‘Friday Night Lights’ With Bill Simmons and Mallory Rubin
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What's happening? It's Todd McShay, and I'm back with a new home and a new show at The Ringer and Spotify, The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year-round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts, and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

That'll include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week.

So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for the McShay Show on the Ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. This episode of the Rewatchables is presented by State Farm. There's a lot to say when buying a new home or car, but only one thing to say when you need help to protect them. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. We're Mally Rubin hosts House of R with Joanna Robinson. Yes. Who we team up, the three of us.

Prestige TV podcast, season three of White Lotus in February. We did the recaps for season two. We're doing them again for season three. We're not splitting up Joanne and Rob Mahoney. They're going to do the precaps on Friday. Yes. And then the three of us, because we had a great time the last time. I can't wait. I don't even remember. It felt like, was that 10 years ago? Was it two? Was it one? How long ago was it? It was a long time ago. It's been a couple of years. Will we be, is this where you're ready to officially confirm that we'll be recording on location in Thailand? Yeah.

We have to film all of them at once after the football season. Yeah, we can do it. We'll have to fly there right after. Why not?

I'm going to dress. I'm going to have the facial hair, hair and shirts of the concierge in season one. That's going to be my look. That's going to be how it was that guy's name in season one. The guy who you're talking about the Murray Bartlett character. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You think you can match that mustache? Yeah. I'm going to try to get, get it going. Anyway, I brought you on for the last rewatchables of the year. I'm honored to discuss a movie that we love very much. Friday night lights is next.

In a town where winning is everything. Here's to the state. Let's bring them hell. A team with no chance. Where you going? You want me to go in, coach? You don't want a helmet? My goodness gracious. Will make hope come alive. On Friday night. This is my team. This is us, y'all. From the producer of 8 Mile comes one of the greatest sports stories of all time. Friday Night Lights. I don't want this to never end, Mike. Never. Never. This film is now yet ready. Starts October 8th.

All right, Mallory. I don't think anybody loves the Friday Night Lights franchise more than you, with the possible exception of me and a couple others. I go way back to the book coming out when I was in college, Buzz Bissinger's book.

And it was one of the best sports books, not only the eighties, but probably ever. It was two years after season of the brink with the, uh, the John Feinstein book about, uh, John Feinstein about, uh, Bobby Knight. And it was just this glory stretch of, it started with breaks of the game, the beginning of that decade and Friday night lights came out. It was awesome. I was immediately attached to everybody. And then the question became, when is this going to be a movie? Right. It took 16 years. So when did you read the book?

Uh, God, college. Yeah. Yeah. College. It's been a long time since I've read the book. I have it like behind me over there, but, uh, yeah, I read it cause this came, the movie came out in 2004, which was when I graduated high school and then started college. So I read the book because it was like out in the, in the, in the ether because of the film. Yeah. And so it's been, it's been a while since I've returned to the text, but, uh, obviously it's, it's a more frequent rewatch for me.

Well, literally yesterday. What a joy. This did the triple crown of the book, the movie and the TV series. Yeah. Which, you know, there's, there's been really good movies that led to better TV shows. We bash is probably the most famous example of this one. Buffy the vampire slayer. I think parenthood, there's a really good argument. What's better, the movie or the TV series. It kind of depends what you like, but both of them ended up being pretty high end. And then this one,

Which I think the TV show kind of overwhelmed the movie. And now the movie has become weirdly underrated. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's any doubt that the excellence of the television show, which is, you know, unmatched, like this is one of the best television shows ever made.

Yeah. Yeah.

thinking about the movie a ton because the show just takes up so much real estate in my mind and in my heart. So it was really fun to revisit it. I do think that it's just kind of undeniable that it can't hold a candle to the show, but I also think it's okay to say that and acknowledge that without it really being a slight on the film because it's more about the show's excellence than it is about anything the movie is lacking. Yeah, it's almost not fair. They had so much time and real estate and space to explore with the TV show. And that was the great thing about this movie is...

It's a TV show wrapped in a two hour movie. There's so many plots, characters, so many interesting things going on. It's all concentrated in this one season. But for my kids, like neither of my kids have watched Friday Night Lights. And I kind of can't believe my daughter hasn't watched it yet because it checks a lot of boxes of things she likes on a show. But I have watched a movie with my son who really likes it and would never watch the TV show. And I wonder as the years pass, is the movie actually going to take on greater significance than the show for people watching?

who don't feel like diving into a five-season show. The other thing we have is there's going to be a reboot coming. Right. So I saw Peter Berg, who I've known forever. I saw him a couple weeks ago at a Christmas party, and this is happening. It's in. I don't know what took so long. Yeah. And frankly, it should have come out six, seven years ago, right? I was ready for the TV show to come back 10 years ago. I think that if the...

continuation of the television series had happened too close to the end of the original series, everybody would have wanted it to follow those characters, right? Right. Kyle Chandler kind of group. You would want to be in Pennsylvania with the Chandlers, like, with the Taylors. You would want to know what Riggins was up to. So...

The extra time allows them to do what it sounds like they are going to do, which is use the title as a bucket to tell different stories about high school football in Texas. So this is going to be a completely different cast, different characters. I'm sure at some point some of our favorites will make their way into a given scene. How could they not? But this isn't going to be about Tammy and Eric Taylor. This isn't going to be about –

New set of characters.

Same set of core ingredients with this perfect alchemy that leads to this incredible brew. As long as they have explosions in the sky, we're probably good. The thing is, though, I do feel like we've missed a lot of opportunities TV-wise to just run back a concept with different characters. Even Entourage, I think, could have easily done this and just had a different...

or a musician or somebody in their entourage moving in and going through some of the same things. Maybe it's a black hip-hop star, whoever it is. I think Cheers could have easily, I've talked about this in the past, just take Cheers, move it into a different city and go. I think ER, which I guess they're kind of doing now with the pit. A max, but there's certain things that just feel like they would make sense. And to me, high school football in Texas, they could have moved Friday Night Lights, put it in Pennsylvania,

right? They could have put it in like Minnesota. I think there's places it could have kept going, but I guess they're just saying we're running back Texas. Would you put it in a different city or no? No, I think this has to, because the idea of like high school football as religion in Texas, the idea of Ratliff Stadium as the cathedral, as the church where the community gathers, that feels to me like a strand of DNA that is inextricable from the experience. Now, obviously there are plenty of other

high school football hotbeds across the country, you could set it in Florida. You could set it somewhere in California. You could set it in Ohio. I think that's not an impossibility, but when you hear those three words, Friday night lights, you think of the oil derrick. You think of that particular hue of sunrise or sunset.

over the open plane like it's just it is texas i mean texas forever right you can't have riggins say texas forever for five seasons and then set the next burst of the show somewhere else it would just like feel impossible feel wrong well i think the movie's oh for the tv series is oh six yeah

We don't have any of the stuff we have now. From a storytelling standpoint, documentaries, followed the team around for a season, QB1, social media. We didn't really know anything about these worlds other than what was on SportsCenter, what was written about in a Sports Illustrated feature.

Kind of going in blank. So when they brought us into this first with Varsity Blues, which there was a couple, I don't want to call rip off things because we love Varsity Blues, but there was against the grain, an NBC show with Ben Affleck as the quarterback that failed.

There was varsity blues. Same thing. Like let's go into this Texas world. What is this? Why do they care about high school football so much? Then this movie nailed it. And then the TV series took it to nine other levels. But I do feel like in 2024, we do have more info on this stuff now. Right.

Well, I think it's a combination of that, of just the access that you have to the players, to the culture, to the team, but also the landscape of the sport has fundamentally shifted in the last couple years. We're in the NIL era. You can't do Friday Night Lights in 2025, 2026, whenever. Who knows exactly when the first season is going to hit Peacock.

And not have NIL be a part of the fabric of the story. So, like, the things, you know, obviously, booster culture. I mean, Buddy Garrity icon, right? Pantheon TV character. Like, it's great to see Brad Leland in the movie. It's so fun to go back and be like, Connie Britton, there she is. I have some thoughts on that coming up. Brad Leland, there he is. John, Buddy, same character. Booster culture is a huge part of the story. But the role of...

acknowledged money in the sport is just going to be such a central ingredient in the new series. So that's kind of interesting. And I think also that helps me wrap my mind around the idea of how Friday Night Lights is a recurring resource, right? Because the sport is always changing. And so you have that like

harmony between the things that are eternal. The role that high school football, that football plays in Texas as the element that is like fixed and unchanging. And then you have the nature of high school football, college football, what changes about the landscape, what changes about player empowerment, but also just like what changes about football. Where are we schematically in 2025, 2026 when this comes out? And also

like so much innovation is always happening at the high school level. So you have a real, I think, fun opportunity to play there with just like what is happening in the game itself. So when I first heard the news, I recoiled because I'm like, it just makes me nervous to go back to this beautiful well. But the more I started thinking about it and reading a little bit about what they were saying about like the concept for the impetus for the initial story, I got really excited and I can't wait.

Well, you hit the two big things, NIL and social media, which in the movie don't exist. In the TV series, there's a little social media stuff. Like there was the, what was Mika Kelly's character name? Lila.

the slam page episode, which was like one of the, one of the first great social media episodes, even though we didn't really have social media. But imagine, imagine Tyra on Tik TOK. Oh my Lord. I mean, it's just a different thing. Imagine booby miles with NIL Tik TOK, the whole thing. So I mentioned how it had been 16 years, 16 years from book to movie. Yeah.

There were seven different rejected scripts. Brian Grazer owned the rights for a while. Different people will go into some of the casting, what if stuff with it. Yeah. And at some point there were seven rejected scripts that kind of got pushed aside. And according to the research, Peter Berg read all of them and reread the book. And he was like, what did they get wrong? And he realized that.

that it was all these things were about like trying to get race and oil and all these different like big picture Texas themes. And he was like that the books about what football means to this community, what football means to Texas that you basically peak when you're in high school. If you're on one of these teams, those are the themes I need to put in the movie.

And I got to say, I like the movie even more than I did when it came out. And I think part of it is because I was going to do this in What's Aged the Best. The way they film it was so dramatic in 2004. Oh, my God. The quick cuts. I saw this. I actually saw a screening for it because I had known Peter forever and he had a screening for a bunch of family friends. And I

I remember my one takeaway was like, I'm a little dizzy. That was hard. But now I watch it, I feel like every movie is like this. I'm totally used to watching it. Did you notice that this time around that it seemed way more not busy? So it's funny. I also had that in What's Aged the Best, just the editing and cutting. And honestly, the movies in some ways, a series of montages, like nature of the film. But then inside of each of the montage, like the

the number of moments where you are not just in a huddle, but inside of a... Like, when...

