"We Are Marshall"

Directed by: McG (seriously?)

Staring: Matthew “Sexiest Man Alive? Really?” McConaughey, 
Matthew “Cries-a-Lot” Fox, Anthony “Who?” Mackie, David “Hey, 
It’s That Guy!” Strathairn, Kate “Hey, It’s That Girl!” Mara, 
Ian “Deadwood” McShane, Kimberly “Seriously, Who?” Williams and 
a brief appearance by Robert “Scary Bossypants” Patrick, which 
I am totally using as an excuse to recap this. I need help.


I should say right off that I am not a sports person. I like 
*playing* sports, but I would rather get a root canal than 
endure the endless posturing, debating and replays that makes 
up the bulk of watching football games. So why am I recapping 
this movie? For one reason: I’ve officially lost whatever 
marbles I may have had left. That being said, don’t be 
surprised if I skip over massive chunks of this movie just to 
keep me from falling asleep.

A boring white font informs us simply that “this is a true 
story”. Really? And we pan over some West Virginia landscape in 
a way that makes me dizzy...or maybe I just really need a 
chiropractic adjustment and an eye check. A girl identified as 
“Annie” voiceovers “in the middle of Huntington, West Virginia, 
there is a river. Next to this river there is a steel mill. And 
next to the steel mill, there is a school.” Let me guess: next 
to the school there is a farm and in the farm is the cow that 
kicked the dog that chased the cat that ate the rat. Is this a 
travel video? Get on with it, Mother Goose. Close up of 
Marshall University. “In the middle of this school, there is a 
fountain. Each year, on the exact same day, at the exact same 
hour, the water to this fountain is turned off. And in this 
moment [...] time stands still.” Gee, this is fascinating. 
Maybe this next scene will get my interest.

Boring white font: Marshall VS East Carolina, November 14, 
1970. Damnit. And we’re in the middle of a football game. Some 
jock catches the ball and slams face first into the ground over 
the line. Quick shots of Kate Mara in a cheerleader uniform 
cheering him on and Matthew Fox in a coach’s uniform and 
the announcer says this is the first down. But Marshall is out 
of time-outs and the clock is ticking. Yeah, I only vaguely 
understand anything he’s saying. Robert Patrick – also dressed 
in a coach uniform and apparently named Rick – says “call it 
in, Red!” all smiles. Red – Fox – calls the guy who just caught 
the ball over. 

Play starts again and we see several shots of people all over 
town huddled around their radios listening to the game. Urg. 
The players hesitate and both Red and Rick start screaming 
orders. Yeah. Matthew Fox can look very intimidating, but if 
you stand him next to Robert Patrick he looks about as 
threatening as a kitten. What’s that, Matthew? You want me to 
do what now? YES, SIR, MR. PATRICK! RIGHT AWAY, SIR! The guy 
with the ball waits until the clock ticks down to one then 
starts running in circles all over the field. He throws it to 
another player and it bounces right out of his hands and the 
other team starts cheering in victory. Kate actually has her 
mouth gaping open in shock.

In the town diner sometime later a blonde grumbles about her 
weekend going out the window as Red will “be in the film room 
till Monday.” Some guy – possibly the owner - says he’d better 
because “your husband hasn’t figured out how to beat the 3-4 
all year.” The who? And did we really need that clunky, 
expository “your husband”? Like we couldn’t have figured that 
much out on our own?

In more clunky exposition, somebody finds McShane – one of the 
guys listening to the game earlier - in his office and says 
he’s surprised to see him because he “figured the chairman of 
the school board would be at the game.” McShane says the place 
doesn’t run itself and gets back to business.

A black college kid is listening to the announcer blither about 
next week’s game being a “must win” and mutters “They’re all 
must-wins”. Sadly, I don’t think he meant that to sound 
sarcastic.

Meanwhile, in Wooster, Ohio, McConaughey is doing something 
with some electronics and some tinfoil. Looks like he’s trying 
to get reception on the radio. The station everybody else was 
listening to comes in just before approximately twelve kids (I 
might be exaggerating there) tackle him to the floor, yelling. 
Did I mention his name is Jack? In other words: both of the 
leads in this movie are named Matthew and one of them plays a 
character by a name I’m used to seeing the other one called by. 
Yeah. I’m sure that won’t confuse me at *all*. 

Elsewhere, a mother calls a dozen (not so much exaggerating 
here) kids to the dinner table. One kid, holding a radio, 
whines that he wants a few more minutes. She says dad will 
still be “droning on” about the game when he gets home so he’s 
unlikely to miss much. She calls him by his full name so we’ll 
realize who his father is when, a second later, the announcer 
signs off his broadcast with the same name.

Locker room. Rick tells the team they “gave a good effort” 
today but...well...they got their asses kicked. “A good effort 
is not enough. Now I’m proud of you. But I will not accept 
losing with you. Because there’s only one thing they judge us 
on. There’s only one thing people remember. And it ain’t how we 
play the game! Winning...is everything.” [Diandra stares at the 
screen in shock] Excuse me? What the hell kind of message is 
that? Behind him, Red nods, making me want to slap him. 
Already. And we’re only five minutes in. This does not bode 
well for the rest of this movie. Rick finishes his godawful 
speech by saying the plane leaves in an hour and they’ll be 
home by 8, which should give them plenty of time to do whatever 
it is they usually do on Saturday nights. Get drunk and go to 
frat parties? 

A couple young guys back home blow a lot of hot air about the 
team not winning because they weren’t there. Apparently that 
black kid from earlier is on the team but his arm is in a sling 
so it’s pretty obvious why he wasn’t playing. His shoulder is 
dislocated. Also? The other guy – Tom - has a girlfriend he 
won’t introduce ShoulderInjury to. That’s about all you need to 
know about this scene.

Back at the diner, the owner compliments McShane – Paul – on 
his son’s playing in the game. Yeah, but they didn’t win. And 
that’s all anyone cares about in sports, which is probably why 
I’m not that into them. No, I’m not some bleeding hippie who 
thinks there should be no winners or something – you can stop 
rolling your eyes and muttering. I just find it realistic to 
acknowledge that somebody has to lose at least some of the 
time. He shakes hands with Strathairn, who says “what, now, we 
didn’t win?” Paul rolls his eyes and says if he’s not going to 
listen to the game he should at least know the result so he can 
fake interest. Strathairn says yeah, well...whatever. “The 
board has asked me to run a few ideas through you about some 
potential improvements to the university’s physical plant.” 
Luckily we are spared the rest of what promises to be a really 
boring conversation.

Airport. One of the players – “Joe” - calls a kid named Reggie 
to say he needs a favor. He needs him to get some of the 
players a case of beer. The guys behind him scramble as Rick 
strides up. Nice buddies you got there. Didn’t even give you a 
warning. Rick taps his shoulder. Joe ignores him and tells 
Reggie to go to the liquor store on fourth street. Rick taps 
harder. Joe, annoyed, snaps “what is it godda...” and spins, 
gulps and starts spinning the lamest cover ever “that’s right, 
Reggie. You carry the two and you divide by the sum...” Yeah, 
because Rick’s old and deaf. Rick just calmly takes the phone 
from him, hangs up and guides him over to the waiting plane. 
This plane, by the way, appears to be a private 747 that the 
pilot set down in the parking lot of a 7-11. I mean, there’s no 
other planes around anywhere – including overhead, there’s no 
airport noise whatsoever, there’s a freaking payphone, like, 
two yards away...what the hell? Kate is playing tonsil hockey 
with one of the better looking players. “I’ll see you in a 
couple of hours, right,” she asks, which is a question that is 
only asked in movies so the audience knows the answer is 
actually “no.” Kind of like a soldier showing his buddy a 
picture of his wife and kid back home. He groans that he’s 
going to have to stay with his dad tonight and go through a 
post-game breakdown. “You’re gonna tell him about California, 
right,” she prompts. He says what? After losing? That kind of 
news is best broken when he’s in a *good* mood. But he’ll tell 
him. Eventually. If he’s not killed in the next few hours, 
which, of course, he will be. I’m sure this will all be 
explained later. Probably at great length and with a lot of 
crying. Yeah, just call me Nostradamus. Oh, and she calls him 
“Chris Griffin”. Did I forget to mention that Paul’s last name 
is Griffin? Yeah. And Kate’s name is Annie. They kiss one last 
time and she runs off to join the rest of the ditzbrains in a 
convertible. Why are they not flying too?

