Movie Review: Conjuction -- The Junction Boys didn't function

For the first time since the movie, "Forrest Gump," legendary college football coach Paul "Bear" Byrant was depicted in a movie. This time he was the protagonist in the ESPN movie, "The Junction Boys."

Bryant was played by actor Tom ("Major League" I & II, "Platoon") Berenger, and while I am not a "Bear" Byrant expert, since I was five when he died in 1983, Berenger did a pretty good job of portraying a hard nosed "Bear" Byrant. It mentions some of his past as coach at Maryland and Kentucky, and some of his life as an impoverished youth.

The rest of the movie, however, was plagued by many unrealistic things. I noticed a few of these before I saw the "Outside the Lines" special on the movie afterward. One thing was how the offensive lineman looked so skinny. I know they weren't as big as they are now, back then, but this was ridiculous. The guys they had playing the lineman, such as Fletcher Humphrys, hardly looked the part. This was even more obvious if you see the pictures of the real "Junction Boys" from back then.

"The Junction Boys," ESPN's second original movie was based on the book by the book by Jim Dent with the same name. The movie chronicles "Bear" Byrant taking over the Texas A&M coaching reigns in 1954 and him bringing his team to the distant place of Junction, Texas to practice.

The program had been a country club before he got there, so the reason Byrant buses his team to Junction to practice is to get away from that lax atmosphere. Over a hundred student athletes make the bus trip there, but the number of dwindles rapidly as many of them couldn't put up with the Byrant's tough practices coupled with the heat. Players either went to him to get a bus ticket out of Junction or ran away in the middle of the night and got their own bus ticket because they were terrified of him.

Quarterback "Skeet" Curry, lineman Johnny Haynes, and linebacker Claude Gearhart were three characters that the storyline followed. All three characters were fictional, but based on real "Junction Boys." Why they did this is I am not totally sure, especially when big names such as former Alabama head coach Gene Stallings and former NFL player and Houston Oilers coach Jack Pardee were both "Junction Boys."

In the movie, Byrant head butts a player because he wasn't blocking properly, but worse he kicks Haynes after he passes out. According to Dent, the book's author, this truly happened, although, some of the players that were there deny it happened the way it occurred in the movie, or that it happened at all. The real players said the movie was over dramatic and said that Byrant was a fair coach.

A lot of the football action looked very real and so did the 1950's uniforms and equipment, but then they showed rare footage of the 1954 Texas A&M practices on "Outside the Lines" and the players all wore red and white uniforms with numbers on it. ESPN must have used the no-number uniforms in the movie to keep the players identities secret.

The movie also portrayed the practices from being kept hidden from the media, which was untrue. The media had a few run-ins with Byrant apparently, and this should have been shown in the movie to add another interesting storyline.

The movie showed the background of the three fictional characters in their youthful lives outside of football in Texas, before they went back to school, which shows why some of the players decided not to quit. They decided not to quit because they had no where else to go and didn't want to lose their scholarships. This should have been less implied than it was.

Berenger did don the legendary "Bear" Byrant plaid hat and blazer in the scene where the "Bear" went back to Junction, Texas for a reunion with the 1954 Aggie team. He portrayed him as a man who was scared to face these men because he regretted pushing them to the extremes that he did, even though the Aggies won the Southwest Conference two years later in 1956.

"The Junction Boys," just had too much football in it, if that is possible, and not enough storyline to explain why some of the players stuck around.

ESPN's over hyping of the movie is what caught my eye, and I thought it was better than their first movie, "A Season on the Brink," because Byrant actually overcame something, unlike Bobby Knight in "A Season on the Brink."

I look forward to more movies by ESPN, preferably ones that go back in history like "The Junction Boys," where we can learn about things in sports we might not now much about.