January 16th, 2006

Glory Road: Review

A good plot usually consists of three things: heroes, underdogs, and happy endings.  Glory Road has all that and more.  It also happens to tell an important story.

As you may know, it is the story of a school that took a chance on an unheralded high school girls’ basketball coach, who in turn led them to the title and himself to the Basketball Hall of Fame.  It is the story of players that no one recruited, and a team no one believed in, that came together as a team to roll to a near perfect record and a national championship over top-ranked and perennial-powerhouse Kentucky.  More to the point, it was the first time in history that the starting five of a championship team was black, and it just so happened that Kentucky’s starting lineup - like every other school in the south – was white. 

The national championship run of the 1966 Texas Western (now UTEP) Miners came right in the midst of the nation’s civil rights movement, and has since been an important part of the national conversation dealing with the impact of sports on race and culture in America.

Of course, the movie should not be viewed purely as a historical document.  This is, after all, Hollywood, and a few things should be cleared up.

Don Haskins was not in his first year as coach in 1966, as the movie claimed, he was in his sixth when he won the championship.  Nor were the groundbreaking seven recruits all freshmen.  In fact, Coach Haskins was not even the first Miner coach to recruit black players: there were already three African Americans on the roster when he got there.  One of which, Nolan Richardson, would go on to become a national championship coach himself, with Arkansas in 1994.

Evidence of more creative licenses abound throughout the film.  Tina Malichi claims she did not meet her future husband, Bobby Jo Hill, in a dive bar in Mexico.  By nearly all accounts, there was not the sea of Confederate flags being waved in the stands during the national championship that is portrayed in the movie.  And while the movie claims that the Miners 72-65 win over the Wildcats was “the greatest upset in college basketball history,” Texas Western entered the tournament with only one loss and ranked #3 in the nation. 

This is Disney, not a documentary.  However, the movie, based on Haskins’ autobiography of the same name, has once again reignited the debate as to the historical and cultural significance of that championship team. 

Many might walk away from the theater believing that Texas Western was the first school with black athletes to hold up the national championship trophy.  Or that they were the first Division I basketball program to have black starters at all.

Yet ten years earlier, San Francisco won back-to-back championships with K.C. Jones, Hal Perry, Bill Russell and Gene Brown – black players all.  The following year, Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas would lose to North Carolina for the title in a triple overtime thriller.  In 1958, the consensus All-America team consisted of Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Bob Boozer and Guy Rodgers.  All of them African-Americans.

Loyola of Illinois won the NCAA championship in 1963, using four black starters and playing them most of the game.  As did Cincinnati, who lost to Loyola that game but had won the previous two championships.

Some also argue that 1974 was symbolically more important to the civil rights movement, the year Coach C.M Newton started 5 black players.  The reason? The school was the University of Alabama, where just 11 years earlier Governor George Wallace stood at the door of Foster Auditorium in a symbolic attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling at the school.

At the same time, no team had ever won it all with an all-black starting five, and the symbolic importance of defeating national powerhouse Kentucky with an all-white roster should not be overlooked.  Many of the greatest players the game has ever known – Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan to name two – claim that the 1966 Miner team inspired them to accept scholarships from big-time programs. 

Most importantly, there is little doubt that Don Haskins taught more than one college coach the value of recruiting kids on the basis of talent rather than color – giving countless young men the opportunity to showcase their basketball talent and receive a quality education.

The 1960’s were a time of great social change in America.  There will always be a debate over whether the 1966 Texas Western Miners were a catalyst for that change or merely symbolic of it.

But it is still a greatly entertaining movie.  The cinematography was fantastic.  It was hard to watch the game scenes and not feel like you were right there courtside in 1966.

In addition, for a film that takes on a topic as serious and controversial as race, it was actually very funny.  There was enough wise-cracking and snappy one-liners that the film could almost pass for a comedy, up until it took a more sober turn towards the end, when the movie began to more seriously explore the bigotry the players and Coach Haskins faced.

As a side note, Kentucky fans can rest easy: Adolph Rupp is not portrayed as the arch-villain.  In fact, despite noting that Rupp did not recruit African Americans at that time (he would later), Rupp is never seen as saying anything racist or hateful.  Stand-offish and arrogant, maybe.  But not racist.  There is even a scene where his wife approaches Mary Haskins and tells her as much.

Regardless of how significant that 1966 championship may or may not have been, it is a great story worth telling and re-telling.  It is a story about equality, racism, overcoming adversity and, of course, the great game of basketball.  It is well acted, well written, and is immensely entertaining.

It’s a movie worth seeing.

Kevin McNeill's college basketball column appear weekly on Collegehoops.net.