Griffin crosses paths with Red and another coach, who is 
bemoaning the fact that he’s missing his granddaughter’s piano 
recital. He brushes it off, shakes Red’s hand and wishes him a 
good trip. Red fidgets and finally decides what the hell “I’ll 
do the recruiting trip. You go home and see your 
granddaughter’s recital.” They argue for about ten seconds and 
then the guy agrees and says he’ll see Red Monday morning. 
Where did all these anvils surrounding my chair come from?

Red calls some woman named Doris back in Marshall and asks if 
she can look and “see if Carole’s home next door?” Sigh. 
Obviously Carole is his wife and this is yet another clunky 
line of exposition that makes sense only to the audience. Who 
the hell calls their neighbor and then specifies where they 
should look to see if their spouse is home? Oh, really? You 
live next door? Well, that explains why I keep seeing you 
around here... Or maybe she’s senile. She looks about 90. Doris 
peeks through the window and says nope. He asks if she can give 
her a message then: “I gotta drive to Virginia tonight on a 
recruiting trip and I’m not gonna be home ‘till tomorrow 
evening.” Doris, half listening while watching some TV show, 
says yeah, sure.

Totally pointless shot of the cheerleaders driving down the 
road that transitions nicely from a shot of Annie looking up to 
her boyfriend staring out his window on the plane. Rick pats 
his shoulder on his way up the aisle and teases him about 
daydreaming about that girlfriend of his. He slowly makes his 
way to the front, giving us time to get a good look at all the 
doomed passengers, including the newscaster from earlier. When 
he gets to the front he barks at the team to straighten up and 
fix their collars and straighten their ties. “We are...” 
“Marshall!” the rest of the team replies in what is obviously a 
much-practiced chant. Rick nods proudly and says they’re almost 
home. He picks up a green Marshall University folder from his 
seat and sits down as the captain comes on the intercom to say 
they’re making good time “in spite of the weather” and if they 
could all return to their seats, they’ll be landing shortly. 
Two seconds later, there’s a crash of lightning, the camera 
jolts and the screen goes black.

After a full eight seconds of silence (yes, I counted), we fade 
in on a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Red pulls up and 
staggers tiredly out of the car, politely asking the attendant 
to fill the tank. Red grabs some peanuts and starts making 
small talk while an announcer cuts into the all country station 
playing in the background to announce that there has been 
another plane crash in West Virginia. Red, feeling a sudden 
wave of irony, whirls around. “What did he just say?” The 
attendant says I don’t know but I think it had something to do 
with typecasting.

Elsewhere, the cheerleaders pipe down to listen to their radio 
- apparently on the same station because everybody in West 
Virginia is required by law to listen to country music. The 
movie ShoulderInjury and Tom were watching stops and a woman 
gets up front to make an announcement. The announcer’s wife and 
twenty kids are watching television when a scroll runs across 
the bottom of the screen but all we read is “airport” before we 
shoot to the diner where Carole says goodbye to Paul and is 
about to leave when the owner gets a phone call. He listens for 
a minute, then looks ill and drops the phone.

ShoulderInjury – I should really start calling him Nate – and 
Tom rush out onto the street to see fire trucks and ambulances 
rushing past, sirens blazing. They flag down a pickup and ask 
if he’s going to the airport. The driver says yeah, get in. Ah, 
the 70s. The time before automatic door locks when people 
weren’t afraid of everything and everybody. Reggie – a case of 
beer propped on one shoulder – watches them go, baffled. They 
arrive at the edge of the woods somewhere to find total chaos 
and cops frantically trying to keep back the crowds of frantic 
friends and relatives. They manage to get close enough to see 
pieces of flaming wreckage through a bunch of trees. Strathairn 
– who somebody announces as the President of the University for 
some odd reason – arrives and looks ill. Nate asks a fireman 
what airline it’s from. Fireman says he couldn’t tell him even 
if he knew. Nate says just look at the front of the plane, 
damnit! Fireman ominously says “son, there is no front of the 
plane anymore.” Paul and Carole arrive on the edge of the chaos 
and Paul frantically asks Nate if it’s “their boys’ plane”. A 
fireman picks up something and everything goes into slow motion 
with dulled sound while he hands it to the fireman Nate was 
talking to who slllloooooowwwwly walks it over to Paul. It’s 
Rick’s green folder, half charred. 

Cut to the church, where people are sobbing and clinging to 
each other and Reggie – still holding his case of beer – slumps 
into a pew and looks shell shocked.

Sometime later, Carole is laying in bed sobbing her eyes out 
when she hears a car pull up. She stumbles out the front door 
to find Red getting out of his car and gapes. “You didn’t get 
my message,” he asks. Damnnit, Doris! She wails and runs at 
him, throwing herself in his arms, sobbing, and smacks him a 
couple times for scaring the crap out of her. By the way, Red? 
Your headlights are still on.

Some unidentified time later a TV reporter announces that 
Marshall is in a state of shock after 75 people died in last 
Saturday’s crash, including the entire football team and it’s 
coaches. Well, except the one, who as we speak is picking up 
the newspaper to find his picture alongside all the other 
coaches who were assumed killed in the crash. His chin quivers 
a bit, but before he can burst into tears we cut to another 
scene. Oh, come on, like that’s not what he was hired for. I 
think it’s pretty much common knowledge that if you want an 
actor who can cry – believably - at the word “go” you call 
Matthew Fox. 

Montage skipping through time. Nate looking at the empty beds 
of his approximately seven roommates – all on the team, I 
guess. State Governor on TV declaring this whole thing just a 
tragedy. Funeral. A little girl playing Amazing Grace on the 
piano (what, no harp?). Picture of the guy who took Red’s 
place. Red’s reflection appears in the glass so those of us 
playing the home game will get that he’s feeling GUILTY, 
DAMNIT, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN HIM. Ceremony at the football 
field. Nate places a football on a kickstand (or whatever the 
hell it’s called)...people cry...angst comes off of Red in 
waves.

“Those were not welcome days,” Annie’s voiceover says. I feel 
like the world’s biggest ass because I’m giggling at the fact 
that this is said over a shot of people standing around a 
casket in a graveyard. Really? THAT’S PROBABLY AN 
UNDERSTATEMENT. Annie is standing near the coffin, fingering an 
engagement ring and sobbing. The voice over blathers on and on 
about time stopping and shadows remaining and silence and 
wholes being shattered. I think the writer was going for deep 
and philosophical but it just sounds cheesy. 

Sometime later, President Strathairn – gah, Don - is meeting 
with Paul at what looks like a steel mill where he apparently 
moonlights or something and asks if he’s talked to the other 
board members about “this”. Paul says most of them would rather 
not think about it. It just doesn’t make much sense to rush 
back into it. Their coaching staff, athletic department and a 
lot of their boosters are all gone. “We’d have to start all 
over again from scratch...we don’t have the resources or the 
manpower right now.” Don says he knows there’s plenty of reason 
to suspend the program, he’s just surprised to hear Paul saying 
them. Paul says the town didn’t just lose a football team – 
they lost doctors, lawyers, city councilmen, fathers, sons, 
husbands, etc. “Wouldn’t be a game anymore, Don. Be a weekly 
reminder of what we’ve lost.” Oh, like American’s aren’t good 
at finding ways to dwell in their misery anyway? Seriously, 
where else in the world do people celebrate anniversaries of 
people’s deaths?

So Don gently explains to the remaining team (all three of 
them) that their scholarships will still be honored, but, well, 
the town needs to “take a collective breath” and “figure out 
the proper course of action.” Nate says and that would be what? 
End the program? Don says no, they’re just suspending it. 
Indefinitely. Because honestly, “under the best circumstances” 
it would take years to build the team and staff back up. When 
they bring it back they want to make sure they “do it right.” 
Nate says you mean *if* they bring it back. He bitches that 
this isn’t right or fair and Don neglects to point out that 
*life* isn’t fair, obviously, or an entire chunk of the fucking 
town wouldn’t be dead would they? I’m sorry. I really need to 
start thinking in metaphors or this whole ‘life will not go on 
if we don’t have football’ theme is going to piss me off fast. 
Don promises to pass his concerns on to the board. Nate asks 
why he can’t do that himself. Don tells him the meetings are 
always “closed-door”.

So Nate gathers a bunch of jocks and starts organizing them to 
go grab every person they can find and drag them here by 5:00. 
He does not say why, but he does mention the fact that they 
officially lost their football program so I guess they’re 
supposed to figure it out for themselves. Tom pulls him aside 
and says actually, some of the guys are feeling like maybe 
stepping out on that field isn’t the right thing to do right 
now... Nate refrains from smacking him. “This about our 
teammates, man.” Tom says never mind, forget he said anything, 
five o’clock you said?

