Movie Review of Glory Road

Paul Krause

Dr. Kowalski

Sports

02 October 2011

Movie Review of Glory Road

At the beginning of the movie Glory Road directed by James Gartner, it showed Coach Haskins coaching a girls' basketball team. Where he lead them to the championship game, and they went on to win. Later on in the movie Haskins is criticized for being a girls' basketball coach (Gartner, 2006). Although according to ESPN's Merron (2006), "Haskins coached girl's hoops at a couple of very small high schools... But he was also coaching football and boys basketball at the same time." (Early days: Haskins takes the helm section, para. 2).

When Coach Haskins is offered a much more significant job at Western Texas University, they tell him that it not much of a basketball school and they don't have much of a budget. Best of all Haskins would not earn a normal sized salary and he would be staying in the men's dorms (Gartner, 2006). If this were true, he may have stayed in the dorms to save money and keep his players disciplined, which was explained in the film (Gartner, 2006).

Many people started to become angry when they heard that Haskins started recruiting seven black players for the Miners team (Gartner, 2006). There were really seven blacks on the team, but Haskins wasn't the first Merron (2006), says "TW had been recruiting African-Americans since 1956, when the school signed Charlie Brown." (Early days: Haskins Takes the Helm section, para. 6).

The movie shows that the coach's starting season first took place in 1965-1966 (Gartner, 2006). Although Haskins was first hired during 1961 which was when he actually started to attain players for his team (Early days: Haskins Takes the Helm section, para. 3). Also the Minors didn't exactly open with a flawless season as in the movie. In the Miners first season their score was actually 18-6 (Merron, 2006). This was the only major difference between the facts and the fictional events that took place.

As the season progresses the Minors victories have caused a lot of racism. The level of racism climaxes eventually to the point where the rooms of the players are torn up and the walls covered with less than pleasant remarks written in blood. Also later on two men jump Nevil Shed in a diner restroom and nearly bludgeon him to death (Gartner & Wilmington, 2006).

Increasingly frightened and feeling the burden on their shoulders, the team loses its last game of the regular season after the black players stop playing with passion and good team work. And so the Texas Western Miners finish their regular season of 1965-66 with a close to perfect 23-1 record. Ultimately they enter the 1966 NCAA tournament as the third