got was an unflinching look at what had gone wrong – and is still going wrong – with high school athletics.

It was honest and brutal, and it captured audiences all over the world.

Both Bissinger and Miles are still palpably angry at what they lived through during the 1988 football season.

Miles, a running back played memorably by Derek Luke in the 2004 film, was a sure bet for college football stardom and perhaps beyond, until he suffered a devastating knee injury during a preseason scrimmage and was basically finished as an athlete.

Bissinger was there and saw it all. He also saw how Miles was abandoned after he was hurt.

“I couldn’t understand why coaches would play kids when they knew they were hurt,” Bissinger says. “It happened to Boobie, and it happened to another player, Brian Chavez, who had a chipped bone in his foot.

“They shot him up and sent him back out there.”

No X-Rays were taken.

“The reason you do that is for deniability,” Bissinger continues. “If you don’t X-Ray, you don’t know something’s wrong.”

Once the book came out, Bissinger faced charges of fabrication and death threats. Return trips to Odessa were out of the question.

One teacher said Bissinger simply made up the notion that racial slurs were common in schools. She took her own survey, Bissinger says, and found that only 36 percent of respondents said they used slurs.

“Wow. Only 36 percent,” he says. “She calls that disproving my claim.”

Miles never made it to football stardom but has put his life together. He still lives in the Odessa area and works for West Texas Peterbilt. He’s in training to become a diesel mechanic.

He still chafes at his treatment during his high school days but gives Odessa credit for changing in a positive way in the years since the book was published.

“Things are much better now,” Miles says.

When he was a player, he knew of only one white teammate who was willing to go “across the tracks” to be his friend. Everyone else’s parents kept them away from the neighborhood where Miles grew up.

He admits he didn’t take his education seriously enough and now stresses that issue over all others with his five children.

“You better believe they listen to me,” he says.

To a point, Bissinger defends Miles’ disinterest in school. He blames a lot his struggles on the adults around him.

“Boobie’s being a little too hard on himself when he says he should have hit the books more,” Bissinger says. “Should he have hit the books more, yes he should have. But when you are a sports star, the adults around you don’t encourage you to hit the books.”

When he was healthy, Miles was sometimes rewarded under-the-table with a dollar for every yard he gained.

In one game, he netted more than $300.

“That’s a lot of money to a kid who has nothing,” Bissinger says.

Bissinger was one of the writers for the movie, directed by his cousin, Peter Berg. Plenty was changed and the racial ugliness was toned down.

“He told me, ‘Look, this is a Hollywood film and it will not get made,’” if it dwells on racism too much, Bissinger says of Berg.

Despite that, Bissinger says the movie is excellent, while Miles is a little more reserved in his judgment.

“I like the movie, but I wanted it to be done like he told it,” he says, pointing to Bissinger.

Miles’ role in the film is a little different than in the book, too. In the most gut-wrenching scene in the movie, Miles collapses against his uncle and dissolves into a hysterical fit of tears after an MRI on his knee delivers a devastating diagnosis.

That scene did happen, Miles says, but it occurred as soon as the injury struck him during the scrimmage, not later in a car outside of a doctor’s office.

Also, in the film Miles is seen as a member of the team throughout and cheering on the Panthers during the playoffs, but in reality he quit the team after his injury.

One thing that didn’t change is the ending, although the final score in Permian’s playoff loss to Dallas Carter is different.

“I told Peter, ‘No matter what you change, please do not have this team win in the end,’” he says. “Believe me, there were plenty of scripts where that happened, but there’s so much more poignancy in losing.”

Bissinger’s one regret about the book is that he didn’t name the coach who used the slur against Miles – but the former running back did mention his name at the library.

“Other than that, I wouldn’t change one word,” Bissinger says.