Apparently 5:00 is when the town meeting is taking place 
because that’s what we cut to. Don starts the meeting but 
barely gets two words out before Nate bursts in the door. 
Everyone looks surprised and Don scolds that this is a private 
meeting. Then how was he able to barge in so easily? Shouldn’t 
you have somebody stationed by the door heading off people 
wandering in from other parts of the building or something? 
Nate says he doesn’t mean to interrupt (liar) but he thinks 
there’s something they need to hear. Don says great, you can 
set up a time to come by my office later. Nate says oh, no, not 
me. Them. He points out the window and everybody peaks out to 
see what looks like the entire campus standing on the lawn 
outside. Nate gives them a signal and they start chanting “we 
are Marshall”. Weepy fanfare plays in the background.

Red and his wife can hear this racket all the way in their 
house where they are sitting down to dinner. Red angsts all 
over the place.

Nate sidles up to Don and repeats that “it’s the right thing to 
do”. Don frustratedly reminds him that they don’t have a team 
or a staff or an athletic director and honestly he wouldn’t 
have a clue where to begin getting it back up and running 
again. Nate suggests he start with a coach. Cheesy fanfare 
builds and the screen goes black. 

Diner. Lloyd the owner (yes, I know his name now) calls Annie 
over and gently tells her that she doesn’t really have to come 
back to work right away. The job will still be there when she 
gets back. She firmly says the last thing she needs right now 
is more time to herself. She wants things to go back to normal 
(ha). I squeal as I recognize the Gordon Lightfoot song I loved 
when I was little playing on the jukebox in the corner. Yes, I 
said Gordon Lightfoot and if that makes me a dork then so be 
it. Clearly I was born in the wrong decade. 

Annie hesitantly approaches Paul and says she’s glad to see he 
hasn’t given up his regular booth. He says he’s been coming 
here every day for 30 years so he really doesn’t see any reason 
to stop now. She slowly takes off her ring and hands it to him, 
saying she thinks he should have it back. He needlessly points 
out that Chris gave it to *her* (really? I DIDN’T KNOW THAT.) 
She says yeah, but Paul gave it to his wife first and he passed 
it down to his son and it should stay in the family. “What 
family,” he says numbly. Yeah, way to point out that he’s the 
end of the line now. Unless she’s pregnant. Which is entirely 
possible I’m sure. He tells her to keep it and think of Chris 
every morning when she puts it on. Gee, how nice of the closed 
captioners to point out that Annie is [CRYING] right now. Like 
a deaf person can’t see the BIG FAT FUCKING TEARDROPS.

Obviously Don took Nate’s suggestion to start with a coach to 
mean “start with the one coach you have left” because he goes 
to Red’s house and finds him re-roofing the shed out back. 
After a little bit of “what the hell are you doing” filler 
conversation he says “you know, you’re not on a deserted island 
anymore. You can shave now.” Oh, sorry, I mean he says he’s got 
an offer for Red. Red stops pulling up boards to angst a bit 
and grumble “I was afraid you might.” Don just leaves it at 
that and tells Carole that if he had been in Red’s situation he 
doesn’t know how he’d even make it out of bed in the morning. 
If totally ignoring reality and taking it out on a few dozen 
nails and pieces of plywood is keeping him from total meltdown 
then Don feels they should just leave him be. “Thanks for 
nothing,” Carole doesn’t say.

So Don goes back to his office and starts calling people on a 
one page list of candidates for head coach and crosses them out 
one by one as every candidate obviously rejects the offer on 
the basis of they’re not completely crazy. Also? Don apparently 
has a special phone that is able to call people in the future 
because according to the fact-checkers on IMDb a couple of the 
area codes on that list didn’t exist until the 90s. I’m 
inclined to believe them.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, Jack reads something in the newspaper at 
the breakfast table with his half-dozen kids and asks his wife 
if she’s ever been to Huntington, West Virginia before. No, 
why? No reason. Just dropping random plot points. 

Don’s office. His secretary says somebody from the Herald 
called for him. Oh, and some guy named Jack Lengyel from 
Wooster college called to say he might be interested in the 
coaching job. Don looks baffled. “Where in the world is 
Wooster?” His secretary reminds him that beggars can’t be 
choosers. Or words to that effect.

So Don goes to visit Jack, who is wearing the most hideous 70s 
nerd clothing. I am almost rendered blind for the rest of 
this scene. Seriously. He has plaid pants and a puke-brown 
cable knit sweater. It’s scary. Jack demonstrates some of his 
brilliant coaching skills by directing his kids in a football 
play that hilariously runs one of them right into a tree. To 
Jack’s credit, they are wearing helmets. Don looks worried 
anyway. “Is he all right?” Jack says oh, yeah, sure. “Hey, 32, 
are you all right?” The kid gives a “ferocious” yell. “All 
right, go kill your brother.” Snort. Jack spins this incident 
as “that tree wouldn’t have been there if you had a fullback 
blocking for him. And that is why I’m a fan of the Power I 
Formation.” Yeah, I have no idea what that is but...YOU JUST 
RAN THE KID INTO A TREE. Not instilling a whole lot of 
confidence over here. Don doesn’t know what that formation is 
either so Jack starts to explain it in football 
terminology/gibberish and Don – bless him – cuts him off, 
saying he really doesn’t care to know. I love you, Don. What he 
*would* like to know is why the hell Jack is interested in the 
job. He’s not alumni, he has no ties to Marshall whatsoever but 
*he* called *them*. He actually asks who “in their right mind” 
would want this job. You ask that of all the interviewees? 

Jack totally ignores him in favor of yelling at one of the kids 
to not put whatever he found in his mouth...or his pants. Don 
tries a different angle. Did Jack give any thought to this 
before he asked Don to travel all the way to Ohio to interview 
him? “A little bit.” Don looks like he’d like to give Jack a 
swift kick in the pants but he very politely tells him to thank 
his wife for dinner but he’d better get going back to West 
Virginia and shakes Jack’s hand. Jack stops him before he 
leaves. “You wanna know why I picked up the phone? Is that it?” 
Yes, I believe that’s exactly what he asked if you had been 
paying attention. Jack says when he heard about what happened 
to them the only thing he could think about was his kids and 
how much they mean to him and what would happen if he lost 
them. He tried to expand that to a whole team, school and town 
and picture just how tragic it all was for them and get to the 
point, Sparky. “And I thought hell...maybe I can help.” 

This shaky, shamelessly sappy response apparently is enough to 
convince Don because the next scene starts with him introducing 
him as the new head coach at a town meeting (I think). And 
apparently Jack decided his outfit in the last scene wasn’t 
quite hideous enough because he’s now wearing a plaid coat and 
a tie with diagonal stripes – the former in pastel peach and 
blue, the latter in dark green and yellow. I know it’s supposed 
to be the 70s but seeing as nobody else is dressed *this* badly 
I’m wondering if we’re supposed to assume he’s colorblind. He 
gives a little speech about how honored he and his family are 
to be here and how wonderfully hospitable everybody is. The 
press starts asking questions like “what are your expectations 
for this year” and Jack realistically tells him that if they’re 
looking for miracles they’re going to be disappointed no matter 
what. How about ‘what does he have to say to the families who 
think starting the team up again so soon is disrespectful’? 
Silence. McConaughey seems to channel President Junior for a 
moment as he gets a blank look, laughs nervously and gives the 
nonsensical answer “I am a football coach. That is what I do 
and that’s why I’m here.” The reporters mutter amongst 
themselves, loudly wondering what the hell kind of answer that 
was and what kind of drugs his mother was on when she was 
pregnant with him. “This guy won’t make it,” one guy mutters. 
Of course he will. This is America we’re talking about. We 
worship stupidity (and/or elect it president).

Next up, Jack’s introduced to the three players that make up 
his varsity team. Nate says there were four of them, but 
uh...the fourth guy decided he had better things to do. Jack 
introduces himself and says the good news is he’s usually bad 
with names so he should be able to keep the three of them 
straight. Oy. He babbles about this little name association 
thing he read in Redbook and oh fuck this. Can we just assume 
that he will act like a babbling hick for the entirety of this 
movie unless otherwise stated? He says as soon as his wife gets 
everything settled he’s going to invite the three of them over 
for dinner and ends with “it’s a new day, men”. Yeah, that’s 
profound. Gack.