Great moment in the history of film when Carter Player kicked, not only pulls Winchell's helmet off, but then kicks it directly into his face. Like, you feel the thrust of the helmet moving through the air. There's a lot of, like, close framing. And, you know, you were mentioning documentaries and how that has just, like, that's an element of access that we have now to so many teams. But it does have, even though it's obviously a dramatic film, it has that kind of, like, documentary feel.

footage quality to it where the camera is right there inside of the play on the bench. But you could feel the kind of spit flying between the coach and the player or the father and the players. People are yelling at each other. And so there is a proximity. There's a proximity that pulls you into the action. And it can be a little bit like whiplash inducing, but I also found it riveting on a rewatch. And I think some of that honestly is like

We're just so used to watching everything in high def and with like surround sound. And you are now like accustomed. I mean, I guess in some ways you're accustomed to watching on the smallest screen possible because everybody watches things on their phone now. But on the flip side, you're used to just the most like immersive viewing and audio experience possible. And so like being in the middle of the field feels appropriate now in a way that it felt like more revelatory back then. Yeah. Yeah. Widescreen. When this movie was on the Square TVs...

in the five, six years after it came out. It was just harder to follow. Right, sure. Super shaky. So a couple themes with this. One, you mentioned earlier about sports movies. The documentary boom hasn't taken off yet. Sports movies still have this outsized impact on how we consume stuff as sports fans. And this is coming off

This really kind of cool, fun era of sports movies where it was like this 3.0 version of For Love of the Game, Any Given Sunday. No, Tin Cup was 96. The Replacements, Mystery Alaska. It's Summer Catch. There was like a cottage industry. All of them were making money. Remember the Titans? I can name like 20 of them. They're all doing really well.

And Friday Night Lights is moving us toward this kind of next iteration of whatever that was. And it's leading to stuff like Moneyball and Win-Win and dramas that also happen to be about sports. And I think by the end of the decade, Friday Night Lights sets the tone for that. So that's one thing. The other thing is it's the rare sports movie where the good guys don't win.

Which has happened like less than 10 times. And it's always infuriating when it happens the first time. But then from a rewatchable standpoint, it's actually great that they don't win. This is a top tier what's aged the best. And obviously, we'll say this, I think, many times throughout the pod, this is based on a book that is about a true story. So you're talking about real history. They didn't win. In fact, in real life, they were eliminated in the semis, right? Not even the championship game.

But still, the drama of building toward—you have the opening expectation. It's not really an underdog story, except for the fact that they're small. We keep hearing that they're small. And so you have that seed of doubt about whether they'll be able to do it. But because of Boobie, because of Coach Gaines, the expectations are so high. And Preacher's like 6'8", 400. Love Preacher. The way he's filmed. Yeah.

The first interview with Preacher where he just does not respond to one question. He's basically Miles Garrett as an 18-year-old. Great stuff. And then you have the fall of Boobie's injury and then the just cratering. This team is completely lost without him. And then they manage to put it together and win and make the playoff. Can't wait to talk about the coin flip. And then they don't.

do it. To come up just short after all of that, it feels right in a way that even though when you're watching a sports movie, you want the team to win. You want to see them hoist the trophy. There's something weirdly to me more satisfying about watching the team lose. I don't know what that says about me or why I like that more, but the pans of Carter celebrating and

the Panthers in a state of abject despondence. But here's the true magic. You get just enough hope sprinkled in. You see Charlie and Donnie Billingsley embrace, right? Like there's hope mixed in with the pain. And then of course we build toward like those ending updates on where everybody went, including the fact that

They won. They won the next season. They had the end of season. They did it. Do you need this after every Ravens season ends badly? This is a slow motion. Maybe that's why I respond on a soul deep level to seeing the team lose at the end. It's one of the best sports movie endings of a game sequence ever. The, the two guys slumped at the one yard line, Billingsley and Winchell, and they keep cutting back to them. And they're just, they look like they've just been in a war and they're so despondent. It's great.

So the history of sports movies where the good guys don't win, at least modern version, last 50 years. Yeah. Bad News Bears and Rockies, same year. Yep. Right. That was the first time that flipped. All the Right Moves is a really good version of this where they messed around in a couple ways. They had the big game early on in the first 40% of the movie. It seems like they won...

For some reason, they don't take the safety. Then the guy fumbles coming out of the goal line, recovered in the end zone in the pouring rain, touchdown. And it's just devastating. And then poor Steph never plays football again. Tin Cup, where now we've had a whole generation of, hey, it was really cool when the good guy didn't win. And Ron Shelton twists it in the ending of Tin Cup. A league of their own, which is earlier than Tin Cup, but...

Now, you could argue if you're a Lori Petty person in that movie, maybe the good guys did win. Right. If you're Tom Hanks, Gina Davis, you weren't. Oh, man. Any Given Sunday and Moneyball are the other two. Great list. I mean, that's a great list. This one is probably, other than Rocky, probably the best one. I would also throw in Friday Night Lights. Season three. Oh. Not winning state.

in season three is just so perfect, but so devastating. And like one of my, when I think back on the series, because of course you have state, you have them winning in season one, despite everything. One of the great memorable images in the history of TV were like what happened at the end of season five. And then we see the ring on Vince's hand and we realized they won. We get, we're bookended by titles, but that anguish in the middle of knowing a certain era of the

Coach Taylor Panthers football had ended like that visual of Tim leaving his cleats. It just like shatters me. It's so good. So good. Well, season three, they won because it wasn't season two. Shout out Landry. It's a hard thing to pull off though, because you have to have a really good movie. Yes. Not to win at the end after I've just spent two hours hoping that the good guys are going to win and they don't.

So one of the reasons we're doing this pod, other than we've been dying to do this movie forever is our guy, Billy Bob Thornton, who's having a Renaissance. The only person who loves land man more than me is probably you. And maybe like two members of Taylor Sheridan's family. And it's a Billy Bob resurgence. It's so much fun watching him in any given Sunday.

basically as the landman guy oh my god i cannot believe it took 20 minutes to mention landman i'm astonished should we should we throw actually let's throw to a break and we're gonna come back we'll talk about billy bob and landman all right we were talking about billy bob before the break first of all best 21st century billy bob movie i think i think hands down i'll give you some other candidates if you want okay

Monsters Ball is probably the highest end. That would be my pick, honestly. Not a rewatchable. Downright unpleasant to revisit. I would say that that will not be on the rewatchables. Great movie, though. Yeah, maybe that's probably the highest end quality movie, and Heath Ledger is amazing in that movie. But this is the most rewatchable. Some people might go with Bad Santa. Not over this. Come on. Intolerable Cruelty. Yeah, sure. Some people would go. Not me.

Um, but this was kind of the peak of that whole run that starts with sling blade. He's got this little 10 year run. He was at that guy forever. Um,

And then all of a sudden, Sling Blade, he's in Armageddon. He's in Simple Plan. Yep. He's in Pushing Tin, which they tried to do a movie about, what should we call it? The Flight Dudes? Mm-hmm. But most important, starts dating Angelina Jolie. And they become a crazy celebrity couple. They give crazy interviews. They're wearing blood around each other's neck. And at some point, it feels like this is dammit. Vial of blood necklace. I remember it well. Yeah. Yeah.

They had the interview where they just said they had sex in the limo and the way they wore it. So, and at some point it was like, this guy might be insane, but he rallies back and it all culminates in him playing a coach games.

He had multiple Oscar nominations for Sling Blade and that run of not only getting nominated for adapted screenplay, but getting acting nominations a couple times. Yeah, establishing himself as a fascinating not only performer, but celebrity, like you're saying, because of the Angelina Jolie relationship. I have a pretty vivid memory of being a young person seeing the blood necklaces and thinking, what is going on with these people? This is like...

and almost magnetic, but also kind of actively alarming. He's just incredibly capable and talented and interesting performer. I was really excited when he was in Fargo. That was like a fun, just getting into the era of Billy Bob on TV. I didn't watch, I didn't, were you a Goliath person? I didn't watch Goliath, but I know people really liked his performance in that. And now having him back in our lives, not just occasionally, but weekly on Landman. The best version of Billy Bob. Yeah.

Is the gift of the year. I mean, this show is so entertaining. My favorite weekly tradition is to text you and Chris and Jeff like a random time period. I believe this Saturday was 10 and 10 hours and 36 minutes until land. And I'm just like waiting to boot up the app on a Saturday night because I have a thriving social life and a lot going on. And he's just amazing.

It's not only a great performance and him and Allie Larder together, the Tommy and Angela characters, it's just magic. It's absolute magic. But seeing him back in Texas, it does put you in a Coach Gaines, Friday Night Lights headspace. Though I would say like the Tommy Norris character is much more overtly Texan to me than his Friday Night Lights, Coach Gaines role.

I don't know. I don't know if you feel that way about it. It's the same kind of thing where there's chaos going all around him. He's trying to solve problems, right? He's doing a little more subtle with his coach gains. Lane Man, he's a little more... Total, yeah. Fixer. A little more of a character and probably a little bit of a darker side. But they definitely seem like they're brothers, at least. But he's somebody I've always just really liked. And if you kind of catch him in the right role in the right movie, whatever...

You just think he's one of the best actors on the planet. He's really good in this. He pulls it back. There's some fun scenes, like with him in the boosters, with the way he plays it, where there's a, we really need to win this week. And he's like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I gotcha. I love that moment where they charge into his office unprompted. They're like, we've just got some thoughts on the defense. Yeah. He just, he kind of knows what he has to do, but I think this is his,

Yeah. Monster ball was really great. Yeah. That's just never want to, I've only seen it twice. I saw it once in the theater.

And then once a couple years later, and it's just, it is not a fun movie. It's upsetting. It's an upsetting movie. So Friday Night Lights is probably the last of the long list. This movie had breakout moments for a lot of people, though. Peter Berg. Yep. Who had directed two movies, but this was the one that really catapulted him. Plus, he ended up putting together the TV show, which you can read about on a great old website called Grantland. I think it was...

month two of grantland we did a long oral history robert mays did it was his first big assignment and uh and he got everybody yeah it was the early 2010s were unusual you could be like i'm doing an oral history and you literally get everyone in the movie and everybody who is behind it now you get like three people but uh so peterberg this launches him

And by the end of the decade, he was a big enough star that he was one of the first two directors we got for 30 for 30. And from a credibility standpoint, it was a huge deal with other filmmakers. It was like we had Barry Levinson, we had Peter Berg. Oh, so you guys are for real. It was one of those. So I'll always be grateful for that. Explosions in the sky. Incredible. Incredible. Them and Tangerine Dream in the finals for movie scores. Yeah.

You hear those electric chords.

Yeah. And it just makes you want to charge onto the field. It's like, ah, it gives you like goosebumps. It does. Yeah. That's if any great movie score does that, right? It not only like gives you that kind of tingle in your spine and the goosebumps on your skin, but it pulls you right back into that very specific setting. And this score really, really does that. And I love the way that the movie and the television scores are like in conversation with each other. They're so similar, but also specific and slightly distinct. Yeah.

I can't wait to talk to producer Craig about this movie. Um, at the end of the pod, he's never seen the movie of the TV show. I don't know what his history is with explosions in the sky. Um, but I feel like in the social media era, it's probably, you're probably aware of it in some way with some of the clips, but so anyway, big win for those guys. Yeah. The cast, Derek, Luke, Garrett, Headland, Jay Hernandez, Lucas black. They're all really good. And they all went on to do stuff. Um,

And I think the casting in this movie in general, I had a lot of trouble with, oh, what would I do if I could recast a part? I don't know. Garrett Hedlund as basically Riggins. Oh, yeah. In the TV show, he becomes Riggins. Yep. Versus the actual Riggins. Who do you have? Oh, I mean, come on. Is that a joke? I just want to make sure. I just want to make sure. I love Garrett Hedlund. I actually think... I think...

I think Donnie Billingsley is like quietly my favorite character. I really, really like. Unquestionably is my favorite. Yeah, I really like that character. And obviously the Tim McGraw performances as his father is just tremendous. But Taylor Kitsch's Tim Riggins is like a Mount Rushmore TV character. He's untouchable. All right, I just want to make sure.

