I just found this article online and it sickens me how they could let it go without any comments other than "perhaps wrongly." Talk about yellow journalism![img]smileys/smiley11.gif[/img]
By Rick Bird
The movie is mostly set in the Texas border town of El Paso and focuses on legendary coach Don Haskins and how he recruited the best of America's black players - often from Northern urban areas convincing them to go to school in dusty west Texas - and molded them into a dominant team.
Only in its final few minutes does the movie introduce Rupp and his UK players. It's as though the story needs a villain, and the UK team becomes just that in the national championship game that is depicted - perhaps wrongly - in a racially charged climate.
Rupp, played by Jon Voight, is often seen arrogantly sneering at the Texas Western players and giving his team a stirring mom-apple pie-and-UK pep talk. The subtle setup of Rupp as a racist is there, but on the other hand, it's a polite portrayal. No racial epithets are uttered by Rupp or the players. In another sense, the UK team simply comes off as the Goliath Hollywood needs for this story.
Numerous books, articles and TV documentaries have rehashed Rupp's racial state of mind at the time with mixed conclusions and this movie adds little to the debate, content to picture Rupp and his team as cardboard characters. But it's not hard to figure out what producers want you to think.
In one fictitious scene in which the two teams pass each other at an airport earlier in the season, Rupp asks if the black players are Don Haskin's "boys."
Rupp's son, Adolph Rupp Jr., has said his family was not consulted about the movie and has feared his father would be portrayed as a racist.
"In all the time I ever played for him he never made any derogatory remarks about black players," said Bob Tallent, one of the players on the 1966 UK team. "Why he did not recruit a black player until later in his career, I don't know. That's his business."
Rupp did not recruit his first African American player until the 1970-71 season when he offered a scholarship to Tom Payne, a 7-foot-1 center from Louisville. Rupp's defenders said he had made overtures to black players several years earlier, including Louisville's Wes Unseld, who instead played for the University of Louisville and then became an National Basketball Association star. Unseld has said he never felt Rupp was serious about recruiting him.
Black players were common by the early '60s on Northern teams, as coaches found fertile recruiting ground in the South with players often ignored by the region's schools.
Most of the surviving Kentucky and Texas Western players interviewed about the film remember race was never an issue between the two teams before or during the big game.
But the film depicts UK fans waving Confederate flags behind the UK bench and taunting the Texas Western players.
"The flag waving was not true at Kentucky," said Tallent, now working in health care in Rockville, Md. "When you went in the deep south at Mississippi and Alabama they did it, but not at Kentucky."
Producers indeed acknowledge the scene is a compressed view of some of the hate messages the Texas Western team faced at schools in the Deep South that season.
Colonel_Reb
I saw the coming atractions for that movie last week and immediately crossed it off my list of movies to see.
We all know the agenda of these movie people. I wouldn't even bother explaining anything. It's beneath us to even worry about these people who put this Baloney out.
John...
I would imagine the movie is filled with every anti-white cliche and stereotype imaginable. Someone noted on another board that the previews show the black players performing monstrous slam dunks, when dunks were illegal in college basketball at the time. (Does anyone remember the simple layup?) The blacks most likely are also imbued with all the "hip" attitudes of the present era rather than acting like blacks of 40 years ago.
No, of course there's no need to see it, but there is a need to decry more anti-white poison being fed to impressionable young white people.
Editor, The Nationalist Times, Voice of the Real America since 1985
The dunk WAS allowed the year that Texas Western beat Kentucky. It was outlawed before the 1967-68 season for about 7 years. Toward the end of the 1966 NCAA Championship game, a Texas Western player did dunk the ball. I believe that was the only dunk of the game, which I saw on TV. It was said that Adolph Rupp used his influence with the NCAA Rules Committee to get the dunk outlawed, partly out of anger at losing the 1966 NCAA Title.