He walks out of the building with Don and says he really likes 
those guys but...uh...he needs 55 more of ‘em. Don says well, 
he can’t really help in that department. Jack says he can, 
actually – he can petition the NCAA and ask them to make an 
exception this one time so they can let freshmen play. Don 
hesitantly says Jack knows the NCAA (which he calls the N-C-
Two-A) as well as he does – they’re not really flexible. 
“Usually true,” Jack admits, the stupid look still firmly on 
his face. He then proceeds to tell Don a story about his son 
crapping his pants yesterday and he’s four years old so he 
shouldn’t be doing that anymore and his wife wasn’t home so he 
had to clean him up himself and when she came home she said she 
couldn’t believe it and he said he knows, he’s too damned old 
to be having accidents and she said “no, I can’t believe you 
finally changed a diaper.” Pause. “What are you talking about,” 
Don asks. I don’t know either, Don, but maybe if you ignore him 
he’ll shut up. Apparently, the whole point of the pointless 
story was “there’s a first time for everything.” I am going to 
be ready to strangle this guy by the end of this recap.

Jack goes to talk to Red. Because, hey, if anybody could talk 
him into coming back maybe it’d be the obnoxious new guy. “What 
are those, 1 by 5s,” he calls up to Red, who is hammering some 
shiny new boards to the roof of the shed. “One by sixes,” 
Jack...I mean Red (I told you this would be a problem) mutters 
and goes back to hammering. Jack says oh, they don’t look that 
wide from down here. Red rolls his eyes and says he saw Jack’s 
guys play once. “Did we win,” Jack asks. “It was the Ashland 
game.” Jack winces. “Ooo...well, that’d be a no, then.” Heh. 
Red says they looked pretty good until the fourth quarter but 
yeah, Ashland wiped the field with them after that. “I 
appreciate you coming out here to see me but they already came 
out here to ask me back and I already told them that I’m 
not...” He trails off as Jack just climbs up the ladder to him 
without asking. “...coming back,” he finishes. Red...I mean 
Jack...AUGH! Seriously, I don’t know if I can do this for 
another hour and fifteen minutes. Jack says yeah, yeah, 
whatever, he just thought he could make Red a better offer. 
“They asked you to be the head coach. I want you to be the 
assistant coach.” Red snorts “I think that’s a demotion, Jack.” 
Jack says not necessarily – it’s pretty much the same job but 
with less pay. Red looks at him like “is this guy fucking 
kidding?” and Jack tries to make it sound better by saying he’d 
have less responsibility and less pressure. Then he goes right 
to begging: they’ve got barely any team left and he needs 
recruiting help from somebody who knows the area. 

Jack...fuck RED sighs and starts babbling about how he and 
Carole moved here a couple years ago and he had been hired for 
receiving but when he arrived they told him he’d be in charge 
of recruiting too. So he recruited twenty kids that year “and I 
promised twenty mothers that I’d look after their sons” and, of 
course, every one of them was on that plane. “So let me ask you 
Jack: how am I supposed to look a mother in the eye and promise 
her anything ever again?” Jack says something but I’m too 
distracted by the ugliness of his black and red weave overcoat 
to hear it. Red says he just doesn’t think he can go on that 
field again. Jack is distracted by a train whistle in the 
background. He points to the train in the near distance and 
asks if that’s the Ohio Valley Coal line. “The same one that 
went off the tracks near Akron last winter?” Red says yeah, 
that’s it. Jack smiles and says “back on track.” An anvil the 
size of a car crashes into the ground next to the shed, sending 
up a five foot plume of dirt and grass. When the ground stops 
shaking, Red turns to Jack and says “did you hear something?” 
Jack, a stupidly blank look on his face, says “what?” 

Nate goes to talk to fourth player Tom. He waxes nostalgic 
about all the crazy times they’ve had since freshman year and 
how he wasn’t too sure about Tom at first but now they’re best 
friends and he never gave up on them “out there on the field” 
so Nate sure as hell isn’t giving up on him now. Did the 
scriptwriter just crack open a big book of clichés and point 
randomly and regular intervals or what? Tom angsts that he 
should have been with them. Yeah, he should talk to Red. Maybe 
they could work a few things out. Nate says he understands and 
Tom screams that he doesn’t. “I overslept. That’s why I wasn’t 
on the plane, Nate. I overslept. I wasn’t hurt or sick. And I 
should have been there.” And Nate doesn’t have the same 
survivor’s guilt because he had a valid excuse of injury, I 
guess. He says over and over again that he just CAN’T DO IT and 
remembers to toss in an apology before walking away.

Diner. Paul is reading “All Quiet on the Western Front” when 
Annie plops a piece of pie he apparently didn’t order in front 
of him. On the house. Or out of her paycheck, I suppose. And 
that’s the entirety of that scene. Yeah. That could have been 
better placed.

Jack goes to his new office – which just says “Coach” on the 
door and has a faint outline where they scrapped off Rick’s 
name. He walks around a bit, puts his name plate and a picture 
of his family on the desk and mutters to himself. This is 
basically just filler until Red comes in the room and – with no 
further explanation – says “so, uh...I’ll give you one year.” 
Jack smirks triumphantly and says well, they’d better get 
started then. 

Montage. The odd couple interview a few more coaches and Don 
dictates a letter via his secretary to the NCAA. Jack and Red 
make a list on the blackboard in Jack’s office of potential 
recruits for the team. Red goes to talk to one of them and I’m 
not sure if it’s supposed to be funny but three big, beefy 
coaches for whatever team the guy is on at the moment trail 
after him like ‘and just what do you think you’re doing?’. 
Seriously, I’m surprised one of them isn’t thumping a baseball 
bat on his palm threateningly. Red goes ahead and talks to the 
kid anyway but I’m guessing this one’s a lost cause. The NCAA 
rejects Don’s proposal. Shocking. Jack talks to some 
candidate’s mother over hot dogs at a diner. She assures him 
her son hasn’t made up his mind about where he’s playing yet, 
but then the son comes in wearing a West Virginia U sweatshirt 
so apparently she hasn’t heard from him recently. Don gets 
another rejection letter. Jack and Red cross names off the list 
right and left. Don gets another rejection letter (the NCAA 
must have been buried in a blizzard of proposal letters or 
something). And the montage ends with Jack looking at the 
exhausted list on the blackboard and muttering “shit.” 

Meanwhile, Don has apparently sent a couple more letters to the 
NCAA and called them a couple dozen times because he gets a 
couple more rejections and the secretary says they haven’t 
returned any calls. On the plus side, they haven’t issued a 
restraining order either.

Basketball court. Jack illustrates just how screwed they are 
using basketballs to represent all the players they have versus 
the players they lost to WVU, which is one to twelve. He tells 
Red that they need to broaden their recruiting base or 
something and start getting creative about this. He picks up a 
basketball and tosses it, adding “isn’t that right, doc?” Oh, 
THANK YOU. I wasn’t confused enou...oh, he’s talking to Don, 
who has dropped by to check on how they’re doing. “West 
Virginia looks to be very competitive next year,” Red snarks. 
Jack asks how it’s going on his end. Don waffles and says he 
hasn’t heard anything *positive* yet. Yeah, way to tap dance 
around the issue there. He thinks maybe they need more time. 
Jack says they don’t *have* more time. Then he goes totally on 
a tangent and asks if Don’s married. Don proudly says yes, 25 
years now. Which apparently means he got married when he was 
14. Yeah, I don’t think so. Jack guesses he didn’t propose over 
the phone. Not if he wanted her to say yes, I’m guessing. Red 
quietly watches this conversation from the background, 
smirking. Jack says his wife probably didn’t say yes in a 
letter either, right? Don looks at Red, who just shrugs like 
“hey, don’t look at me – I can’t help you.” 

They have the following quasi-argument with Jack looking all 
playfully insistent and twisting his lips to one side in some 
sort of tic he seems to have developed for this movie.
   Jack: Huh?
   Don: Jack?
   Jack: Doc?
   Don: No, Jack...
   Jack: Yes. 
   Don: I know...
   Jack: Doc?
And now I’m pretty sure it’s just Fox giggling in the 
background and not Red. McG wisely cuts from him before he 
loses it completely as Jack calls Don a “gunslinger” in a 
“whole new game” and starts whistling the theme from “The Good, 
The Bad and the Ugly”. Don sighs and looks like he’d really 
like to wring Jack’s neck right about now. Jack says there’s a 
first time for everything and “if we’re gonna survive, this has 
to be one of those times” whatever that means.