No question. Liz Kelly, Craig's wife has Garrett Hedlund pieces. We did country strong once on the rewatchables cause it's her favorite movie. Great. I owe it to her. She's been important person for the ringer. Uh, but Garrett Hedlund, that was probably his, uh, his peak. I was liked him as an actor. I always really liked Lucas black. He ended up in, uh, one of the fastest movies. I think Tokyo drift. Jay Hernandez has had like a long TV career. And then, uh,

Derek Luke, who was the oldest of all of them, he's been a bunch of stuff too. Tim McGraw as an actor, wasn't ready for that. He's like unbelievable. He's really good. I mean, we could just go right back to talking about Taylor Sheridan shows now because his starring role in 1883 is like one of the best Sheridan-verse performances to date. It's amazing. Genuinely amazing. What was your favorite out of all of them? 1883 or 1923? 1923. Yeah. I mean, obviously now Landman is...

is just, I think, operating on another plane of existence. But of the Yellowstone shows, 1923 is really, really, really great. I'm so excited for season two of that. I like that one. I can't wait. They're all great.

And then Connie Britton, who's barely in this. And I have a specific spot later in the podcast to discuss this. Okay. Playing Coach's wife. Yeah. Different actor as her husband. She barely has any lines. Her hairdo is different. Yeah.

And not really a lot of correlation to the TV series where she becomes one of the great mom-wife characters in the history of television. You never would have guessed it from this movie. I also have more thoughts coming up on another category. We'll save thoughts on that. So, oh, I messed up the Buzz Bissinger. The book came out in 1990. The team he follows, 1988. He was also cousins with Pete Berg, which is part of how this all happened. So $30 million budget.

Made 62 million. Did well. Didn't do amazing. But I think a lot of people saw it and then it led to the TV series eventually. Our guy Raj. Yeah. Three and a half stars. He loves story. He loves characters. Love story. Yeah. The movie demonstrates the power of sports to involve us. We don't live in Odessa and are watching a game played 16 years ago and we get all wound up.

You're goddamn right, Roger Ebert. I have no notes on that review from Roger. That's exactly what happened. Great job, Ezra. Dead on. Now it's time for the most rewatchable scene brought to you by Den of Thieves 2 Pantera. The original had everything you could want from an action heist movie. And now, Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr. are back. And this time, Gerard's character wants in on the heist. That's right. Big Nick is back. And this time,

That's right. The cop goes gangster. See Den of Thieves 2, Pantera, only in theaters January 10th. I just saw you wipe your nose. Are you sick? No, I just have some allergies, I think. The air quality here. How many times are you sick in 2024?

Two. I had COVID for the first time. I got really sick at South by in March. I came back. I was quite sick from that trip. And then I got COVID for the first time during the house of the dragon run. Okay. Back to most rewatchable scene. I really liked the opening credits. Just going to mention that first day of practice with the camera crews. Yes.

Where we get Don's dad coming down to yell at him, throw him down, and completely embarrass him in front of a bunch of people. And then we also get Billy Bob. And make no mistake about it, gentlemen. We are in the business of protecting this town. We're in the business of winning. The expectations couldn't be any higher. We will win state. We will win state. Can you be perfect?

Can you be perfect? And you're like, wow, he's not going to top that speech in the movie. And then he fucking blows by it much later in the movie. But I love this whole, like the camera crews and you just get a feeling for the stakes. It's very well done. Yeah. The opening stretch of the movie is amazing. Like you mentioned the opening credits. I love, again, the montage nature of that stretch, not only because we're getting like the classic, you know, slam and Sammy radio calls. You're, you're establishing the relationship between the community and the team. You're getting like little nuggets of,

$60,000 salary for coach gains. And should the money be going elsewhere in the school? And wait, isn't the team part of the school? Like it's a, it's a perfect tonal setup. And then you're meeting some of the kids. Like you get to see Winchell with his mom and you get to see boobie training. They walk into the stadium for practice and you see the list of all the state championships. The team has won before. So you understand without a single conversation, like what the expectations would be for this team in this place. It's just like perfect tonally. And,

And I love, too, in the locker room, the player dynamics, like the teammate dynamics are established so quickly.

You have Boobie and Comer talking about Adidas versus Nike. You have like the little bit of tension between Boobie and Billingsley. All of that is like before you get to like you're saying the Billingsley family fighting on the field and cutting back and forth between all of the interviews and like seeing what the players think of each other. You really need that to understand what the dynamics are on the team. So it's a great opening.

I'm also always a fan of the big board of the position players. Yes. The coach moving stuff. And then at the end of the movie, you know, he's going to be like, all right, I'm going to take that guy down. Pulling the nameplates away. Sad. The first game where we get some incredible music leading up to it, we get another excellent Billy Bob speech. And unfortunately...

Boobie gets hurt up 42-7. Brutal. Because fucking Chris Comer, that loser, couldn't find his helmet. Terrible. Tough one. A scene that has been ripped off. I'll say it. I love Varsity Blues. We've done on the rewatchables, but they rip it off with the Lance Harbor injury. Even though it's five years before this movie. And then the Friday Night Lights TV show. First episode. Straight. They flip it with Jason Street, the quarterback, and

And they take it to the nth degree in a much, much darker, darker way to go. Sorry, Craig. Spoiler alert. Next scene. Billy Bob tells Winchell that he has to step up. Yes. I like a little coach kicking the QB, hey, I really need you. And he gives him the whole speech with the end. If you decide to accept that, you're going to seriously fly, son. The thing that I love best about that scene, first of all, you have the little...

right? You get these vignettes with Mike. You have like the pull and shoot sequence with the players. So they're bonding. It's actually like a kind of rare, just slice of life, them hanging out outside of practice or a game. Then you have the practice yelling interview mashup sequence. Then you have that quick little payphone sequence where we understand that there are other people in the family who are not there taking care of his mom. Like he's like, cause your mom too, right? He's alone. And then we build to that coach gains visit. The thing I love best in that scene is Mike,

Mike is holding like a toy car. He's holding like a little Hot Wheel or something. And it's this great little touch to just remind us that these are kids. Like you had them saying, I don't feel 17 when they were out there in the pickup truck. But then, you know, the childhood bedroom, the toy in your hand, it's like, yeah, you have the burden and the pressure of an entire town on your shoulders, but you're like a child. And I love the little detail like that. Yeah, it's a good point.

Chris Comer's breakout game leading into the let's go montage for the season. You always need that in a good sports movie. Here comes Chris Comer. Oh my God. I didn't realize he had it in him. This is emotional. Don's dad throws his ring out of the car. Unbelievable scene. Splitting with Billy Bob talking to Winchell again about curses. Yep. He has a couple of great quotes.

There ain't much difference between winning and losing except for how the outside world treats you. I like it. Great one. I believe that our only curses are the ones that are self-imposed. You know what I'm saying? We, all of us, dig our own holes. I agree. And as this is going on, Don's dad is just losing the backseat and whips the ring out. You know what that is? You know what that is? That's a state championship. I want a state championship. Just touch it.

Can you touch that? Can you touch that? What the hell are you doing? And poor Billingsley is just so upset. Now he's searching for the ring. For a second, it feels like it's going to be, what's that movie when the girl's head gets chopped off? We did on the hereditary. He's pulled outside the road. I'm like, oh my God, is this hereditary going to happen again? But we don't realize that he actually found the ring. They do a nice little...

Save the moment for later. That morning after conversation is fantastic when he plops the ring down and just that line from his dad who is like,

An alcoholic and an abusive father. And the movie, I think, clearly is holding multiple truths in its mind at once, right? And this is part of why this is, like, an interesting thing to continue to explore. There's a critique of, like, the characters like Charlie Billingsley who say this is the only thing you're ever going to have. Like, it is forever. It carries you forever. Or the guy who comes up to Winchell at the burger joint. It's like, can you take a picture with my baby? Yeah. This is it. It's just babies and memories after this. Yeah.

There's a little bit of judgment of that, right? The idea that this is your 17th year, your senior year of high school, your last year fighting for state is as good as it's ever going to get. But then also there is an embrace of how important that is at the same time. And so that Charlie Donnie sequence in the car and then that next morning really captures that. Because it's not like they hug at the end of that. Donnie's crying and he plops the ring down and he charges out. So all of that is in there in that sequence, which I love.

Yeah. That scene has, he gives their dad the ring back. Boobie watches the garbage collectors. Yeah. Boobie packs up the locker room and then Boobie gets in the car and cries. And that's all. How many times did you cry during the rewatch? Uh, no, actually not really that much. Weirdly, maybe just because I'm so familiar with the beats of the story. No tears left. Exactly. You'd say about your tears for round two in the NFL playoffs. All right. Come on. Um,

The coin tossing you wanted to talk about, because that's a really good scene too. And it just shows how stupid Texas football is.

It's like, yeah, we're going to do a coin toss. It's just insane. Like, it's just crazy. I mean, I want to talk about it in a picking nits, though it's hard to say picking nits from a story perspective because it is based on how it actually happens. Undisclosed trucker location. It's just so bizarre that something so consequential would be decided in that way. And then even like building, it's less inane than the coin toss deciding which of the two of the three teams in the tie go. But just like...

let's have a conversation about where we want to play the game instead of that being predetermined is so bizarre. Right. Imagine. And that's the only time the book really, really, really dove into the race stuff in this town. Yeah. And one of the only ways they would let Peter Berg and the film crew even use some of the stuff that,

In that town was it was like, hey, you're going to make a sports movie or are you going to dive into all this other stuff? Because it was such a big piece. The coin, the where do we play the game was the only real time they dive into like, are the what are we going to have? Are we going to wait? We're at Splatcraft. So we have a mix of both. And that scene dives into it the most. But for the most part, they stay away. Yeah, there's a little Don Billingsley boobie. Yeah. And there's like the booster dinner early in the movie. There's like a lot of room.

Yeah, true. Racism in that scene. But in terms of it actually being like the core text of a stretch of the film, yeah, picking where the game is going to be and talking about who the officiating crew is going to be is an outlier in the film compared to how prominent that is as a focus in the book. Next scene I have, everyone gets on the bus for the Astrodome.

boobie shows up on crutches yep explosions in the sky it's like hold my beer let us get back in i have that as kid cuddy pursuit of happiness where best needle drop you can pick like five different spots but this is probably the best one uh heading the first game shots everyone on the bus i feel like this is the tv series i think was the most influenced by this sequence

Where they were like, hey, as long as we have like this kind of scene every couple episodes, we're good. Yeah. Yeah. It is the tradition in the show, not only of the team bus, but then checking in with everybody else who is driving to a game. Yeah. And the fun, surprising pairings that you get, you know, like Tyra picking up Grandma Saracen, who is currently just thriving as Ethel on Landman. Yeah.

That's a great point. We should have mentioned that sooner. Spoiler alert for the most recent episode of Landman. For anyone who's not current, this has nothing to do with the story, so it's out of context. But Ethel sitting in her old age home saying, just once more before I die, I want a dick in my face.

And Allie Larner not being surprised to hear that at all. She's like, I get it. Everyone needs to redo their year endless. That is like the best TV moment of the year. That was the best quote of the show. All right, so we have the game. Yep. I'm going to skip to halftime. Preacher gets pissed. They're building the whole year. He finally gets mad, goes nuts, gives his speech. And then Billy Bob's like, hold my beer. Yeah. Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there.

