You do not have to be a great fan of college football to appreciate this film but I suspect watching it might offer you a change to become a fan. Visually, the movie is quite lovely. It has a lush warm tone that is unaffected but effective.I like this film. I like the story. I like the way the film is executed. I find the story and characters credible and interesting. The contrast of themes or counterpoint of themes works well. The then young actors seem realistic. They are multidimensional. In fact, this is one of the best football movies.Dialogue is playful intelligent, and perceptive. The film uses multiple points-of-view and varies them in interesting ways. There are subjective reaction shots and asides that give the narrative great interest. I love the helmet camera images.

I was just reading one of the user comments here that hailed this as "one of the best football movies of the 90's next to varsity blues" come one people, both of these movies are terrible and in no way depict what real football is like, but only rather what a stereotype by an ignorant person would think. I can see where people would find both of those movies to have some entertainment value, but as far as documenting of depicting the true nature of the sport for people, that is ridiculous. They only football movie that i can think of as being properly done in the 90's has been Rudy. Football, and sports in general is a lot more complex than guys running around getting drunk, beating woman, laying on train track and jumping harleys as depicted in the program. Terrible, terrible movie.

The college football team of the Timberwolves is made up of students from all over America and of all sorts of background. Joe Kane is the team's poster boy and is tipped to go all the way to the NFL; Darnell is a rookie from the tough streets looking for a break with the team and his tutor Autumn and the rest of the team are made up of steroid takers, trash takers and course flunkers. With all this raw aggressions and raw ability, Coach Winters must try and hold it all together despite his own problems.It has been so many years since it came out that many viewers will have forgotten the fuss that made this film better known than it really deserved to be at the time. I won't go into it but I really fail to see (aside from the one impersonation) why a scene involving chicken with cars was cut yet a scene involving chicken with trains was left in – surely if one was unsuitable then the other should be so too? Now, over 10 years later the film remains more famous that it deserves on the back of some fortunate casting – it was the cast list that attracted to this film. The actual story is a fairly ho-hum sports movie with all the usual clichés about college sports as well as the usual semi-drama stories around the characters – overcoming bad backgrounds, party excesses, girl troubles and so on. As a basic sports movie it is enjoyable enough but it doesn't really do anything that makes it stand out from the genre.The cast is the ongoing selling point of the film and the performances are OK considering that the material doesn't give them a great deal to do other than go through the genre motions. Caan plays a grizzly old coach who has to cover the player's indiscretions and he does it well enough. Berry looks OK but has little to do in a very male dominated film. Sheffer is supposed to be the lead role but he doesn't really have the ability and he is easily swallowed up by his support cast. Epps is good and minor female roles are also given to Swanson and Adams. Bryniarski overplays his steroid addict but still works and I thought Davis showed a gentle touch when he was given the chance to in minor scenes during the final game.Overall, aside from the controversy that helped it getting a bigger audience at the time of release and the good list of names in the cast, this is actually just a competent film rather than a really good one. It has all the usual clichés that you expect from college sports films and it doesn't do anything special with them but it doesn't do them badly either. Entertaining as along as you know what to expect.

James Caan is the head of a college football team with a possible future Heisman Trophy winner for a quarterback (Sheffer). The kid is a natural, but he's a natural with problems. But this kid's problems are just a tiny few pages in the big book of the problems the coach has to face.This is a film designed to be, realistically, about the problems concerning a major college football team. I'd say that there were a few too many problems for one team to deal with, but that's what you get, I guess, when you get 80 little maniacs running around in front of a camera. A few of them have to come up with problems, otherwise we would not have a movie...Believable, no...if any coach were to come as close as Caan did to breaking the rules or drawing that kind of negative attention, then those kids would be gone...but, then, there's poetic license and we would not have a movie...Five out of ten...barely!