So Don goes all the way to Kansas City and marches up to the 
NCAA headquarters in the pouring rain to talk to a very 
surprised man. He practically grovels. It’s not pretty. He 
returns to the basketball court, where the odd couple are 
waiting, dressed exactly the same and with the same amount of 
light coming in the room like it’s only been five minutes since 
Don left. Y’all could at least pretend these scenes weren’t 
shot one right after another, you know. He hands Jack a letter 
stamped “approval” and says “guess who’s gonna change our 
diaper.” Didn’t need that mental image, thanks. Jack responds 
by leaping in the air and landing in a position that makes him 
look a lot like the monkey that clearly raised him. Then he 
lifts Don over his shoulder, whooping excitedly.

Oh, goody, another montage. Jack and Red go back out recruiting 
again. Well, Jack is doing most of the talking really. Red’s 
just standing back and watching, looking him up and down like 
“I don’t get it, what the hell do women see in this guy?” I 
guess “creativity” for Jack involves looking at other sports 
players because they manage to recruit a baseball player who 
has a habit of tackling basemen (the team was clearly glad to 
see him go) and a soccer player who kicks balls way the hell 
over the goal net and out of the park. In other words? If you 
suck at other sports, maybe you should try football. I’m sure 
that’s not the message they’re trying to convey, but that’s 
what I’m going with. 

Red and Jack look at their blackboard and congratulate 
themselves. And then there’s a weird moment where Jack moves 
toward Red and fakes like he’s going to shake Red’s hand and 
hugs him instead. Then the whole scene just gets uncomfortable 
as McConaughey prances in circles around him, shoving a 
football at him, and running through the list of players in a 
loud announcer voice and Fox basically looks like somebody just 
rammed a very large pole up his ass. And I just ducked and 
waited for somebody to slap me even though A) Chrissy's not 
here, B) This is certainly not “Pirates of the Caribbean” and 
C) That would barely even qualify as a slash joke. That's an 
interesting reflex. Know what else is interesting? I just got a 
mental image of Josh Holloway in a pirate costume. Huh. I wish 
I was watching “Pirates of the Caribbean” right now. That would 
be far more entertaining. I should really take my ADD 
medication before I start writing a recap. Note to self: edit 
this paragraph before publishing this recap.

Diner. A couple jocks are trying to talk Annie into coming to 
the bonfire and checking out her ass when she turns to get 
their orders. She pushes a couple bundles of silverware at one 
of them slowly so they get a good look at her ring. Sadly, this 
does not seem to have been intentional and she deflates when 
they start backing off. Girl, if a couple of dogs like them had 
tried to pick me up I’d be borrowing a ring from somebody else 
just to get them off my back.

One of the dead announcer’s kids wanders into the stadium to 
watch from a distance as Jack gives a boring ass speech to the 
assembled team. On the field, Jack, Red and one of the extra 
coaches walk through the practice while Jack babbles about the 
Power I again and he needs a quarterback for that so who have 
they got? Red says, um...just this one kid over here. Jack 
looks too surprised for somebody who was barely scraped 
together fifty guys at all and says “competition breeds 
improvement”. Oh, fuck off. Sorry. I just get sick of hearing 
that argument from yahoos who think everything should be run 
like a business. All it does is fuck everything up. I light a 
few candles and spend the entire following training montage 
meditating in an effort to calm myself back down. 

Red calls over a player – a big dumb-looking cliché of a jock – 
and, craning his head back to look up at him, says that was 
supposed to be a post route not a flag route and he knows the 
difference right? The guy is all “dur...wha?” Red patiently 
gives the football for dummies explanation that a post route is 
where you head for the big ass fork-shaped thing at the end of 
the field called a goalpost. And a flag route is where you run 
toward that flag shaped thingee in the endzone called a flag. I 
giggle because he says “post” and “flag” about fifty times each 
and practically draws the kid a diagram and the kid keeps 
nodding stupidly and saying “yeah, uh-huh, sure...” and you 
just know he’s probably going to forget all of this in about 
two minutes anyway. Meanwhile, Jack pulls aside the kicker 
(soccer player) who is just standing in the field twiddling his 
thumbs after he kicks the ball like “that’s all I’m supposed to 
do, right?” Don’t you love working with peanuts-for-brains 
jocks? 

Jack decides the memory tricks he learned from Ja...Redbook 
(okay, this is getting ridiculous) are not working anymore and 
he wants to get the players’ last names printed on their 
helmets. Huh. Didn’t even notice they weren’t. So the next 
scene the guys all have their names on their helmets in masking 
tape and magic marker like your mom used to label your crap 
when you were little. Jack calls on their “second team” to 
practice a run and an extra coach is all “um...what second 
team?” Jack grumbles and decides he and the rest of the 
coaching team are the second team. Reggie’s all “um... 
coach...y’all don’t have any pads or helmets on or anything.” 
Not that it matters because they still manage to knock half of 
the players back anyway. Yeah, I really don’t know that much 
about football, but this is not looking promising. The dead 
announcer’s kid in the stands obviously agrees with me as he 
groans and slaps his forehead dramatically. Hee. Oh, and just 
to warn you: I may give up trying to figure out all the 
terminology they’re spewing and just make shit up at some 
point. Or maybe I’ll just make everything they say sound dirty 
because statements like “we’ve got a huge problem on the O-
line” are just begging to be followed by “if you know what I 
mean [wink wink]”.

Coaches meeting sometime later. Jack holds up a folder labeled 
“Power I” and says they know he’s a big fan of this play but if 
there’s one thing he’s learned in the last two weeks it’s that 
it’s not working so, y’know, fuck it. He tosses it in the 
trash, erases some of the plays from the blackboard behind him 
and says they’ll have to just throw everything in their 
rulebooks out and come up with the simplest offensive plays 
they have ever tried and won a game with. Red offers something 
designed for teams without a strong offensive line. Jack says 
brilliant, who uses it? Red says well, Texas and uh...West 
Virginia. The wheels visibly spin in Jack’s head. Red snorts 
and tells him he’s crazy if he thinks their rival is just going 
to hand over their playbook. Jack is all “hi, my name is Jack. 
I don’t believe we’ve met.”

So Jack and Red are waiting in a lobby at West Virginia U and 
McG is scaring the crap out of the audience by shooting 
McConaughey’s reflection off a curved trophy that warps the 
hell out of his face and accents that stupid sideways lip curl 
thing he’s got going. Red nervously reminds Jack that he 
doesn’t think this is a good idea and then the coach comes in 
to talk to them and wonders what the hell is wrong with this 
guy when Jack shakes his hand overenthusiastically and refuses 
to let go for a good minute. Jack gets right to the point and 
says they’re thinking of adopting that Veer play and they were 
hoping for some pointers. The coach looks at him like he’s 
suddenly reverted to Pig Latin and looks over at Red, who looks 
like “don’t blame me, it was all his idea!” “Pointers,” he 
repeats. Jack says yeah, tips, advice, whatever. Coach starts 
laughing. Red starts laughing nervously. 

Instead of kicking them out on their asses, the coach takes 
them down to the storage room where they keep all the 
playbooks, filmed games and research and tells them they can 
talk to the woman down the hall if they need copies of 
anything. “You serious,” Red asks, wide-eyed. The coach says 
yeah, well, we’re not playing you guys this year so who cares? 
Oh, and there’s some food next door if their hungry. 
McConaughey gets about two inches from Fox’s face and says “you 
hungry, Red? I’m gonna watch some film. Huh? Huh? Huh?” I’ve 
decided that McConaughey is either playing this character like 
a hyper puppy or he’s decided Fox needs to loosen up and is 
trying really hard to get him to crack. He heads over to the 
shelves and Fox darts off screen before McConaughey tries to 
kiss him or something. I just ducked again. I really need to 
shake that reflex.

Meanwhile, the players – all except Nate - are having some sort 
of party in the dorms and drinking beer. Ask me if I give a 
rat’s ass about any of this.

Jack and Red watch the tapes. Red is the only one taking notes. 
Still trying that Redbook thing are we, Jack? They’re 
interrupted briefly by a couple of players until the coach 
comes in to redirect them next door. This whole exchange was 
basically contrived so Jack and Red can get a good look at the 
Marshall University logo still on the back of the helmets the 
players are carrying under their arms when they turn their 
backs. Yeah. Way to recycle. You couldn’t paint over that part 
too while you were slapping WVU logos all over the rest of it? 
The coach notices them looking at this uncomfortably as he has 
two functional eyes and decides the best course of action is to 
make a joke about the different team colors clashing. Jack, 
suddenly serious, says “that’s first class, coach. First 
class.” And the tone of his voice says “you’re a first class 
asshat.” The coach tells them again to take all the time they 
need and scoots out, tail between his legs.