It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship to yourself and your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn't let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is that you did everything that you could. There wasn't one more thing that you could have done. Can you live in that moment as best you can with clear eyes and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that, gentlemen...

then you're perfect. And he does his big speech, which apparently was improvised the night before. Great nugget. They had it written differently and then he was just, something had happened to him in his personal life. So many good stuff in this, but

Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn't let them down because you told them the truth. You and I have had, we've said this to each other for a long time. I want you to take a moment. I want you to look each other in the eyes, put each other in your hearts forever. He's just running, running on. I want you to think about Boobie Miles. He's your brother. He's right there. His eyes are rolling up. And then boys, my heart is full. My heart is full. If you're going Kyle Chandler versus Billy Bob,

This makes it tough to not make a Billy Bob case. I strongly disagree. With respect for this movie and respect for this podcast, it's just not close. And frankly... Why? Tell me why. Well, you just love Kyle Chandler. Well, he's like one of the five sexiest people who's ever lived. You gotta strip that apart. Come on. You know I love Eric Taylor's sad eyes. They're both great. But I... Okay, here's my actual case.

I have two main points here. One, the fact that the ingredients for clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose are present here. Like clear eyes and love in your heart with joy in your heart. It's clearly the cornerstones, the foundation on which clear eyes, full hearts will be built.

But Gaines doesn't put it together? Exactly. It's like you have, and now I think I'll acknowledge that this is one of those things where like you can't not think about the thing you've seen subsequently when you return to the film. It's not like that's in your mind in 2004 because it hasn't happened yet. But now going back, I think that the Coach Taylor locker room speeches are

like their own genre of magic. They're the thing that people would point to if you were talking about like a great speech from a coach. But here's the other thing then. This is the only good Coach Gaines speech in the movie. And that's a, I think that's a problem. He has the one on the first day of practice. But, but,

But the messages, I think, in the speech, like this actually feels like this is Coach Taylor right here. These are the ingredients that they're going to build Coach Taylor around. But this isn't really Coach Gaines the entire time. You have, like you mentioned, that great line about winning and losing and what really are the differences. But I'm tipping my hand a little bit for a take I have coming later. But like a lot of the things that Coach Gaines says to the team, I

I think are like of a different variety. And my assumption for why that is is because you're building dramatic tension in the film for how

necessary this feels at halftime of the championship game as like a balm, the players need it. They need some sort of healing little ray of hope from the coach. They need to understand not only that he believes in them, but that it's okay. That it's okay if they lose, which they will. But this isn't really his energy throughout the whole movie. Like he's the guy pulling his players to the sidelines saying, are you the village idiot?

So it is Coach Taylor all the time. It's only Coach Gaines in the climax, and I think that tips it forever to Coach Taylor. Sorry.

I'm not even going to argue with you about this. The big comeback. Oh, by the way, this whole from halftime on is my most rewatchable. This is just, if this was on TV and I'm watching. That's great. 81 Trojan horse. The big comeback. We get a shady fourth down pass leads to the TD. We get a, when it bounces and the refs screw him on it. Yeah. We had a kickoff return TD. Oh, there's hope. We get Chavez with the pick six and,

We get the Philly special. I guess it wasn't pick six because it sets up the Philly special to Winchell. Yeah. And then we get a huge fourth down stop from the undersized tiny team leading to I right wiggle 34 switchblade for the state championship. They put switchblade in there. Yeah. Flag in the play. Classic swerve. We've seen this in a couple sports movies. They got to run the amazing last play again. Fall yard short.

Everyone cries. Everyone's despondent. So good. But Don's dad is finally proud of Don. Hugs him. Beautiful. They do this exact same thing with Saracen in the show where he's running and you think initially from the angle that he crossed the plane and then you realize he came up just short. It's so good. It's like they couldn't resist doing it again. The sequence right before that final Winchell play, the Billingsley run,

I mean, this is like unrivaled in terms of its inanity that you don't even care is a name. Like he's dislocated his shoulder. Right. And he gets hit by nine guys. He has fumbled all year long. Like one of the through lines of the movie is that he cannot hold onto the ball. And so you know, before it even happens that his big moment will be holding onto the ball when it counts and

as they pop his shoulder back into place and then that like hold that holding call coming in and running it back is so genius because it gives you both things it gives you that i did it like i crossed the threshold moment for billingsley but still puts the team in dire peril which is just like exactly where you need it to be it's great it's great

So you have the game? The ending? Yeah. I think it's either... Oh, it's tough. It's either halftime and the second half of the game, or I do really like the Billingsley family car scene. That's great. I think the only things that you didn't have that I would even put in the consideration list are the first scene at the burger joint. That's great. And that's the kind of stuff that is constant in the show, again, just in the community. And I think that...

The inner cutting of the booster dinner and the party, I really love that stretch. I mean, the beginning of the movie is just so good. But yeah, it's got to be halftime in the second half of the game. It kind of has to be. That was the most rewatchable scene brought to you by Den of Thieves 2 Pantera. What happens when a cop wants in on an impossible heist? Action, suspense, and a whole lot of chaos. See Den of Thieves 2 Pantera only in theaters January 10th. So...

What's the most 2004 thing about this movie? I'm going to give you the two things in the finals. Okay. The Astrodome. Yeah. Or the football hits. Yeah. This was like right near the end of the Tom Jackson screaming jacked up after they show the top five guys getting knocked unconscious. This is the EA Sports Madden, like just people getting crushed.

And you actually watch this when you've seen this movie a couple of times. There's like 45 borderline beheadings. Oh, my God. Or clotheslines where it just seems like people are going to be carried off left and right. Yeah. And I just don't think they would make a movie that way now. Interesting. Yeah. I think you're right. It's the combination of it being set in 88 and released in 04. That's like a very rich text. Varsity Blues has it too. Varsity Blues has a lot of like jacked up stuff.

What's aged the best? The football scenes are really good. I would say like nine out of 10. They're about longest yard is still my favorite for football scenes, but this is way up there. I think he, uh, Peter Berg did a great job. He took it really seriously. They did some cheat stuff where they actually filmed real games and then they tried to match the uniforms to the stuff in the game. So it looked great. Like really all of it was super savvy.

Uh, the giant home of the Permian Panthers sign with all you mentioned earlier with the years that they won. I love those movies. What do you have for what stage the best? Cause I have a bunch. Let's see. I mean, you know, just obviously broadly at the most macro level, high school football is a religious text in, in, uh, in a Texas story. I mean, it's tough to top. And I think the combo of like, again, slam and Sammy and, and Ratliff stadium, which is where the team actually plays, uh,

capturing that pressure on the players and the fact that they're like, they're gods, they're heroes, but they're also these just kids who are crumbling under the weight of expectations. I love that. I don't feel 17 line. And that like longing, but also tragedy of the idea that like it's 17 is the best it's ever going to get. That's, that's broadly my winner. Wait, hold on. Can we stay on that for a second? Please. Cause that's, I should have hit that harder at the top of the, it's obviously the theme of the movie. It's also a really good theme for a movie that, that,

This is, this is it. It's never going to get better than right here. And we've seen it in some sports movies. And they usually have the character, um, who was, is now in their thirties and has two kids and was on the champion. They always love that. It never really worked. That guy never becomes like, Oh, he's now a state Senator.

Or, oh, now he owns a couple businesses. Things have worked out great. It's always like he's just kind of looking longingly at these 17-year-olds. Like, oh, man, that really was the peak of my life. But even like movies, like Dazed and Confused, it was a theme for that movie too. Like, this is kind of it. Yeah. For Randy Floyd. Well, and the thing that's so potent about it in this movie

not just this movie, but the show, like a story like this is that it's supposed to be true for the kids. Like it's supposed to be a thing that they're thinking about it, but it's also like, it's, it's not just internal. It's really external. Yeah. They're constantly being reminded that how,

other people feel is also on them. It's not just about like securing their own happiness and their own memories. It's that like they have the burden of ensuring that an entire town feels like it has purpose and like fulfillment. And what would that feel like ever, let alone when you're

And you're thinking about whether like your mom is okay at home taking her pills. That's just a very dramatically compelling. And that's the thing ultimately where like having, like you said earlier, more room in a season of TV than in a movie. Like that is the thing specifically that they were able to mine. And I think a depth that you just definitely can't do in two hours, but still like tonally they're able to establish it very effectively here. Yeah.

All the Right Moves, which came out in 83. Yep. And that was the first time I'd really seen something dive into that in that way where it was like, this team, we've never beaten these guys. We haven't beaten them in eight years. If you beat these guys, you're a mortar on this town. And oh, by the way, when you graduate high school, if you don't go to college, there's your job. Your uncle's, your dad, you're going to be working at that mill right there. So it's never, ever going to get better than this right now.

I don't know. It's a, it's a good sports movie theme. We've seen it over and over again. We've mentioned the quick cut filmmaking. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. You had more. We've hit a lot of mine. Tim McGraw, actor. It's just sensational. James Dutton, great character. Tension on the team. You know, I think I actually wish there were more of this. We get a little bit of that. It is for sure. Yeah. Cause like you built, you pick up right with the,

the boobie billingsley tension with smash and riggins like immediately in the in the pilot of the show um so it would be it would be fun if there were more time for that but that's obviously important because then it builds towards a great little moment where you know boobie gives donnie his nameplate and he's like i i think it's gonna be worth a lot of money and you're waiting for donnie to tell him to fuck off and he's like i bet it will and your heart just melts it's like

great. You know, a team overcoming adversity and then that team coming up short, like we talked about already, it's just absolutely magical. Meddling boosters is something we've also already hit, but is a definite what's aged the best. I mean, that is just tremendous. Montages. Okay, you know what else? Dallas Carter's approach, and to be clear, not

the ineligible player that led to their championship and season being vacated in real life, but they never punt. They never kick. They go for it on fourth. They go for two. This is like a great modern analytically driven approach. I really, I got a kick out of revisiting that. That's funny. I, I had a couple more Lee Jackson played preacher. Yep. Only IMDB credit ever. Never in anything else.

He was a university of Texas linebacker from 98 to 2002. Then speaking of IMDB, Billy Bob and Lucas black, they were together in sling blade. Yeah. So they had the connection from that. They were also in all the pretty horses. Uh, what's actually best for me. I love when it goes badly for the coach and he, he gets back home and there's all the for sale signs. Incredible. Front lawn. It works. They did it all the right moves too. It always works.

I like Coach Gaines and Preacher. How is it out there? They're fast. They're big. They're dirty. Plus, they're fast. You said that already. You said that already. Yeah. And then you mentioned the guy at the diner or the outdoor or wherever they were, the guy with the baby. Take a picture. And he goes, don't waste a second of it before you know it's done. Nothing but babies and memories. Great.

Babies and memories. So good. Good name for a sports bar. I like boobies MRI when, uh, when he's distrustful of the guy from Midland too. I just thought that was accurate. Anyway.

The Fortune 3 Clap Award for Most Giffable Moment, I think, is also the Great Shot Coder Award for Most Cinematic Shot. Okay. Don and Mike slumped over the one-yard line. Yeah. Just like complete despondence, despair. Great one. I took a picture of it, and I'm going to mail it to you after the Ravens get eliminated in round two. Thanks. Probably like a week later, though. That's great. A week later. That's kind. Depending on how many points you have. I appreciate it. Yeah. They're drenched in blood. Hopefully, I won't be. But...

The proper response is your team's not in the playoffs. You could have just said that back to me. Your team is 3-13. Unlike you, I'm not a heartless monster. Also, you're going to get too good of a draft pick for me to be rude to you right now. I can't believe you guys get to rebuild like this. It's maddening. Assuming our dumbass team doesn't beat Buffalo. The Den of Thieves Benihana Award for Scene Stealing Location.

