Rob Brown, Dennis Quaid and Clancy Brown in the Gary Fleder movie ‘The Express’

The 1983 Robert C. Gallagher book Ernie Davis, The Elmira Express: The Story of a Heisman Trophy Winner tells the story of multiple firsts in the impressive college career and illness shortened life of national champion, Heisman Trophy winner and Syracuse University football player Ernie Davis. We look at the Charles Leavitt screenplay for the Gary Fleder movie The Express (2008) that came from that book.

(From left, Rob Brown as Ernie Davis and Charles S. Dutton as Willie ‘Pop’ Davis in the Gary Fleder movie The Express).

The story of Ernie Davis begins with Davis growing up first in Pennsylvania and, in later in Elmira, New York. It is in Elmira that a young Ernie Davis first plays runningback in an organized youth football league. A number of years later, Ben Schwartzwalder of Syracuse University recruits Davis with the support of the graduating Jim Brown, who would go on to excel with the Cleveland Browns. Rob Brown, Dennis Quaid and Darrin Dewitt Henson would portray Ernie Davis as an adult, Ben Schwartzwalder and Jim Brown.

(Coaches from left, Dennis Quaid as Ben Schwartzwalder and Clancy Brown as Roy Simmons in the Gary Fleder movie The Express).

The sport of college football, a legacy of racism in Dallas, Texas made tangible through threats, and the effort to play The University of Texas at the Cotton Bowl Classic in Dallas for the 1959 championship on January 1, 1960 unfolds in the telling of The Express. An injured leg and biased officiating interject, as does further insult at the recognition banquet following the game. The outcome of both the game and the follow-up indicates something uplifting in the face of ugliness.

(From left, Rob Brown as Ernie Davis, Omar Benson Miller as Jack Buckley, Nicole Beharie as Sarah Ward and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Marie Davis in the Gary Fleder movie The Express).

The story of Davis getting drafted by the Cleveland Browns, then of the National Football League (NFL), leads to the revelation of a life threatening disease during preseason efforts to get into condition for the coming season. The formal revelation by then owner Art Modell that the disease would keep Davis from formally fulfilling his professional dream happened matter-of-factly in the middle of practice. The formal announcement of the outcome was addressed with more class. Davis‘ recruiting of Floyd Little to Syracuse mirrors his own recruitment there with the aid of Jim Brown. Saul Rubinek and Chadwick Boseman portrayed Modell and Little, respectively.

(From left, Dennis Quaid as Ben Schwartzwalder and Darrin Dewitt Henson as Jim Brown in the Gary Fleder movie The Express).

As presented in passing in the movie, former United States President John F. Kennedy offered praise for Davis after the football player as a player and citizen following Davis‘ death. The tribute gave dignity to the sympathetic portrayal of Ernie Davis. I give The Express as directed by Gary Fleder 3.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.

Matt – Saturday, September 2, 2023

Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron and the movie ‘The Blind Side’

Remarkable acts of compassion can make all the difference. If that isn’t an overriding message of the movie The Blind Side (2009), then I was watching a different movie with the same name. John Lee Hancock and Michael Lewis take movie writing credit for the film, which in being based on the Lewis’ book The Blind Side. The sport of football is a language of this movie, with compassion being the message.

(From left, Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy, Ray McKinnon as Coach Cotton, and Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy in the movie The Blind Side).

The primary compassion of the movie began with Leigh Anne Tuohy, as portrayed by Sandra Bullock, who saw Michael Oher as a teenager walking down the street with nowhere to stay. Touhy convinced her husband, Sean Tuohy as played by Tim McGraw, to bring the young man into their home for a meal and a night of sleep. Oher would become a member of the family, go to school and college, and become a legitimate part of the Tuohy family.

(From left, Kathy Bates as Miss Sue and Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher in the movie The Blind Side).

