January 1, 2012 -- This emotional love letter from a coach to his team follows a downtrodden Memphis high school football team through a tumultuous season which tests the patience of the coach, Bill Courtney. Despite the title, the film is not about an undefeated season. The Manassas Tigers team does lose games. Rather, it is about the fighting spirit that Courtney is able to instill into his players. They never give up, no matter what the score. They might lose a game or two, but they are not defeated.

Courtney, an incredibly dedicated volunteer coach who works harder than many paid coaches, has an approach to football which is the polar opposite of many coaches. He sums it up this way: “The foundation has to be a solid platform that you can stand on and speak to these kids and say 'this is the way you build yourself. If you build yourself this way and handle yourself this way, you get to play football, and winning will take care of itself, because young men of character, of discipline and committment end up winning in life and end up winning in football.' Well, when you flip it, and the foundation of what you are doing is football, and then you hope all that other stuff follows, well then you think football builds character, which it does not. Football reveals character.”

Courtney starts out the season by listing all the discipline problems he's facing, a career's worth for most coaches, just in the first two weeks. It is a challenge. The football program at Manassas has been a perennial loser. The school district has no money. The district is littered with empty houses after the primary area employer, Firestone, pulled out. Blighted neighborhoods and all the crime and violence problems that go with them add to the school's and team's problems.

The film follows the team on its winning season, in particular, several key players, Montrail 'Money' Brown, star lineman O.C. Brown and the short-tempered Chavis Daniels. Anyone who has seen the award-winning film “The Blind Side” will immediately recognize O.C. Brown as a man very similar to Michael Oher, the main character of “The Blind Side,” a gifted athlete who is taken in by people who want to help him get good enough grades to be accepted into college. O.C. is getting lots of attention from college coaches because of his size and speed, but they are wary that he might not be able to qualify for college academically.

During the season, Money comes down with an ACL injury and is forced to miss some key games and Daniels is suspended from the team for disciplinary problems. Surprisingly, both of them make comebacks and rejoin the team. Courtney goes above and beyond the call of duty to go retrieve players who have quit the team because of arguments and fights. He persuades them to return to the team. He tries again and again to get his message through to the players, team first, character, determination, don't quit. One scene, when a player learns about his college career, is especially emotional. This film rates a B.

I couldn't help but think about the emerging dark cloud of brain injuries over the sport of football, even in players who have never had a concussion now show signs of brain function impairment. The combination of bigger, faster players than ever before colliding with each other with increasing amounts of force means that high school and college football is becoming too dangerous a game to play. It is becoming a blood sport. It is a pity that the same effort level of dedication and effort can't be put into more positive roles for young men than beating their brains out in football games. For more on this, see the revealing documentary Blood Equity.

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Copyright © 2012 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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