Would you go Astrodome? The Astrodome, just an incredibly important sports movie location. I'm going Undisclosed Truck Stop for the coin toss. Oh, that's a great choice. I love it. It's just so funny to me that they're like, we can't tell you where we are. And then there are visible signs everywhere. What's going to happen? What are people going to show up there? What's going to happen? I guess.

Big Kahuna burger where it best used food and drink. Probably Mike's burger in the beginning because it made me hungry. Okay. When the guy comes over and he's eating that burger. He is. He's housing it. It looks like a nice little Texas cheeseburger. What do you have? All right. I have two other candidates for you. One would be the car chocolate milk cartons and breakfast burritos in front of the 7-Eleven. And then the cop pulls up and he's like, you're going to win state. But I think this is actually the winner. Okay. The foundation on which the rally girl plot lines and Friday night lights were built.

Karen's Rice Krispie model of Billingsley. Oh, that's great. That's got to be the winner. Well, we only get to do this category when you're on the podcast. Oh. The Mallory Rubin Award for Did This Movie Need a Better Sex Scene? This is a movie where a very fanatical fan of the team gets Winchell in a laundry room and has sex with him.

Yeah. Kind of bullies them into it. I don't know. I don't know if you would have gone further. Is there a different sex scene? What's the move? Thanks for asking. So no question. This movie needs a better sex scene. Could it have been opening earlier on the Mike Melissa sex scene instead of just cutting to Lucas Black panting into the bathroom mirror? Maybe. Uh,

Could it have been seeing how Donnie rewarded Karen for the Rice Krispie Treat model? Possibly. Could it have been seeing what Flippy and Charlie Billingsley were up to before Maria and Donnie came home and started to fuck on the couch? How'd she earn her name Flippy, Bill? I'd like to know. Could it be Preacher Man taking someone to church? It could be any of those, but it's not. Here's the actual pick.

It's Coach Gaines and his wife, Sharon. We need a sex scene between the Gaineses because...

Those moments between Eric and Tammy in the television show are such an essential part of why when people talk about that show, they're like, yeah, it's a great sports show. It's a great high school drama. What it really is is like the best portrayal of a marriage in the history of TV. And you get just none of that in the movie. You have like the little moment in the parking lot where they run into the boosters. You have the cute little like kissing through the chain link fence after the loss scene.

We need to see these two in bed together. We get the lip point thing. We do. We get the lip point. We need to see them in bed together cuddling. Because when she sits down and he's watching tape and he's prepping for the Carter game and she's like, let's move to Alaska, you get that little glimpse of what their domestic life is like. She's waiting by the for sale signs on the porch when he gets home. We need to be in bed with them. Have to have it. It's just got to be in there. If they made the movie again, we'd have that, I think, no doubt.

So I had that in what's age the worst, how they, I wrote the coach wife marriage. They just punted on it. Yeah. Where was the Connie Britton heat check scene? So you're saying you'd even go further and have the sex scene. So in the oral history we did at Grandland, Peter Berg's talking about how he's trying to convince Connie Britton to be in the TV show. And this is what he said. Connie Britton's role in the movie was sort of pretty wife clapping in the stands, which is about the shittiest job an actress can have.

At least Talia Shire got to own a pet store and go ice skating with Rocky. So then Connie Britton said, Pete got in touch with them. Why don't you play this part? I was like, no way. The only thing worse than playing a nothing part in a movie is playing it for years and years on TV. So Pete Berg said, she said I was out of my mind. I told her, I promise we'll create a character. We'll give you a job. We'll give you dimension. We'll give you a real voice.

And they did. And she became one of the best characters. The marriage was fantastic. And it was the key to the show. You would never know that from this movie that that was going to happen. I don't think there's any question. Sometimes we rip off like 15, what's age the worst. And it's like, Ooh, toss up. I don't think there's any question that it's this.

Keeping Coach Taylor's wife on the bench for a two-hour movie and just not even running a play for her. Because even when you watch it the first time, you're kind of like, this is a nothing part and a nothing character. This is just sort of weird. Just to establish that he has a loving wife and support at home and a family where if the town runs them out and the kids are like, do we have to move again? There's some sort of direct personal consequence. That's it. That's the only reason to have them in the movie at all. Yeah.

So the first time you see it, you're like, eh. But...

Coming back to the movie after Tammy Taylor has blown us away for five seasons, it's one of the best performances ever on TV. And like you said, one of the most memorable characters. This is just kind of unforgivable. It's really damning. It really is. But you know what? This is a sports movie issue over and over again with girlfriends and wives. If they didn't really know what to do with them, they just kind of put them on the side and they cut to them during a big game. Yeah. You're leading me to...

That easily could have been for me, the Butch's girlfriend award for weak link in the film. Yeah. But that's not what I had. Okay. I combined it with the Vincent chase award for, are we sure this character was actually good at his job? I have a feeling you have some thoughts on this as well. Coach Gaines, maybe just a bad coach. This is my hottest take, but maybe it's not that hot. So I just stuff I wrote down. You might have more first day of practices. Yeah.

Let's just starting fullback. Just get the shit beaten out of him on his, on the field by his dad. Crazy being the dad from practice. Yeah. Ludicrous guys abusing your starting fullback. Uh, first game. If Chris Comer was the backup to the backup and he couldn't find his helmet when you're at 42, seven with 90 seconds left,

Maybe put in the second string running back. You have a giant Texas football team. This drives me crazy. This drives me crazy. Put in Wilson, the second stringer. Put in Billingsley. You're 35. Call timeout. Anything other than putting Boobie back in. Anything. And we should say, like, I don't know if you want to talk about this elsewhere, but this is not how Boobie got hurt in real life. He got hurt in a preseason scrimmage. His leg getting trapped in the turf. This is movie only. Movie only.

Then after the game, he tells the team Boobie's fine. This is like, I wrote this in all caps in my outline. Lying to the team in this situation is deranged. Boobie's going to be fine. Boobie's going to be fine. He'll be back in a week. What is the point of telling this lie? What is the point of this? This is like, I can't wrap my mind around this. This is deranged. This is pathological. Why doesn't he try to find any information about Boobie's knee from that point on? Crazy. Crazy. Hey,

You're the most powerful guy in town. You're the football coach. You have all these boosters. You don't have one medical booster. There's not one person who'd be like, hey, something's going on with Boobie's knee. We got to get the best doctor possible. Is there somebody we can fly in? Right. We got to get an MRI immediately. He's acting like Boobie had COVID or something. Is Boobie's COVID done yet? No, we don't know yet. Maybe one more day. It's like...

fucking knee this guy's going to college next year where are the scouts calling finding out more about boobies knee the movie just kind of yeah i guess they only had two hours the this this drives me crazy because like again a movie i love but this just doesn't make sense and it's also like we have the scene before he lies to the team but after the injury where like the team doctor one of the assistants is like it's definitely like a tear so he knows and

And yet he's content to let Boobie and LV lie to him multiple times when they're like, yeah, we're fine. Put your brace on. We're fine. Yeah, put your brace on. Let's try it in game six. Why is he not insisting that he has surgery for

for the good of his life. Because we get that little scene early in the movie where it's Coach and his wife Sharon and LV and Boobie. It is the four of them having a family dinner and he's like, everything that happens to you this year you deserve. That is there to tell us one thing, that he genuinely cares about this kid and that there's a closeness between these families that transcends whatever happens on the field. And

And then he doesn't back up any of it. And then he's giving the speeches to like Winchell about like trying to get trying to get elevate those guys. And it's like you just like sent boobie out in the side. But my guess is this was probably based on some real life stuff. And I haven't read the book in a while, but I'm sure, you know, bizarre. I don't know why it took an extra game to start airing it out with Mike Winchell. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

I don't know why he didn't play preacher at tight end, at least on like third and short preachers, six, eight, 490 pounds. And was miles Garrett just like maybe, maybe have two plays on offense. It's high school. The best guys play both ways. I don't understand why he didn't have more info on boobies need before he throws them in, in the last game, doesn't play him for three and a half quarters, brings them in and then immediately runs two sweeps on him where he's clearly hurting. The first sweep is like, we're running back. What could go wrong? Deranged. Um,

And then you mentioned earlier the Billingsley. So my fullback has a separated shoulder. Here's my idea for a trick play against a much bigger Dallas Carter team. Surprise handoff and just try to knock off nine of these guys with your injured shoulder. That was his trick play. And I love the way that they, when they caught to him, when they're popping Donnie shoulder back in and he's like nodding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What other coach games, nitpicks did you have? Well, you hit almost all of them. I think there's like a lot of Mike stuff and just how he's coaching Winchell that puts him into the actually is in the, again, with respect to the real coach, like in the fixture fictional portrayal, like, are we sure he's a good coach camp? Everybody after the booby injury is like you designed your entire offense and your entire team around one player.

You didn't get anyone else ready to really have to carry the load. And then the way he's coaching up Mike is by calling him a village idiot in game two. When Mike is crying and saying, my mind's not right and he clearly needs help, we do get the touching exchange, as you noted, but we also get him – we get Coach Gaines saying, your mom, you know, you're going to have to leave her. Yeah.

you're gonna have to leave her. It's like, what? This is your advice for this kid who is just like falling apart in front of you? I also think on the are we sure he's a good coach front, it is bizarre. And this would be for the whole coaching staff, not just the head coach. It is insane and bizarre to me that they seem astonished that their third string running back, third string running back on a

potential favorite to win state in Texas is a star. And they're like astonished that he's got speed and can run. It's just, I had that as a nitpick later, but it felt appropriate to hit it here. Just bizarre. And he's like downright hysterical during the Midland halftime rant, which again is part of why I have to take him down below coach Taylor for like the quality of the, the pep talks. It's just not, it's just not the same. It's just not the same.

So you had that as weakest link. That was my hottest take. My weakest link is not establishing other high school students in the movie. Again, I acknowledge that there's no room for that. Yeah, you got that 20 minutes. Yeah, but the thing that makes Friday Night Lights the show magical is really like...

The Landrys, with respect to his future career as a kicker. The Julies, the Tyras, the Lylas, the Beckys. It helps make these characters real people and their lives feel full. And it also helps make it a high school story, not just a sports story. I see what you're doing. You need it. You need it. No, I see what you're doing.

You're worried as the years pass, the movie is going to start grabbing real estate from the TV show. So you're doing some subtle, just so everybody knows, don't touch the goat over here. Yeah, the movie's aging great, but just be careful. There's room for both. There's room for both.

What's aged the worst? Anytime I see based on a true story, it's like, all right, here we go. Okay. Interesting. Based on a true story just means, hey, some of this stuff might have happened and then we're going to take a lot of liberties. They actually stay pretty close to the true story in this one. Connie Britton's hair. It's the 80s though. So let's set an 88. Doesn't it feel like 80s appropriate hair? I get it. But I know it totally does. It totally does.

But I just am watching her like, oh man, I just can't wait till she's coach Taylor's wife with a more modern hairdo. Man, this one really bugs me. Derek Luke was 30 years old during the filming. Yeah. He's great though, but he's great. He's great. He's fantastic. His boobie. Putting in the Andrea Zuckerman role. If you're in your thirties, you can't play a high school kid. Just a rule. Tell that to the cast of the Outer Banks. That's, that's another example.