Practice. The team attempts something like that move they’re 
ripping from WVU, which seems to work and Jack says he “like[s] 
it.” Some guy (who I vaguely recognize as possibly a reporter 
from earlier) in glasses and a hideous jacket and tie (but at 
least they’re the same color combination) sidles up to Jack and 
starts babbling about playing around with the numbers and the 
average age of a starter in college football is 20 years, 10 
months but the average age of his players is 18 years, 7 
months. Jack calls them the “Young Thundering Herd.” The 
reporter’s eyes light up and he writes that down and asks if 
Jack minds if he uses it. Yeah, like Jack can claim copyright 
on that. It’s the same nickname they’ve been using all 
along...which I haven’t mentioned, sorry...with the addition of 
the word “young”. How original. 

Marshall VS Morehead State, September 18, 1971. Jack gives a 
little speech so full of clichés it makes my head hurt and Nate 
– team captain – leads them out onto the field, surrounded by 
several cheerleaders and the coaches. Wait. Forty five minutes 
left in the movie and we’re already at a big game scene? So I’m 
going to have to recap, like, at least a half an hour of jocks 
playing football? ...hang on a second.
   [Phone rings]
   Chrissy: I really need to change my phone number.
   Diandra: (dryly) Ha ha. Are you busy? Because I am in 
    desperate need of alcohol and somebody to bitch with.
   Chrissy: (sigh) What are you recapping?
   Diandra: “We Are Marshall”
   [Silence]
   Chrissy: ...why?
   Diandra: Because I felt like it.
   Chrissy: Y’know, one of these days we are going to have 
    to sit down and have a long talk about these 
    masochistic tendencies of yours.
   Diandra: Yeah, whatever. You gonna help me out here or 
    not?
   Chrissy: Honey...you’re my friend and I love you, but... 
    well...no.
   [Click]
Damnit.

Everybody’s gathered around their radios again, listening to 
the game, including Tom, the former announcer’s family and 
everyone at the diner. Apparently this town doesn’t have much 
else to do but follow college football religiously. 

We mercifully snap right from the kickoff in the early evening 
to night somewhere in the middle of the game and I actually 
want to kiss McG for that. Players are grunting and knocking 
each other to the ground and Nate is on the ground wailing and 
clutching his bad arm and Red is screaming at the referee while 
Morehead makes a touchdown. Apparently one of the Morehead 
coaches is played by the real Red Dawson but hell if I know 
which one. The real Jack Lengyel, however, is not in this 
scene, though he’s all over the extras for the movie. By the 
way neither of the real coaches Lengyel and Dawson are nearly 
as photogenic as the actors playing them but I guess they had 
to do something to make up for the fact that they made Lengyel 
look like an idiot hick (which he doesn’t seem to be). We see 
the scoreboard: 28 to 6 in favor of Morehead. Not doing so 
well, are we? Nate unconvincingly insists that he’s all right 
as he’s scrapped off the field and the announcer notes this and 
says hopefully he didn’t re-injure his shoulder. Oh, and 
Morehead gets an extra point for something or other because 
their score wasn’t ridiculously high enough already. 

Bitching screaming grunting...blah blah. Players arguing with 
each other. Football speak I don’t really understand and don’t 
care too (something to do with blitzing...which I believe 
happens immediately after a dime back. No, wait... I’m thinking 
of a dime *bag*. Sorry). Godawful slow motion shot of one of 
the Marshall guys (can’t tell who) getting knocked up into the 
air and coming down at an angle that looks like it totally 
snapped his neck. Still don’t know who he is but he’s number 
29, which is apparently Annie’s dead boyfriend’s old number. 
Jack calls Red over and babbles about how they need to get 
three points at least and send out the kicker or some crap. 
Red’s not listening anyway. He’s watching player’s 26 and 33 
help 29 stagger to the sidelines and having flashbacks of the 
former players who wore those numbers and he faintly hears Jack 
yelling “Dawson, send them in”, but then Jack turns into Rick, 
smiling and yelling “Call it in, Red!” and then another player 
gets sucked into a giant propeller and... oops, never mind. 
Weepy music. Jack gives up and starts yelling the orders 
himself as Red staggers away and seems to try very hard not to 
cry.

So basically, Marshall loses fantastically and the announcer 
says that while they have plenty of “heart”, they don’t have 
the skill or experience for this. And he predicts next week’s 
game against Xavier won’t go much better. Way to think 
positive. Oh, and “the Xavier game will be the first home game 
since the devastating crash that killed 75 players and fans. 
After this painful loss, the Marshall faithful must be 
wondering if they’ve done the right thing.” Why the hell would 
you say something like that? Just go ahead and rub salt in the 
wound, pal.

Apparently, HP center would like to remind me about available 
updates right now by covering part of the DVD player with their 
banner. Yeah, because this melodramatic crap isn’t annoying me 
enough.

Some guy named Mickey (one of the coaches I think) tells Jack 
that Nate’s shoulder is pretty bad and they might need to sit 
him out. No shit. We see this from Nate’s point of view, where 
he’s sitting in a tub soaking said shoulder. He’s not happy 
about that idea because he’d apparently rather cause himself 
permanent damage than not play a football game. Have I 
mentioned I hate sports?

Practice. Again. Some more. Jack tells a player to do a half-
kamikaze with a dude ranch and a top spin backhand. Yeah, 
actually, I have no idea what he said but I don’t care. The 
whistle blows and they knock each other over and basically take 
out their general frustrations and hostilities on their 
teammates, even after the whistle blows and several coaches 
have to break up fights. We get several random shots of Red 
walking up and down the sidelines, not saying or doing a damn 
thing. Until Nate knocks another player onto the ground 
seemingly after the play is already over, at which point he 
starts screaming, veins bulging, and shoves Nate to the ground. 
“You think you’re the only one who has the right to be pissed 
off?” he yells. “You think you’re the only one that’s had it 
rough?” Jack runs over like he’s going to pull Red off him 
before he totally loses it but then he just stands there while 
Red storms off. Everyone watches him, totally silent like 
“shit”. Jack helps Nate up, checks on the other guy and runs 
after Red.

He catches up with him as he rounds the corner off the field 
and asks what’s going on. “What the hell are we doing out 
there,” Ja...Red (I will get it by the end of this recap) 
growls. Jack says well, they’re running a Veer and getting 
ready to play Xavier. No, I’m not kidding. He’s really this 
clueless. Red stops walking and says really? Because it feels 
like they’re just bickering and “punching walls”. “We’re not 
actually helping them. We’re bringing the worst out in them. 
Shit, we’re bringing the worst out in me. And for what? So that 
we can collect pity applause in front of every college in the 
conference?” He paces and angsts and says Jack didn’t know 
Rick. “I did. And on the day that he died, he said the only 
thing that they judge us on, the only thing that counts, is 
winning.” Gee, thanks for reminding me of that. Could we stop 
promoting that message please? You know what’s more important 
than winning? Learning how to lose gracefully so you don’t come 
across as a total asshole. “So what do we do? How are we 
honoring their memory? We put together a team that doesn’t win. 
Can’t win. Not this week, not this season. Hell, maybe not 
ever. We’re not honoring them...we’re disgracing them.” Oh, 
shut up, Jack. I mean Red. I have to hand it to Fox here though 
because he manages to sell it anyway and he looks like he’s 
teetering on the edge of a total meltdown and barely managing 
to pull it together. Nice. He says he’s done and walks off, 
leaving Jack to stare into space. “Damn,” he’s thinking. “He 
just totally acted circles around me.”

Crack of dawn. I think. Jack finds Nate in the locker rooms (I 
think). Nate begs Jack not to bench him. Jack asks if he’s 
slept. Uh, no. Not before their first home game he doesn’t. 
Jack starts needlessly pointing out how bad his shoulder is and 
it needs rest and Nate doesn’t think so because he’s still 
young and stupid enough to think he’s invincible. He insists 
his shoulder is fine. Jack says really? This shoulder? He gives 
him a hard slap to the shoulder. Nate grunts in pain and, 
through gritted teeth, continues insisting that it’s fine. Jack 
hits him again, reminding him he’s gonna take hits a lot harder 
than that and Nate growls that it’s fine but this time his 
voice cracks and he starts crying. Jack softens. “Talk to me.” 
Nate sobs that that was his team and “they left it in my hands” 
Jack says no, no, they just *left*. Nate wants to know why. 
*Why* damnit? Why do people have to die? Why do bad things have 
to happen to good people? Why am I recapping this movie? Er, 
sorry. Jack doesn’t know. He hugs a sobbing Nate and wonders if 
all of the remaining scenes in this movie are going to be 
stolen by his co-stars. I pick up my Magic-8 ball and flip it 
over and it answers: YES!

