A Movie On TCM

[sport historian]

Today at 6pm ET, Turner Classic Movies is showing "Saturday's Hero", a 1951 film about college football. It presents a negative view of the sport. This opinion was quite common at the time, as the West Point cheating scandal was big news.

The hero, played by John Derek, is named Steve Novak. He is of Polish background from New Jersey. Tennessee's 1951 National Championship team had plenty of players with this profile.

The film's message is that players who want an education are discouraged by the athletic department from getting one. They are then thrown out when they are injured and unable to play. This film is rarely shown on TV. I saw it on TCM around 7 years ago. It's worth a look if you want to see what critics of college football were saying in 1951.

 

[Colonel_Reb]

Cool! Thanks for the info sport historian. I saw a piece on ESPN yesterday about the 1987 strike and replacement games/players. I wondered if there were any interesting racial angles to that time. I was looking at the Bears replacement roster and it was definitely whiter than the regular one. I know some interesting things happened during those 3 weeks. Anyway, since I don't have personal memories of it, if there is something you or some other long time NFL observer could tell us about, maybe you could start a new thread on it.

 

[sport historian]

Cool! Thanks for the info sport historian. I saw a piece on ESPN yesterday about the 1987 strike and replacement games/players. I wondered if there were any interesting racial angles to that time. I was looking at the Bears replacement roster and it was definitely whiter than the regular one. I know some interesting things happened during those 3 weeks. Anyway, since I don't have personal memories of it, if there is something you or some other long time NFL observer could tell us about, maybe you could start a new thread on it.

I don't recall any racial angle to the 1987 strike. In the early 70's, there were around 3 strikes. It was sometimes reported that black players were more pro-union than white players.

Getting back to the movie, I would advise CF members to ser their VCR's to tape "Saturday's Hero."

 

[backrow]

what's a VCR and tape?

thanks for the heads up, historian!