Movie mustache buddy Garrity? Is he belonging in what stage the best or what stage the worst? I think this is the rare one where you could put him in both because when you see him in the movie, you're like, yeah, we wouldn't have gotten him as buddy without this. And so I think we just have no choice but to be grateful. But it's not buddy. You know, it's just not the same as buddy because he has like three scenes. I do love the mustache though. I think the mustache is great. My last one is Don's dad interrupting the hookup.

It's really grim. You've really grown up. He's really kind of like, he's really getting skeevy in that one. Yeah, that's a tough one. They go pretty far. What did you have for what stage of the worst, I think? Let's see. We already talked about Connie Britton. Just medical treatments. You know, this gets to what we were just discussing from the Coach Gaines perspective, but more broadly...

not immediately having surgery, trying to play again on the knee. It's just all of it is crazy. In 2024, you'd be Googling the symptoms and you'd have, you wouldn't just be like, Oh, when's my knee going to be better? It's 88. Like it's,

it's not a, the, the odds of coming back at full strength obviously are not the same in 88 as they would be today, but it's not like surgery for reconstructive knee surgery would have been unthinkable or rare. So it's just very, very strange. Um, no, that is a good, what stage the worst though, because now the torn ACL, you'd fix it and you'd probably be the same or close to the same, but in 88, yeah, you were definitely gonna be different. Like,

Like you were knee brace for the rest of your career type of thing. Yeah. No instant replay because there are like really a number of plays where... They have that in high school? Yeah.

it's just the fact that in a sports movie, you're like, oh man. And of course they end up incorporating that effectively into the dramatic tension of the film. But like that conversation about did when she'll break the plan, it's like, well, yeah, he did. You could just, you could just tell he did that, that, you know, the fourth quarter incompletion that you mentioned already, that was ruled a catch that clearly bounces. Like we cut to people watching it on TV at home. They know it's a drop. So then the fact that they can't fix it in the game, bummer. Um,

All right, I got one that you might think is controversial because you praised his performance earlier. Lucas Black is like the leading kid. I don't know.

I don't know. I think we could have, I think we could have done better. I do. Sorry. I love Tokyo drift weirdly, but sorry. Yeah. I think I'm blinded by Tokyo drift because I like him in that movie. And when he returns to the fast franchise, yeah. Yeah. Could we have done better? So the one I, the one I would have rethought was, uh, I liked Jay Hernandez, but he just seems too small for me as Chavez. Maybe that was the point. He was an undersized linebacker, but he's

Really? I mean, there's one scene when he's next to Preacher and Preacher just seems like a foot and a half taller. It's also just bizarre because Preacher and Chavez are like two of the five players who get updates on their life at the end, but they have like...

four and a half minutes of total screen time between them like they're not really characters and obviously they are in the book but in the movie they're like you know just not at the the winchell billingsley but do you think the winchell saracen maybe the quarterback on the 88 team was a little like that like you wouldn't have thought he was the quarterback a little undersized that must be for sure yeah i mean i think in terms of the the comps are like

fairly clear in terms of the characters, right? Like Winchell's Saracen, Winchell's mom is Saracen's grandma, Boobie is Smash, Billingsley is Riggins, John is Buddy, Gary's Eric, Sharon's Tammy, etc.,

But the performance – so I think him being like a doubted guy who has confidence issues and isn't the star is appropriate. That all makes sense. They built the offense around Boobie. Obviously, Saracen's coming in as like the backup and then becomes QB1, so it makes more sense in that context. But I think they establish how like your quarterback wouldn't have been –

the alpha guy it's not really the character it's just the performance like is not i don't know i feel like garrett headland and and derek luke are like at a just a different level in the movie i have a spot for this and recasting couch okay overacting award ruffalo hannah rubin and partridge i didn't really have one i thought the acting was pretty good i wouldn't agree i couldn't think of anyone for this i also can't think of a better title for the movie no no no way

Can you dig it? A word for most memorable core. We've mentioned a slew of them. It's probably nothing but babies and memories, right? I think I would put out another candidate. Billingsley saying to Winchell at the burger joint, we're going to get laid. We're going to get drunk and we're going to win state, but not tonight. That is iconic. That is a great one. All right. We're taking one more break and then we'll hit the rest of the categories. All right. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest take awards. So you kind of gave yours already. Yeah. What's yours?

I think Billy Bob should have played the coach in the TV show. I think it's a better move for his career. Come on. All right. Let me go through his career. So he's an A-lister in 2004. Here's what he does from 06 on. Again, the point of this is this is the hottest take.

School for Scoundrels, The Astronaut Farmer, Mr. Woodcock, Eagle Eye, The Informers, The Smell of Success, Deadly Creatures. By 2010, he's in Faster with The Rock playing Cop. I just think it works out better if he's on a beloved NBC show for five years playing Coach Taylor. From his perspective, sure. But you want to rob the world of Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor? I don't. I am speaking sure...

purely as Billy Bob's career strategist, in retrospect, better for him to be on the TV show. Sure. I would like to believe that Billy Bob would not want to deprive us of Eric Taylor and Kyle Chandler. And he would say, I'm willing to languish. I knew that would infuriate you. Until I can return triumphantly to your Texas screens as Tommy Norris.

and shriek in horror every time. Maybe that's why he didn't do it. Angela FaceTimes me. It all worked out. Casting what ifs. Mm-hmm. So I mentioned how Brian Grazer kept the rights. Alan Jay Pakula, who's directed a couple rewatchables, was planning to direct this film in the mid-'90s. He died in 1998. That didn't happen. John Abnett, who was a pretty well-known director back then, he had a big run at it. Richard Linklater? Yeah. Yeah.

Was all in, wrote the script. They had a budget. And then I guess it was too expensive. That got pulled. And then it eventually led to Peter Berg. But there's apparently like seven different versions of this before it got there. Garrett Hedlund moved to LA, was in there for a month, and won roles in Troy and Friday Night Lights. Pretty good. He'd been in LA for like four weeks. Not bad. I wasn't satisfied with the casting what if, so I texted Peter Berg. And I was like, can you give me one casting what if from the movie that nobody knows? Wow.

And he's like, there's a great one. Don's dad, the person that he tried to get was James Hetfield from Metallica. Holy shit. Yeah. And he said, it's a crazy story, but it didn't happen. And then Tim McGraw was great. So it worked out. Interesting. James Hetfield, who, by the way, doesn't act.

Why did he... So he wanted a musician, no matter what. That's fascinating. He's something about James Hetfield's energy he thought would be the right guy for Don Billingsley's dad. That's a great one. What a nugget. Great casting lineup. Incredible. Sometimes you got to go off the internet and go right to the source. Right to the source. Look at you. I love it. The link leader...

version of this is really interesting to think about he's a he's an incredible filmmaker it's just a different movie it becomes a texas it becomes way more personal i don't know how it goes i yeah i'm like intrigued and i i think we would have loved it you're right it would be totally different but like think of how you feel about everybody wants some right like the football version of that would have gone that version yeah could have been fun best that guy award

I feel like you and five other people are the only people who know Buddy Garrity's name is Bradley Lynn. Bradley Lynn, sure. The icon. I think Buddy Garrity is the best that guy because I see him in anything. I'm like, Buddy Garrity. I don't think of him as Bradley Lynn. So I think he wins. That's the winner. I went just because he is Buddy Garrity always to me. I went with Timothy F. Crowley, who is the official in the championship game, but is of course coached Crowley on Eric Staff in the TV show. He's another one who appeared in both films. And when I saw him, I was like, oh my God,

That guy, Coach Crowley. Really good. Dion Waiters Award, Buddy Garrett, he's eligible. Former Permian player coming in for the baby pick. Oh, yeah. Girl who seduces Mike Winchell or Flippy. Flippy. Good old Flippy. Or girl who is about to have sex with Don Billingsley and then it doesn't happen. I think those are all the candidates. Unless you want to go anyone with the coin flip. Wild to realize that's Amber Heard. I

I like your burger joint guy idea. Yeah, I think he wins. Remember every minute of it. Babies and memories. Don't waste a second. Yeah, that's a good one. Recasting couch director of City. So I'm actually, I had the Lucas Black character down. Yeah.

But I couldn't think of anybody in that age range. Yeah. And what I realized was that this would have been an amazing mid-90s Matt Damon part. Oh. Like a 1993 school ties era Matt Damon as Winchell. But he was too old by the time they made this movie. But it was whoever Matt Damon was in 2003.

I think might've been the move. Interesting. I like it. I think like one thing that feels really true to me based on where these actors were in their careers when the movie came out. And then also, of course, the way the show is cast is like, they, I think they have to be unknowns when they cast the new show that they have to be unknowns. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. It's important.

Collinsworth, Romo, or someone else for the director's commentary? Who'd you have? It's hard to channel Chris's spirit, you know, CR spirit when he's not here. I think I was able to really like clearly feel

And here, Collinsworth, when Boobie got hurt, though, like, oh, Mike, you just hate to see it. You hate to see it, Mike. The game's secured. It's a blowout. The backups are looking for some reps. Oh, Chris Comer's got to find his helmet, Mike. He's just got to find it.

Yeah, I hate it. I was thinking Chris Collins, we're talking about Preacher, would have been really fun. Oh, yeah. I want you to watch. He's being double teamed, Mike. Every game, these guys are huge. Every play, he's killing these guys. Half-assed internet research. There's cameos in this movie from Roy Williams, the receiver. Yep. Ty Law. Yeah. There's a highlight of Aqib Talib at some point when they're splicing highlights. Yep.

The real Boobie Miles plays a permanent assistant. You can see him next to Coach Gaines during the big halftime speech. Saw that happen. Tweaks from real life. Boobie Miles was actually a fullback in real life. Right.

Don Billingsley's father, Charlie, lost the finals in 1968. Oh, man. So what did he throw out the window if not the state ring? The number two ring. Real boobie got hurt in a preseason game. You mentioned that. And then there's a million differences with how the 88 season went that I'm not going to go through all of them. The most interesting one was

Carter High, you mentioned that they had their title revoked. So the team that they played in the finals was Converse Judson. Yep. And they ended up being the state champions. So Permian actually could have been. And then Permian did win the next year. Then there's some stuff with how Permian was portrayed in the movie compared to it's a much bigger, robust town in real life, I think. Right, Odessa. Yeah. Yep. And then we mentioned the racism stuff too.

Berg was so obsessed with the football scenes that he spent several weekends following Permian and an Austin team called Westlake High just to soak in everything and then try to put as much as possible in the movie. And then there's kind of a bummer of a story about Brian Chavez because he went to Harvard, got his law degree, moved back to Odessa, and then ended up in this whole thing where he ended up in this huge fight

He got a felony. He had to give up his license for a little bit, and now he's back, and it's all good. But it was a big story at the time because when it happened, the movie had happened, the TV show had happened. Apex Mountain. Mm-hmm. Friday Night Lights is a property. No. Come on. Next. This is not up for discussion. It isn't. You're trolling. I know you don't believe this. I don't. Okay. Billy Bob Thornton. No. It's going to be Landman, who's just...

With apologies to this and Sling Blade and Monsters Ball, let's just carve out the necessary turf here for Lamb Man. It's dialogue like, that wasn't Sunday morning sex. That was angry Saturday night sex. Great stuff. Peter Berg. No.