Don goes to see Paul at the steel mill. Paul says the board 
voted Don out this morning. Don says excuse me? What? Why? Paul 
says Don was a “temporary solution” – he said so himself after 
“Roland” resigned. Don wants to know if this is about the 
football program. Isn’t everything in this universe? Paul says 
the crash just “cut too damned deep” and “it’s not just the 
team that’s bleeding. It’s not just the school. It’s the entire 
town.” Then he totally undercuts his “for the town” argument by 
going on about how painful this is for Annie and she can’t even 
read the paper or watch the news or even go to work without 
being reminded of football and the crash and Paul’s dead son. 
Realization dawns. “Paul. This isn’t about football, is it?” 
Really, Don? Figure that one out all by yourself, did you? He 
says he’s sorry about the loss of his son “but until you find 
the strength to deal with that pain nothing’s going to get any 
better. No matter how many presidents you fire.”

Speaking of Annie, Jack goes to the diner. The owner says 
they’re closed but since when has Jack ever taken no for an 
answer? He says his wife says they have the best apple pie in 
Huntington. The owner – ego sufficiently stroked – says it 
depends on the apple, but okay, he can try it for himself. 
Annie hands him a piece that was sitting in the fridge on a 
plate all cut already and he goes to sit at Paul’s booth with 
him. He introduces himself and says he’s heard Don lost his job 
this week and “you know, if you have a problem with anything 
that happens on the field, blame me, not him.” Paul defensively 
says Jack’s not from here and wasn’t here “last November” so he 
doesn’t expect he’d understand but this isn’t about what 
happened on the field, it’s about what happened to the town. 
Really? Because I think the distinction has been pretty well 
blurred. Jack ponders this, takes a bite of apple pie, looks at 
the picture of Paul and his kid on the wall and says he’s 
really sorry about his son – he must have been really proud of 
him. Paul snaps at him to not talk about his son like he knew 
him and he’s still proud of him, thank you very much. Then he 
storms from the diner, leaving Jack to stare into space.

Montage number 815. I’m totally skipping this. Suffice it to 
say there’s a lot of sad music and people moping around.

Jack finds Red sitting all by himself in a church. He’s still 
not crying. Jack sits in a pew behind him and says “he was 
right [...] Winning is everything and nothing else matters.” 
FOR FUCK SAKE COULD WE GET OFF THIS?! “Any coach who’s worth a 
darn in this business believes those words.” I think I’ve 
discovered definitively why I hate American football. “And then 
I came here. And for the first time in my life...hell, maybe 
for the first time in the history of sports suddenly it’s just 
not true anymore.” Hallelujah. There is a saving grace. “You 
see Red, it doesn’t matter if we win or if we lose. It’s not 
even about how we play the game. What matters is *that* we play 
the game.” I never cared much for McConaughey, but I want to 
kiss him right now. “We play the game, Red, and I’m telling 
you, one day...not today, not tomorrow, not this season, 
probably not next season either, but one day, you and I are 
gonna wake up and suddenly we’re gonna be like every other team 
in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing 
else matters. And when that day comes...well, that’s when we’ll 
honor them.” Red blinks and makes pained faces and Fox totally 
upstages McConaughey without having to say a word. Jack says 
they have a team meeting tomorrow and he has a little field 
trip planned for the team and he hopes to see Red there.

Next day. Jack tells his wife to make sure she’s there on time 
for the game because if he doesn’t see her in the stands he 
gets all “out of whack” and it’s really sweet but totally 
pointless so, you know, fuck it. He goes out to get the paper 
and stares slack-jawed at what looks like the entire town going 
down the street, headed toward the stadium I assume.

Paul arrives at the completely empty but for Annie dinner and 
asks if nobody in the town eats anymore. Since yesterday, you 
mean? He tells Annie she should go. She says naw, it’s okay, 
her shift ends in a few hours. He says that’s not what he meant 
and beckons her to come take a walk with him. “I don’t think 
your customers will mind.” 

They walk along the Ohio river and he babbles about growing up 
here and how he’d listen to the sound of the water when he was 
away at war and when his wife died and blah blah. “Whenever I 
see this river, I know I’m home.” I feel the same way about 
snow and mosquitoes the size of small bats. “You were going to 
California with my son.” She boggles. “How long have you 
known?” He says please. He was the boy’s father – he’s always 
known. He says she should still go. She splutters that things 
have changed now – she has responsibilities, a job... “and you. 
You’re all alone. I can’t-“ He says oh no, she’s not using him 
as an excuse. “If you don’t leave now, you never will.” And she 
can’t stay because of her job because if he tells her boss that 
she left the restaurant unattended he’ll fire her. Way to burn 
her bridges for her. He folds a handkerchief in her hand and 
says “Grief is messy, Annie. Makes you do things you regret, 
sometimes things you’ll always regret. She yelps that she 
doesn’t regret it. He says he’s not talking about *her*. 

And we cut to a marble plaque by the side of the road somewhere 
that reads “in lasting remembrance of the members of the 
Marshall University football team the coaches, staff, and 
devoted fans who died in the plane crash November 14, 1970.” 
Any errors – grammatical or otherwise – in that sentence are 
totally not mine. Also? I’m pretty sure they didn’t even try to 
use any film tricks to make that thing look any less than 
thirty years old. Jack stands in front of the monument, around 
which is gathered the entire team and coaching staff except, 
apparently, Red. “For those of you who may not know...this is 
the final resting place of six members of the 1970 Thundering 
Heard,” he says, gesturing to some headstones scattered on the 
ground around the monument. Because the crash was so bad and 
DNA testing would not be available for nearly twenty years 
their bodies were not identifiable, so they were buried here. 
And Red finally shows up as he babbles about this being where 
they have been and how they got where they are. “I want to talk 
about our opponent this afternoon. They’re bigger, faster, 
stronger, more experienced and on paper they’re just better. 
And they know it [...but] they don’t know your heart.” I really 
don’t think they care either. He says he does though and “when 
you take that field today, you’ve gotta lay that heart on the 
line, men.” Okay, do I really have to recap this? Just picture 
any standard sports/war movie pep talk and you get the general 
gist of it. I will note, however, that he does say that even if 
they are behind in points they “cannot lose” if they give it 
their all. 

Marshall VS Xavier, September 25, 1971. Guys running all over 
the field. Announcer prematurely predicting a repeat of the 
Morehead debacle. Nate totally slams his shoulder into a Xavier 
guy but is unaffected. Then he totally misses another guy two 
minutes later, hits the ground and starts yelling in pain. Red 
and Jack mutter about Nate knowing he can’t “play to his right” 
but the stubborn idiot is doing it anyway and they’re going to 
have to watch out for him. Blah blah clipper blah hip check... 
Nate goes down again. Jack says he’s benching him at halftime 
no matter what he says. Red agrees but wants to be the one to 
tell him. And with only a few seconds to go before halftime, 
Jack brings out the soccer kid to kick the ball from way the 
hell down the field and – shocker – it goes right through the 
goal posts, which apparently gives them the lead, 3 to love,
surprising the hell out of the announcer. 

Locker room. Nate says he’s fine, damnit. Red says he’s sitting 
out. Nate says he can’t do that to him, he has to “cover 19”. 
Red says 19 has a 3 handicap and a mean underhanded shuffle. 
No, I don’t have any idea what they’re talking about. Is it 
obvious? Nate says they have two innings left. Red says yeah 
but “you’ve done enough.” They go around in circles a few 
times. Red tries to convince him that they are where they are 
now because he “didn’t stop pushing” and keeps repeating that 
he’s “done enough”. Nate finally gives and asks if they’re 
going to be all right. Red says yes and they both try not to 
cry.

Paul listens to the radio broadcast as they come back from 
break and announce that Marshall’s rag tag team of freshmen, 
transfer students and walk-ins are somehow beating the Xavier 
Pirates (which is a funny way of pronouncing “Musketeers”). 
Paul finds the engagement ring tucked in his handkerchief and 
smiles sadly. Aw.