Ironically, Texas Western played what was called forty years ago, a "Disciplined Offense." They won games 65-55, and 68-60, much like Ray Mears' Tennessee teams of the time. They beat Kentucky that night much the same way Tennessee did a few weeks earlier at the end of the regular season.
Originally Posted by pol. historian
You must be Sport Historian from the Caste Football board,with the great memory and store of knowledge. I better be careful what I post in the Sports section here.
Editor, The Nationalist Times, Voice of the Real America since 1985
Yes, I call myself Political Historian at this Forum. I thought that would be more appropriate. In some ways, following politics has become like following sports. People root for their "favorite team." This helps account for the increasing unseriousness of the contest between the two major parties.
It's great to have you posting here as well. [img]smileys/smiley20.gif[/img]
Editor, The Nationalist Times, Voice of the Real America since 1985
I'd just like to comment on a couple of things. First I reallythought the article by J.B. Cash in this months Nationalist Times about Spacial (Spatial) Cognition was great, as far as it went. However, It was far too narrow. Spatial Cognition goes far beyond race and certain abilities that white people possess. It has to do in some way with everything everybody does and includes perceptions, memory, judgement, focus, awareness, etc. Actually, it's a vast field.
Yesterday, in the Steelers/Colts game, there was an unbelievable event that focused Spatial Cognition, but I'm very sure that most people have no idea what they witnessed. I'm talking about the fumble by Jerome Bettis late in the game.An opposing player picked the ball up and started out for the goal. If it wasn't for the Steeler QB who had the presence of mind to have took the part of a safety and fallen back twenty yards or so after the handoff, theColt player would have most certainly have scored and the Colts would have probably won the game.
It's my opinion that 95% of the rest of the QB's in the NFL (sorry league that it is) and none of the black QB's would have thought in those terms (Take no chances, something could go wrong). Ben Rothlesberger thought of it though and made the game saving tackle.
I'm not a professor or scholar, but I was brought up in a time when just about everybodies spatial cognition was very much part of everyday life. We weren't aware of this at the time though. It was just something that was a part of each of us and nobodygave any active thought to something that wasmucha part of everybody as breathing is. Now that people live in such narrow circumstances, such a thing as witnessing normal presence of mind islooked at as something marvelous.
John T., JB was referring to Spacial Cognition, not Spatial, and he differentiated the two. You are correct, in that it was a good article and can be applied to many other areas of society.
Colonel_Reb
Yes, I know that Mr.Cash differentiated the two and he was making his point about throwing and figuring motionand timeand distance. All these things are part of this whole subject. He just reduced it toit's racial element.
My point was that whatever you choose to call it, it's almost unrecoginzed for what it is today. For instance,the game was played indoors, and viewed by people indoors, who probably seldom venture outdoors, other than go to or from their cars, thus vastly reducing their own spacial cognition.
Spacial/tial cognition is becoming more and more "obsolete" in this country as people of all races become more and more introverted and livevirtual lives, spending incredible amounts of time in from of their TV's.
Just a small point about Mr. Cash's piece. I remeber years ago, I observed a young black guy on the job attempting to throw some bolts up to a manabove him on a beam. At the time, I couldn't believe what I was observing. He had no idea of distance or how to feather his throws or the weight of the bolts, etc.I can't describe how he was throwing other than to say that it was underhand. However, the bolts were going in all directions. I firmly believe my sister could throw better thanhe was. I wasn't the foreman, but I stopped him because we were up pretty high over the street in NYC and I couldn't allow him to throw one off the building. At the time, I mentioned laughingly that the way he was throwing was the reason he was on the job rather than at Yankee Stadium.Actually, he shouldn't have been on that job either for many other reasons connected, in his case with spacial cognition.
John...
Good story John. I understand what you mean. I remember my Dad teaching me how to allow for distance when throwing things as a kid. I am very good at it most of the time, and pride myself on it. I have never noticed closely enough to see someone do that horribly, but I am sure it happens more frequently these days, especially with video games being so prevalent.
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