No, but I think it's actually the TV series putting that together. Yep. I think was such a hard achievement to pull off. And then all the ways that show almost died and it should have died after its first season. I remember writing, um,

I wrote about this in the magazine piece I did that year. Wrote a magazine column about it because it seemed like it was going to get canceled. And I had stopped watching it like everybody else because it was pre-streaming. And if you didn't watch, you know, if you felt like the show was going to get canceled or you missed the first two episodes, it was really hard to jump into a show. And the show didn't do well. And then that summer, there was some rerun stuff.

a friend of mine got me these Japanese DVDs that I watched that summer, caught up, and then I was like, we can't get this. The show has to come back. It came back, writer's strike. Probably should have been canceled after the writer's strike because they had a bad second season, which we don't talk about. Right. But three, four, and five are amazing. Three, four, and five. They also, they nailed...

We have to graduate some of these guys and bring new people in. Are the new people going to hold up to the old people? And they had this new cast that included Michael B. Jordan. So everything he did with that show, I think he's had a really good career. He's directed a lot of big movies. He's made a lot of money, but I still, I would think he would agree that the show is the apex. I mean, I think because they're so proximate to each other time-wise, like you could just lump it all together, but I, yeah, the property, like I agree. I think that

Season one of Friday Night Lights is unbelievable. You mentioned season two. Season three is really great. It's hard for me to think of too many...

like story resets that are on par with moving Coach Taylor to East Dillon. Yeah, it was great. Like, and pulling it off at that level and making you, you have invested for three seasons at that point in the Panthers and you are rooting so fervently against them and for the Lions by the time they face off. It's just astonishing. Like, I have a Vince Howard jersey. I love the Lions. It's like,

Season five of that show is unbelievable. The finale is incredible. Yeah, to get Michael B. Jordan at that point in his career is unbelievable. Yeah, my favorite show, and I wrote about this at the time, but my favorite...

sports show ever was the White Shadow. And they never figured out that third season when they had to graduate some of the people. And they kind of kept the coach there. The people they brought in weren't as fun as the previous people. And the show just got canceled. So I think by the time we got to the late 2000s, they had enough evidence of how to not do this that they did it correctly. And they had a big twist. They brought in new people. They really took pains to figure out who to cast. Anyway, Garrett Hedlund

I think he's done some good stuff. I think his Apex Mountain was the country's strong rewatchables. Because he was probably as surprised as everyone else. Oh, man. With apologies to the entire Tron franchise. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. Black Nikes? No, but prominently displayed. Texas high school football content? Probably the TV show. TV show. Yeah. Tim McGraw? No. No. No. Sports movie coin tosses? Oh, my God. Yeah.

Wow. That's a great one. It's a whole scene with a coin toss. I'm going to say yes. Jay Hernandez, no, because I think he's been in a bunch of stuff. Lucas Black. It's probably Tokyo Drift. I think it's Tokyo Drift, yeah. Yeah. Horrible sports movie parents. Oh, boy. Crowded field. Really tough to top Charlie Billingsley. He's bad. Yeah. Jeez. That's a good one. That's a really good one. Ooh, I like that. Anything else?

Move on. No, I don't think it's the Apex Mountain really for anyone or anything, even though it's a great movie. Cruise or Hanks? Cruise. Cruise? Yeah. As Coach Gaines? As Coach Gaines. What? Make the case. I mean, I think the moments of like mania that simmer to the fore where you have this kind of

collected guy who, like you said, can sit there when the boosters charge into his office and just sort of like nod and smirk and know that he has to play the game. He's got the button-down shirt collar popping over his sweater. But then we'll call his player a village idiot. We'll just scream at them as they're letting this slip through their fingers, but then can kind of find the like, it's time to rally, let's get hyped jolt. I think that's

I think the cruise version of this would be deranged, but kind of mesmerizing. It's harder for me to see where Hank slots in the movie. Honestly, I usually pick Hanks, as you know. The answer is Hanks. But unfortunately, because we have a tie, we have to bring in producer Craig Early. He's got to decide it. Cruise or Hanks. Craig, you have the tiebreaker as a cruiser Hanks. The answer is Tom Hanks. I'm sorry, Mal. Come on.

but you can't first of all Cruz is way too small nobody will buy it you can't have him as a football coach he's like 5'6 Billy Bob at least has some size yes but Billy Bob is too slender I think Cruz has a stoutness thick jackets I also I don't buy Cruz in Texas for some reason Hanks to me can pull off the southern great point Craig personality

Cruz being like a diehard longtime Texas guy makes zero sense. No. I see Cruz going toe-to-toe with the boosters in a way that I don't see with Hanks here. I don't know. What's the tally now, Craig? This is our last one of the year. So if Hanks wins, it's 21 to 16, Hanks. Well, Hanks won.

I think this is the first time I've ever picked Cruz. Typical. Can't wait to get Craig's take at the end. Racehorse, rock band, wrestler, or fantasy team name? Would you go Boobie Miles or would you go Babies and Memories? Neither. I'm going Mojo. My racehorse is Mojo. Great dog name. You know, uh...

My wife looked at me last night as she was lying in bed with one dog on one side and one dog on the other side. And said, let's get a cat. Beloved Jesse is 11. And she said, when Ben goes to college, we're getting a third dog. And she didn't say it in a way that it was an argument. What happened to her desire to get a cat?

I told her I was going to move out if that happened. I don't like cats. Yes, you do. I don't. You do. I don't. It would be the cruelest thing ever to do to Murph. It would ruin Murph's life. I could see Murph getting along with a cat. Mojo would be a good name for a dog. Picky Nits. We did so many. We did a lot of these, yeah. Cooper's coach didn't realize his coin was tails?

You fucking moron. Frankly, everything with the coin toss belongs in picking nits. All of it. Just absolutely all of it. Not revealing the identity of the truck stop, even though it's happening in real time when they're airing it. My 1969 Buffalo nickel. What's that? Who flips a nickel in a coin toss? It has to be at least a half dollar. Great stuff. Great stuff.

Last game, there's some score issues. Again, I'm right here. I've been here for the last 30 years as a sports movie consultant. Last game goes from 18-7 to 26-7 right before the half. They say it's 18-7 and then at halftime it's 20. I don't know what happened with the extra eight points. There's not only some scorekeeping wonkiness, but there's some just general timeline wonkiness. I always trip up on the fact that when Boobie goes to Midland for his MRI and he's like...

They said three weeks, three weeks is up. I'm ready to play. But right before that, we get that montage and we hear that, we hear that Permian is five and one. Right. Boobie got hurt the first five weeks. Those are not like that. Just that math is not the same in the game. All of a sudden it's 26, 14 in the third quarter. We don't know how they got the second touchdown. Um, which I'll takes 30 rough in the QB penalties. Um,

I know it was a little crazier back then, a little more violent. But I don't remember an era of football ever where every single time the quarterback was just getting teed off on three seconds after he released the ball. I'm positive that was always a penalty.

It's wild in the concussion protocol era to see him get kicked in the face and just stay in the game. He had previously also had like a neck wound. Yeah. Some amazing, amazing stuff. And I would add Preacher at tight end on any third and short. He's just going in.

The team's going to, the defense is going to have to worry about him. You have any nitpicks or can we keep going? Um, I think we hit all of them. I guess I'll just say like Winchell basically being Will Levis the entire movie. It's just like, you know, the, oh,

reactions to the bad throws across the field and then suddenly being Russell Wilson with pinpoint precision on 50-yard bombs. Heated up. He's like Jordan Love. As soon as he's down 20, he heats up. The Jordan Love story. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast are untouchable. Well, we have an answer to that one.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sid Goldberg, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, now Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, evil after Ramon Raymond, long legs or Philip Baker Hall. Uh, trail hasn't won this all year. Okay.

Trejo is Chavez's dad. Interesting. We get one bar scene with him. He's a little rowdy, but he's a great dad and somebody insults the team and he ends up fighting two guys in the bar and just does Danny Trejo stuff. And then maybe he gets beaten almost near death and coach Gaines comes to see him. And he's like, yeah, Gary, I like it. Don't leave me like this.

It's good. Gary, don't leave me homes. I like it. As a daughter of Baltimore, I'm always going to pick Wayne Jenkins here. And I would posit that there's not a scene in the movie, not one, where Wayne Jenkins doesn't perfectly fit. You can see him as an angry, trash-talking assistant coach on a rival team. You can see him as stadium security. I like him best as...

A dirty cop, right? Staying truly in the Wayne Jenkins aura who is convincing one of the players to throw a game because he's in gambling debt. Oh, that's, I thought you were going to go coin toss. He's there in the coin toss just being like, 1969 Buffalo nickel. Oh, look at this guy. So I didn't know we were dealing with super coin. I love it. That gets me to one of my unanswerable questions. I'm so curious what you think about this on the coin toss front. Yeah.

What's to stop two of the three coaches from just like, we're in cahoots. Let's wait the coins. It doesn't matter. Yeah. It doesn't matter if the third team. Two heads. Yeah. Just make sure it's heads every time for two of the schools. Good scandal. That'd be good. Absolutely nothing in place. Not a single thing in place to prevent that outcome. Not one. It's a great one. Just one Oscar who gets it.

Probably the explosions in the sky. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great one. That's really good. I would, I would, I mean, I think best adapted screenplay. Hmm. Right. Yeah. Like even though some of the, the changes and the way they have to compress the, the like nuance of some of the characters and the, and the story, obviously like it's, it's a two hour movie, but I think that, I think the best adapted screenplay would, would be the one now, like for me, that stands out more than the acting performances, honestly. Yeah.

unanswerable questions why didn't don move out couldn't you just lived on somebody's couch during the season did he have to be home with the most abusive awful dad possible yeah you know again like where that we have the tv show where riggins and his dad have this very fraught estranged relationship but riggins does not live with his dad he lives with his brother so it's that's on our minds certainly uh boy donnie just move out live in your car for a couple weeks

Where does Preacher rank for you, greatest sports movie football legends we've ever had?

Because the bar for me is, and we did it this year on Rewatchables, Fast Times. Yeah. The Forrest Whitaker character just demolishing everybody. That's probably a 10 out of 10. Preacher's a solid 9-9. It feels like if he doesn't have seven sacks, forced two turnovers, and 40 tackles in the championship game, they probably don't come close. Yeah. It's a great one. And I just like those characters in general, the guys who are just...

you know, everybody wants some has that, which is ironically the mustache guy. What was that guy's name? Not Glenn Powell. Glenn Powell is good too, but a mustache guy who looks like Burt Reynolds and everybody wants them, but it's just like, he's just clearly the best guy. I like when sports movies, there's also like clearly a best guy. My favorite, my favorite. Everybody wants some figures. Wyatt Russell, remarkable stuff.

Absolutely remarkable. I think that the fact that the movie makes it feel like they have absolutely no chance without Boobie knocks Preacher's legend down a tier because there's never a moment where they're like, it's okay. We have the most dominant defender. We'll figure it out. Well, the problem is the dumbass coach was, he did a whole, yeah, he built the whole offense around a running back and didn't even know his third down running back could do anything. Classic.

I had for unanswerables, where does this movie rank in the best football movies ever? And it's in the top six. Okay. Okay. And I think it really depends on, I think longest yard is just number one. It has to be. It was the first one. The football scenes are still great.

And then the next five in some order are Friday Night Lights, North Dallas 40, Remember the Titans, Rudy, and Any Given Sunday. Yeah. I think... And it really depends on what you want out of your football movie. But I think those five...