Back to the game. Xavier starts smacking Marshall guys down 
left and right and makes a touchdown. Nate watches from the 
sidelines. Jack tells him he’s still the captain of the team 
and he needs him to act as such so Nate is basically like an 
acting coach from now on. Blah blah double axle blah blah 
piledriver. Marshall makes a touchdown. Xavier makes a 
touchdown. Announcer helpfully points out that Marshall has 
just enough time for one last ditch effort but they’ll have to 
do a line drive down the middle if you know what I mean and you 
probably don’t because I’ve been just making shit up for a 
while now. I’m bored, what can I say? One of the Marshall guys 
apparently is a magician as he slips the ball to another player 
and nobody – including the announcer – notices until the kid is 
halfway down the field. Cute. Jack calls a time out and spews a 
bunch of crap but he might as well be telling them to shoot for 
the corner pocket and do-si-do to the end zone for all I 
understand.

The guy with the ball faceplants and there’s a moment where 
McConaughey smirks at Fox like “let’s see you keep this off the 
gag real” and smacks him on the ass a little 
overenthusiastically. Fox doesn’t even *blink*. He just turns 
to the kid next to him and barks at him to go in and do a spear 
tackle with a half-Nelson and a butterfly. With one second to 
go they start running and the guy with the ball barely manages 
to toss it to another Marshall player before being slammed into 
the dirt and the ball is in the air long enough for another 
montage. This one is just a bunch of random images from the 
movie so far (and I mean *random*) set to pretty music. 
Seriously, McG, I think you’ve met your quota of montages for 
this movie. Cut it out. The guy in the endzone catches it and 
the Marshall side of the stadium starts screaming and jumping 
in the air wildly, except Red who’s just staring in shock. 
Speaking of random, I have the video paused on a shot of him 
right now and the only observation my brain can come up with is 
that those are some really big belt loops on his pants. I’m not 
sure which I find more disturbing: that that’s all I can come 
up with or that my eyes were drawn to his pants. Lots of 
cheering and screaming. Jack finds President Don and tells him 
tradition is to give the ball to the “most valuable player” and 
hands it to him. Don needlessly points out that he’s not one of 
the players. Honey, I know Jack is not the brightest jock 
(probably an oxymoron) in the world, but...duh. Jack cheekily 
says oh, he hasn’t heard? “We’re Marshall. We’ll take anybody.”

Cut to Annie driving across state lines, her little Volkswagon 
convertible packed with shit. “The following week,” she 
voiceovers, “Marshall lost to Miami of Ohio 66 to 6.” Wow. And 
we’re back in the locker room where the team is still 
celebrating as she continues “they would only win one more game 
in 1971. Jack Lengyel resigned as head coach in 1974 with a 
record of 9 and 33. And a dead handle.” Sorry. I’ll stop now. 
“He went on to become athletic director at the Naval Academy. 
He’s now in the Hall of Fame.” Don served as president of 
Radford University until he retired in 94 and probably attended 
a few AA meetings to kick the drinking habit he picked up while 
working with Jack Lengyel. One of the dead announcer’s kids 
became an announcer himself...for Marshall. He’s still there. 
He also likely has an irrational fear of airplanes. Reggie 
played until he graduated, then returned as an assistant coach. 
Nate moved away after graduating and started a family. Then he 
died in 2001 after a “prolonged illness”. Even though he died 
in Virginia, he was buried in Huntington with the 6 
unidentified players from the crash. We get a closeup of the 
plaque near the monument, which is conveniently far enough away 
from the rest that they didn’t have to use anything more than 
strategic camera angle to hide it before. 

Red left the team at the end of the year like he said he would 
and never came back. The camera lingers on him, sitting in the 
locker room all alone sometime later that night, as Annie 
finishes her monologue. Here we go. Three...two...cue the 
waterworks. And since he’s been saving up all damned movie, it 
lasts a full minute. Thank you, closed caption people, for 
helpfully pointing out, once again, that somebody on screen is 
crying. You do know that closed captions are for the deaf, not 
terminally stupid, right? If nothing else: it’s Matthew Fox in 
a movie that begins with a bunch of people dying in a plane 
crash. Anybody who’s seen him on television could have 
predicted this would happen at some point. The janitor comes in 
the locker room and congratulates him. Red says thank you, 
composes himself and goes out the door to find Carole standing 
just outside. He apologizes for “keeping [her] waiting”. Wow is 
her shirt trippy. Seriously, it’s like the kind of thing you 
could stare at for five hours all glassy-eyed after smoking 
pot. Not that I have any experience with such things. Carole 
blows it off and drags him out to the field where the entire 
town is still crowded around acting rather sedate. Annie 
resumes her voiceover: “Marshall lost more football games in 
the 70s than any other program in the nation. Ever. Even more 
than Columbia University did when Matthew Fox was on their 
team, which we’re sure was totally a coincidence.” Sorry. 
Scratch that last part. They started winning again in the mid 
eighties and have been doing pretty well ever since. And we end 
on a shot of Jack being lifted on the shoulders of the team, 
whooping and shouting “we are Marshall!”

Oh, hallelujah it’s over. 
   [Phone ringing]
   Chrissy: Yeah?
   Diandra: Next time I think about recapping a movie that 
    revolves around football, do me a favor? Shoot me.
   Chrissy: Will do. 

~Diandra 


Glossary of all the sports (and a couple non-sport) terms I used in this recap:

O-line = I have no idea what this is, I just copied it from the closed captioning

blitzing = a defensive maneuver in American football wherein one or more linebackers/defensive backs are sent across the line to the offensive side to tackle the quarterback or disrupt a pass. At least, that's what Wikipedia tells me and I trust it when it comes to pop culture. It is also a slang term for getting high as in "man, I got so blitzed!"

dime back = a "cornerback" who serves as "sixth defensive back" in a football game, whatever that means.

dime bag = a $10 bag of crack. Much more interesting than a dime back.

half-kamikaze = a Kamikaze is either a downhill mountain bike race or a drink with vodka and triple sec. I think I just pulled this one out of my ass. A half-kamikaze just sounded funnier

dude ranch = A ranch typically used by visitors and tourists. This has nothing to do with sports - I just thought it sounded funny

top spin backhand = a tennis shot. Backhand just indicates which way the racket is being swung. A top spin spins the ball forward and makes it bounce at a sharper angle. The combination of these two maneuvers might well be incredibly difficult to achieve but I liked the way it sounded.

clipper - A type of ship with sails. I think I couldn't find a basketball term I found funny enough so I just used the name of a basketball team from Los Angeles. Or I might have been referring to "clipping", which is actually an illegal block in American football. Or I might have just been watching a weather report in the background. Your guess is a good as mine.

hip check = Using the hip to slam another hockey player into the board or ice. Off the ice, it can serve a whole other purpose. If you know what I mean. And don't even get me started on "pole checking".

love = A zero score in tennis, which made more sense when it was pronounced "l'oeuff", which is French for "egg", which is what the zero looks like on the scoreboard - a big, fat goose egg.

handicap = A number arrived at via a complex formula to indicate how bad a golfer is and how much s/he is allowed to cheat.

underhanded shuffle = I think this is just a method used by magicians to give the illusion of shuffling a deck of cards without actually changing their order, but it might have another meaning I've forgotten.

innings = Time divisions in baseball

double axle = a figure skating jump with two and a half rotations where the skater leaves the ice moving forward and lands moving backward. Axles are the most difficult type of jump and therefore the most overused by showoffs who try to do triple and quadruple axles one after the other.

piledriver = a wrestling move wherein one wrestler turns the other upside down and drives his head into the mat. A very dangerous, stupid move that can result in death or paralysis.

line drive down the middle = A batted baseball that flies level straight down the middle of the diamond. Can take on a whole different meaning when said with a wink and a "if you know what I mean".

shoot for the corner pocket = In billiards, aiming for one of the four pockets in the corners of the table. Yes, it's that simple.

do-si-do = A bastardized pronunciation of dos-à-dos, a square dancing step wherein partners walk around each other without turning around. Many a square dancer has run into their partner on the walking backwards portion of this move.

spear tackle = A piledriver done on a rugby field, which is even dumber and more hazardous.

half-Nelson = A wrestling move where the arm is looped under the opponents arm and hand clamped on his neck.

butterfly = a very fast and very difficult swimming stroke.

dead handle = aka straight handle, aka no handle. In curling, it's "a rock delivered without a turn" that often takes an unpredictable path.

Turkey = Bowling three strikes in a row. At one time, people who acheived this were supposedly given actual live turkeys.

Off the Broom = An incorrectly aimed shot in curling

Flunge = A cross between a flèche and a lunge in fencing. Basically a leaping lunge toward the opponent.