I have a soft spot for sports movies, especially true story sports movies, and even more especially (apparently) Disney true story sports movies.  Maybe it has something to do with my own “athletic” career being extremely subpar.  My one YMCA basketball season ended shortly after I got a bloody nose while attempting to grab a rebound (The injury came from the ball, mind you, not an errant elbow).  I managed to stay in Little League baseball for three seasons, finally deciding that the two or so innings I got to stand in right field and bat maybe twice because the coach was obliged to play everyone wasn’t going to make me a better player.  The only success I found in the athletic world was towards the end of high school with my church softball team, where overweight men in their late 30’s seemed amazed at how fast I could run to first base.

So until I have a child to live vicariously through, I’ll get my sports high from watching college football and Disney sports movies.  Though college football only lasts a few short months each year, luckily for me Disney churns out sports movies like butter.  (And, like butter, they are usually okay at first but kind of make you sick if you have too much of them.)

Recently I rented Glory Road, the true story of Texas Western’s improbable run to the NCAA Championship game and the history-making moment of it being the first school to start five African-American players in said game.  This isn’t the kind of movie you watch for surprises.  (Spoiler alert: they win.)  No, this is a movie that you watch for the little moments, and Glory Road does them surprisingly well.

While there are other racially-tinged Disney true story sports movies, the most prominent one is Remember the Titans.  It has its supporters and its haters, but I think we can all agree that it is far from subtle when it comes to the racism issue.  Which is fine.  While the majority of racism in our world is much more subtle, there have obviously been (and still are) blatant acts.  But if you’re going to be blatant, you really need to go all the way, and Remember the Titans is watered down.  It’s the after-school special about racism.

Honestly, I expected more of the same from Glory Road, so I was beyond shocked when the “n” word was used.  (Even in a simple discussion of the subject, I don’t feel comfortable writing it, so I won’t.)  I thought this would be the only occurence, but it came up quite a few times, including a painful incident where the players return to find their hotel rooms trashed with said word (and other deragatory phrases) written on the walls.

There’s something deeply troubling about hearing (and seeing) this word in a Disney sports film.  It’s the kind of movie you watch to feel happy, and suddenly you are thrown out of your passive state as a viewer and forced to confront the ugly issue of racism.  I’d say such an impact is exactly what the issue needs.

The filmmakers were so insistent on bringing the force of racism to the forefront that they heightened some events and even made some up.  Not a new technique for “inspired by a true story” films, to be sure, but perhaps they went a little far.  The previously mentioned hotel room scene loses some of its impact when you learn that it likely never happened.  (The school they are shown playing before the incident occured did research and learned that it didn’t happen in their town, if ever.  Needless to say, they were upset at being portrayed this way.)

It’s obviously manipulative, but all films are.  It’s the ones that take you from beginning to end without making you realize (or at least without making you care) that you’re being manipulated that are successful.  Whether or not this particular scene was necessary is debatable, but the filmmakers were forced to make something out of nothing at times.  Looking back, the mere act of starting 5 African-American players was significant.  But at the time, Coach Don Haskins says he was just playing his best players in order to win.  He wasn’t attempting to make any sort of statement, so the real-life events leading up to this moment wouldn’t be anything note-worthy.

This includes the speech the coach gives to his players the night before the championship game.  He gathers his players in the seats of the arena and rattles off all the things others are saying about how their team can’t win.  Whether or not this particular meeting actually took place, I don’t know, but if Haskins’ statement is accurate, one part definitely did not.  In the film, he tells the players that he plans to start and play only the African-American players.

I’m fine with the film heightening the significance of this decision by making it a specific choice on the coach’s part.  But the film shies away from realism when the white players dutifully accept it.  They should be furious.  They’ve finally come together as a team, and now the coach plans to not play some of his very talented white players simply to make a point?

Having them be angry with this decision would not make them racist in any way, but the film seems to be worried that it would.  Though the film does a great job for the most part, this is the one moment where the issues of racism aren’t dealt with realistically.  Because in real life, it’s not as easy as stepping aside and putting your own feelings on the back-burner simply to help the greater good.  If it were that easy, the act of starting five African-American players wouldn’t be worth making a movie about in the first place.

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