If you're starting the discussion, I think those five have to be in it. Interesting. And then after that, I would do Varsity Blues, All the Right Moves, The Replacements, and Draft Day, which we did together on the rewatch. The best. Really fun football movie. You pancake-eating motherfucker. I love it. Is this for you for high school football movies, clearly the winner? No, just football. Sports movies featuring football. Yeah. And then the only other one, Necessary Roughness is good. Mm-hmm.

um and then after that it gets pretty bad and we haven't had one in a while yeah um we haven't had a good one in a while i should say but we've we've and i'm sure i forgot one but i think that's the list but friday night lights is somewhere number two to number six interesting on the list um interesting for craig replacements is number one after we did replacements just a great one that one great one

All right, so we're done with unanswerables, and now we have... Wait, I wanted to ask you for unanswerables. Give me some insight on the odds, on the lines. What were Permian's odds to take it all in the preseason? What was the line for the championship game against Carter? Where are we on all this? I think with Boobie... Yeah. First of all, thank you for asking. You're welcome. I think with Boobie, they're probably the number two best odds. Okay. So they're...

basically where like the Eagles are right now. Right. Probably like minus, or I'm sorry, plus like 300 plus 350 range. No boobie championship game. Dallas Carter, probably like 16 and a half point underdogs. 16 and a half. Yeah. Holy shit. 14 and a half. I mean, it was like,

Maybe. An all-time powerhouse in a huge city versus a team in a smaller city missing their best player. Interesting. You might be right. I mean, there is that. We get the glimpse of the poll at one point. They lost two regular season games. They did. They did. Yeah. They also had plummeted to 16th in the rankings after the boobie injury and losing the second game of the season. So obviously then they have to kind of work their way back up into good standing. But 16 and a half, wow.

Somewhere 13 and a half to 16 and a half, I would say. Okay. I mean, after seeing Dallas Carter, you could argue maybe they should have been like 20 point favorites, but I almost feel like you have to do like college lines for that one.

Best double feature choice. Varsity Blues is too easy, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's my pick as well. Yeah, just Varsity Blues right into this. Let's get both sides of it. We get the super fun Texas version, then we get like the serious version. Yeah, and they're like relatively contemporary. I mean, Varsity Blues is 99. You know, it's a five-year difference, but that movie is just, it's just a study in debauchery. It's the best. Oh, yeah. We did that as a live show. I remember. What theater was that? That was Largo. Yeah. Yeah, Largo. That was so fun. That was fun.

The Indian Reds, the Watanabe Award, what happened the next day? Just notable, Gary Gaines went to college after they won the title in the next year, became an assistant in a bunch of different programs, bounced around a little bit, and then came back to Permian in the late 2000s. Yeah. So this clearly, I am assuming, inspires the season two plotline where Eric goes to be a college assistant, right? And then comes back. Yeah.

Do you find this category to be quite difficult when this is based on a real story and you know what happened to all these people? Yeah. This is like really hard. Almost impossible. Could have skipped it.

What piece of memorabilia would you want from the movie? I could offer you the Boobie Miles jersey or the Boobie Miles nameplate. I could offer you the Permian coin, the 1969 nickel. I could offer you something else. Oh, man. I want, I think, Charlie Billingsley's championship ring, given the emotional weight attached to that one. I should have had that. Yeah, no, that's the answer. You could pick the Panther's helmet, but it's so basic. You know what would be really fun to have as one of the lawn signs? What?

For the players, those are great. I would love a lawn sign. I would not keep it on my lawn. I would keep it inside my home. I would frame it and hang it. You could have put it right in the behind you. I could. In your podcast territory. Still can. Coach Finstock Award for best life lesson. You may never matter again in your life as much as you do right now. Wow, that's kind of a downer. I'm going with always keep your helmet handy. All right, that's good too.

Who won the movie? Peter Berg? I think it has to be. This leads to one of the best television shows in the history of television, so I think it has to be. In terms of the performances, obviously Billy Bob is great. I really think Derek Lucas' boobie is just tremendous. He's great. Him and Garrett Hedlund, I think, are the performances. All right, it's time. Producer Craig Horlbeck had not seen this movie. I'm a little nervous.

Wait, can we just establish? So you have not seen the show, Craig? No. Show or movie? I don't understand. Not only have I not seen the show, I don't know anything about it. I don't know the characters. I don't know how the movie, how the show ends. I knew nothing about the movie. It came out, when did the show start? What year? 06. 06. It went 06 to 11. But you, I don't understand this. You love football. You love story. Yeah.

Just like Raj. Those are my two core tenets. I don't know. I guess it came out when I was in middle school and I wasn't watching it live. And I think when I was in high school, it was like, it was harder to watch stuff after the fact in high school. You're kind of just watching stuff in the moment. There wasn't like an easy. You had to do a DVD box set. Yeah. Yes. So it was kind of hard to do that.

Before we start, just want to say, why do they let these, we're just putting a lot of trust into these Texas high school football coaches to bring their own coin to a really pivotal coin toss. It's crazy. Three equal quarters. They're just like, yeah, whatever you want. Imagine a basketball team just being like, we brought our own ball to the game. It's ridiculous. That's what I'm saying.

Like what are they doing to protect against cheating? Like you could wait the coin. You could get into cahoots with another team. Like on Unanswerable Questions, the guy who fucks it up with the worn out coin, like he's probably thinking for the rest of his life about what if I just brought a different coin the rest of his life.

The best unintentional comedy moment was like the guy who was ever running the coin toss was like, and over here, Coach Gaines has a 1978 nickel. And I'm like, what are we doing? I don't know. Any coin you can find in your car. It's a captivating scene for some reason. It is. Anyway, what's your take?

This movie was way, way, way better than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. So everything you guys said at the top, I wrote down and I completely agree with. Really smartly edited, very choppy, a lot of close-ups. Even the color grading is kind of gritty. Yeah. I didn't realize how serious this movie was going to be thematically. I guess because it was a TV show, I thought it was going to be way more teen melodrama-y. And it wasn't at all. And...

I mean, very, very serious. This is about peaking in high school legacy, disappointing your parents. I thought they did such a great job. And this is easily one of the most relatable movies for young athletes, maybe ever, or at least that I've seen. It's not a very Hollywood movie. Remember the Titans is my favorite movie. I think it's remember the Titans is kind of the in-between between like completely ridiculous and real serious.

But that even has the Hollywood ending. This does not have that. So it's definitely closer to Moneyball than it is like The Replacements by a long shot to me. I have to imagine the TV show is much more melodramatic. So were you shocked when they didn't win at the end? Honestly, yeah, a little bit. Because there were moments... I actually didn't love the coach of...

I thought he was a little slapsticky for the movie. I thought they should have grabbed somebody who was a bit more serious because he, there, there was like, he was 10% replacements and I didn't like that. Uh, maybe he should have won the overacting award. Yeah. I didn't could have given it to him. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I honestly probably did think they were going to win and I, I really enjoyed that. They didn't. I also thought they hit a lot of really good subtle stuff. You know, I, I like didn't really play football in high school. I played for my freshman year, but I had a lot of friends who did.

And just all the subtleties of they're always eating because they got to maintain weight. Yep. And all these guys probably got to be like 30 pounds heavier than their bodies want them to be. Yeah. They're always stuffing their face with the burritos, the burger. I mean, he's eaten that burger for like two straight minutes. It feels like he has three on his plate. I love that everybody in town is a psycho. They're constantly asking the kids if they're going to win state. You know, they're pulling up next to the cops. Yeah. Hey, boys.

Going to win state this year? Yes, sir. Going to go undefeated? Yes, sir. And it's just like so good. All the disregard for women is so 80s in Texas. Yeah. Hey, Coach Gaines, how's your pretty wife doing? Like, man. What?

This is great. And I have to say, I think the most, honestly, the most harrowing scene perhaps of the 20, of the 2000s is Tim McGraw watching his son hook up with Maria. I think that is a fucking horrific moment. It's terrible. Horrific. Imagining that, imagining that in high school, I would be out of that house in the next 10 minutes.

Uh, my God, just, just an unfathomable situation. I, you guys should have hit on that. Even Byron, even Byron Mayo wouldn't have done that. I feel like he would ask for permission from somebody. Dad, just go back to your room. So, so did this make you want to watch the TV show now?

Could be the next step, you and Liz. You have to. Yeah, I think it might be our next rewatch. Craig. Did she watch the movie with you? No. Oh, because Garrett Hedlund, I thought maybe. She actually saw me watching from, like she walked by and she's like, Garrett Hedlund, I love him. And I was like, I know. You were like, well aware. All right, dude, you're going to love the show. Like I think this has a chance to genuinely be your favorite show. I'm not kidding. Bang out like two episodes and see how it feels. But is it much more like,

you know, teen drama, Riverdale mixed with a football show. Not Riverdale at all. There is teen drama, but like it's expert. If you like the movie, there's no way you won't like the TV show. I would say it's an impossible season. Two goes wrong in a few key ways that we will not spoil, but then they trust that they, they get their hands on the wheel again.

Also, one last question. So I found out, right, that they won state the next year. Yeah. Why wasn't the movie about that? I understand that it's maybe more interesting if it's the losing team, but I'm just surprised that it's not about the year they won. Because it was kind of a letdown to be like, oh, next year they won. The book was about 88. And I think they were staying faithful to the book because the book was like an iconic book. Like if you like football and you liked reading, you read the book. Did the book come out before the following season?

The book was about the 88 season and it came out after the season they won. I guess I'm just surprised. Why write the book about the losing season and not the winning season? But maybe that's more interesting. Because overcoming adversity is more interesting, right? Than just dominating. He was a really big newspaper writer and he took a year off to follow the team around in 88. So that was what the book was about. And then he went back to his job and wrote the book.

Yeah. So I think that's why they did it that way. But you're right. It's, I think there was a 30 for 30. I don't remember if I was still there or not, but we did a 30 for 30 about the Dallas Carter team at some point. Yeah. But I can't remember if it was a short or what we did so many of those, but yeah, the Dallas Carter, like having to give the title back was like a big, that was like a national story in the late eighties. So, yeah, I also, I think Billy Bob's, I think his best scene is the first speech when he ends before the first game, he ends his speech with, so let's take care of it.

I thought that gave me chills. Are you watching Landman yet, Craig? No, I haven't. So now Craig has two shows. You're missing out. Fantasy football is over now. Right. You're missing out. You got the playoffs. The Steelers are going to be out after round one. That's correct. No more fantasy football. And you have the draft coming in a while from now. I don't know. You have some time for a show. Great. All right. I'll pencil in Landman and Friday Night Lights.

think Landman, I don't know if there's ever been a better show that you don't have to 100% watch as you're watching it.

You can like 89% watch it, but also like kind of look at the internet. It does have a 100% approval rating from everybody I've spoken to. It's not high enough. I think it should be higher. It's the best. 110 should be the percentage rating. All right. That's it for the rewatchables. That was our last one of 2024. Thank you to Mallory Rubin. It was great to see you. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. Another great year for us. At some point, we got to do the rewatchables mailbag because we have...

All of these mailbag things that we can do. So 2025 next year, some fun anniversaries. It's the 30th anniversary of the 95th.

Really nice run. 90 was super fun. We've done a lot of the movies from those years, but we'll probably do some more. Thanks to Good How as well. That's it. I guess we're coming back next week. We might do two next week. So just know that. And you can watch all of these that we've done for the last couple of years on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel that has some great stuff going.

on there as well. Don't forget me and Mal and Joanne on the Prestige TV podcast next month, White Lotus on a Dice. Craig, Mallory, thank you. Great to see you guys. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.