Roy McKinnon as Coach Cotton needed some convincing to allow Oher, as played by Quinton Aaron, to join the high school football team. Having had a difficult beginning wherein his mother was exposed to crime and his father wasn’t in the picture, Oher could have easily fallen through the cracks of a system that could not provide the safety net that the child and man Oher was and would become could flourish. Kathy Bates as Miss Sue became a tutor. Collins Tuohy as portrayed by Lily Collins and S.J. Tuohy as portrayed by Jae Head became a sister and brother to Michael Oher in real senses of the term over time and through the course of the movie. The friction of acceptance, belief in decency, and an affirmative choice of compassion in the face of stereotypical fear were all forthrightly addressed with an affirmative outlook.

(From left, Lily Collins as Collins Tuohy and Jae Head as S.J. Tuohy in the movie The Blind Side).

Michael Oher grew to become the 23rd pick in the 2009 NFL draft by the Baltimore Ravens. The movie offered a dramatic and comedic look into the journey of Oher, the Tuohy family, and the journey from homeless teen to more fuller, whole person. I rate The Blind Side at 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, July 18, 2020

Sean Lahman and the book ‘The Pro Football Historical Abstract’

Anticipating the National Football League‘s 2020 Draft, I finished reading a book about professional football players that I began reading nearly seven years ago. I came across The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan’s Guide to All-Time Player Rankings by Sean Lahman at a book store in Lynn‘s hometown, and was intrigued by the concept of a Bill James style treatment to the underlying sport of football.

(Sean Lahman wrote The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan’s Guide to All-Time Player Rankings).

The concept of reading The Pro Football Historical Abstract hit me in a way similar to my enjoyment of the table top board games of Bowl Bound, Paydirt, or Data-Driven Football, which I wrote about in December 2016. Given that I was taken by the concept of Bill James and his concept of The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, a project with the same goals and techniques in football held immediate appeal. The notion of looking back at American Football League and All-America Football Conference teams and players also held a particularly high appeal to me as well.

(Logos of the National Football League).

A book reviewer named Tom Gower at Reading and Thinking Football looked at The Pro Football Historical Abstract, identifying three particular points that made this first step into ranking by Sean Lahman into the abstract particularly hard to accept.

1. The rankings produce screwy results;
2. The ranking methodology that produces the screwy results is not sufficiently justified;
3. Irrespective of the rankings and the quality of his methodology, Lahman for some to many players fails to properly execute his methodology, invalidating to some extent all of his rankings for those positions.

Gower’s critique has merit, along with some pointed questions geared at the statistics and methodologies in use for The Pro Football Historical Abstract are not properly justified with explanations of the methodology, or they do not fully take into account how reliable the statistics themselves in fact are. Critiques, for example, that get into understanding how Lahman’s rankings of Larry Johnson‘s performance in 2006 performance should compare to O..J. Simpson’s 1973 or 1975 campaigns seems valid.

(Logo of the American Football League).

In Lahman‘s defense, I view the project that The Pro Football Historical Abstract could spur as a first step for projects geared at building databases that look into the past. There is broad information accumulation that helped to contextualize performance much more broadly across eras in baseball, which in large part is a builder of the credibility that lends credit to Bill James. Gower said this in the opinion in his article. Further accumulation of data, including the contextualizing of it that quite possibly exists with professional teams today, largely does not seem to exist on a per play basis or go back into statistics like sacks, plays on third and short that resulted in first downs, and other things that we have in baseball. The calling for this type of work, and a public domain for that, is identified by Lahman and theoretically resides through access points such as this.

(Logos of the All-America Football Conference and its teams).

The merit that could exist moving forward with the book The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan’s Guide to All-Time Player Rankings was not exactly the exciting or educational experience that I had hoped for from the beginning. There quite honestly is a reason that it took me almost seven years to finish reading the book. On that point alone, my rating is not that high. However, I would truly like to see something that addresses the critiques of Reading and Thinking Football with the loftier goal that Sean Lahman had with his project. My rating for The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan’s Guide to All-Time Player Rankings by Sean Lahman is 3-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, April 25, 2020