Book Review

After getting this assignment I was in a little panic because I had no idea what I wanted to do. Doing a reaction paper to a movie that deals with diversity/race is not something I do everyday, but I decided to buckle down and get it done. There are tons of movies that deal with diversity, but a lot of those movies aren’t movies I’m interested in, this made my decision a lot harder. While looking through my movie collection I came across a few movies that fit the assignment description, Guess Whose Coming to Dinner, Glory Road, Guess Who, Remember the Titans, The Great Debaters, etc. After finding all these movies I decided I wanted to do something that deals with something I can closely relate to, after some great thought I went with the Disney movie, Glory Road.
Glory Road is a movie that is based on a true story that happened at the University of Texas El Paso in 1966. It addresses the events that the players and coaches faced during this time period due to racism. Once a girl’s high school basketball coach, Don Haskins was recruited by UTEP to be the head coach of the men’s basketball program. At the time of taking the job, Coach Haskins had no idea what he got himself in to. He walked himself into a program with a non-existent recruiting budget. With no money to recruit Coach Haskins was not able to attract the more popular and well-known white player to UTEP. Not willing to give up on his winning tendencies he decides to change it up by recruiting African American players from New York. In America during the 1960s race was an overriding issue in sports. Black players were openly admitted to be superior to whites in basketball, and black players clearly changed the character of the game during the decade, bringing speed, jumping ability, and showmanship. This is something that Coach Haskins seen and this is ultimately why he decided to bring them to Texas to play for him. There was stereotypical association with the players that were recruited made by the school and angry fans of the school. However, with courage, pride, and trust the players and coaches passed all the barriers of racism and made history at the seemingly subpar school that would go down in the books forever.
In the 1960’s racism was still at a high in America, though the civil rights movement was close to ending there was still a lot of things going on, freedom rides, sit in, etc. Many colleges in the 1960’s were still segregated so when Coach Haskins brought 7 black athletes a lot of people weren’t happy. In fact most of the school administration was very unhappy with Haskin’s choice to recruit so many African American boys to play basketball for their school. They do not seem to share Coach Haskin’s belief that the players who can help you achieve a victory through hard work and passion is the player that should be put on the court no matter the skin color. Haskins refused to give into the pressure and added the 7 recruits to the team of all white players. He continues coaching them on how to play fundamental basketball instead of the street style that they are used to playing. They begin their season and are very successful and continue to rack up victories.
During the season there was a lot of ups and downs, though the team was winning and maintained a winning record the hatred from fans all around the country was finally catching up to them. During a conference game VS rival East Texas State University, the fan had a rude and warm welcoming for Coach Haskins’ Miners. The fans were throwing all types of foods and beverages on the players, such as, popcorn, chips, nachos, gum, pop, candy and everything else of the sort. There were no relataliations from any of the players off the court, but on the court the Miners put a brutal beating on East Texas. After the game the players thought everything was over and done with, they thought they could go back to their hotels in peace, but they were wrong. After arriving back to the hotels the black players went back to their rooms to find that all their stuff was stolen and that their rooms had been heavily vandalized with racial slurs.
More and more frightened the black players on the team started feeling the burden on their shoulders; the team started losing their passion, which cause them to lose its last game of the regular season. The Texas Western Miners finished the regular season with a record of 23–1, entering the 1966 NCAA tournament ranked third in the nation. Running through most of the teams in the NCAA tournament, Texas Western makes it to the championship where they play the famous Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats. With a disciplined, better experienced all white team Coach Rupp believed that his opponent stood no chance. The night before the game Coach Haskins decided it was time to shake things up, he called a team meeting and told his team he intends to go with an all black starting line-up and using only the other two black players in the rotation. This would be the first time in the history of the NCAA tournament that five black players would start a game. After hearing that, the team has no idea how to react, but even the white player on the team who worked hard to get to that point accepted his decision and thought it was the right thing to do.
After the upsetting 72-65 win against the top seeded Wildcats the Miners were on top of the world, they finally proved to everyone that they were the best team. The whole season the team fought through all the adversity and all the pressure everyone put them through, some would say that all that got to the players, but other would say that it made them stronger and more reliable on each other. However the Miners did what they had to do and came out on top. Returning to El Paso the players were in for a surprise when they were exiting the plane and seen all the fans who earlier that year hated everything about the team and didn’t support them, those same fans were the ones who were surrounding the plane and cheering as the teams hoisted the trophy in the air.
After watching the movie Glory Road, I realized how much easier us African American athletes today have it, especially myself. While watching the movie I tried putting myself in their shoes and I definitely don’t know how they endured all of that, I would have broke down and gave up. I also tried comparing what it was like playing basketball then and what its like playing football here at Iowa now. There are a lot of similarities and difference between what was going on back in the 60’s and what is going on now in the 2000’s.
Playing football here at the University of Iowa is probably one of the better things that had happened to me in my short 21 years, along with the pros of being a football player here; it also has its cons. One of the cons is the stereotype that comes along with being a black male athlete on campus. Black males are often stereotyped to be athlete but mainly to be football players. I can reminisce a countless number of times where I have been walking on campus and people would come up to me and ask what position I played or what number I was on the football team, not saying that this is a bad thing but sometime is gets overwhelming. Along with the stereotype of all black males on campus being on the football team comes with the stereotype of all football players being poorly educated. This is why I sometimes deny the fact of being a football player, there is nothing worse than being treated different by your professors and classmates because they think your not smart. Another con that is not directly connected with being an athlete but just being black in Iowa is when you walk into a restaurant or bar and all the head turn and everything gets quit, this has happened to me once in the two years vie been here and it wasn’t the best experience.
Looking back at the movie, I have taken a lot of things from it, its good to see how sports have evolved from the time of Glory Road to now. I think the 7 African American athletes who played on the 1965-66 Texas Western team and the African American athlete before them have paved the way for athlete like me to be excepted in places around the world. If it were not for them being brave and going through everything that they did sports would still be segregated and black athletes wouldn’t be accepted.