- Friday Night Lights, a TV drama about a high school football team, was recently ranked as the greatest sports TV show of all time by The Hollywood Reporter.
- Despite struggling with ratings during its original run, the series won critical acclaim, a Peabody Award, and multiple Emmy nominations and wins.
- Inspired by a book and movie of the same name, Friday Night Lights was praised for its portrayal of teen drama, marriage, faith, and working-class life.
In 2006, a new drama about a high school football team in a fictional West Texas town arrived on NBC. It never became a ratings juggernaut. In fact, keeping it on television for five <a href="https://comicvibe.com/fortnite-chapter-7-season-4-guide-how-to-get-onigiri-sprite/” title=”Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 4 Guide: How to Get Onigiri Sprite”>seasons required some creative maneuvering behind the scenes.
Twenty years later, Friday Night Lights has won a much bigger game.
The acclaimed series, which currently holds a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics, was just ranked No. 1 onThe Hollywood Reporter’slist of the 10 Greatest Sports TV Shows of All Time.
And THR’s critics didn’t hedge their bets about putting Friday Night Lights in the top spot.
In its new ranking, The Hollywood Reporter argued against the familiar idea that Friday Night Lights isn’t really about football. The publication pointed to the football-heavy pilot and beloved episodes like “Mud Bowl,” while noting that the show managed to be much more at the same time.
THR praised it as one of television’s greatest teen dramas, highlighted Eric and Tami Taylor’s marriage and celebrated the series’ exploration of faith and working-class life.
The publication ultimately described Friday Night Lights as “thrilling, heartbreaking, hilarious” and praised its remarkable ability to continually reinvent itself as young characters came and went.
That’s quite an accolade for a series that repeatedly faced an uncertain future while it was actually on television.
Friday Night Lights premiered on NBC on Oct. 3, 2006, with Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton leading an ensemble cast as Coach Eric Taylor and his wife, Tami. It was inspired by H.G. Bissinger’s 1990 nonfiction book “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream,” which had previously been adapted into a 2004 movie directed by Peter Berg.
Despite passionate fans and widespread critical acclaim, Friday Night Lights struggled to find a large television audience.
After two seasons, its future was in jeopardy. NBC ultimately struck an unusual deal with DirecTV to co-produce three additional seasons, which premiered on DirecTV’s 101 Network before being rebroadcast on NBC. The series concluded in 2011 after five seasons.
Its ratings may have been modest, but the accolades were anything but.
Friday Night Lights won a Peabody Award and multiple other honors, while Chandler and Britton received Emmy nominations for their performances. At the 2011 Emmys, Chandler won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and showrunner Jason Katims won Outstanding Writing for the series finale, “Always.”
Critics were singing the show’s praises almost from the beginning. The A.V. Club gave the series an A upon its debut, noting how immediately different it looked and felt from other television shows. Years later, when the third season arrived, Variety argued that the series had accomplished something even rarer: becoming better than the movie that inspired it.
And the show’s reputation has only grown. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked Friday Night LightsNo. 22 among the 101 Best Written TV Series of All Time.
Now it can add another title to the Dillon trophy case: the greatest sports TV show of all time.
This story was originally published byParadeon Sep 7, 2026, where it first appeared in theTVsection. Add Parade as aPreferred
