Criminally Underrated is a new series here at The Nerds Templar where we take a look at movies that are, well, criminally underrated. Maybe they weren’t box office hits, but gained a cult following later on with home video or streaming. Maybe they are films from big named directors/stars that don’t get the credit they deserve compared to their other films, but are just as good if not better. For whatever reason, they are criminally underrated.
If I asked you to list the best dramatic football movies you’d probably name Any Given Sunday, Friday Night Lights, Rudy, We Are Marshall or even Remember the Titans and they’d all be great answers. But what if I told you there was a movie from 1993 starring James Caan and Halle Berry almost a decade before she won her Oscar? What if I told you it’s one of the most honest takes on college football ever put on film?
The Program is that movie and it does not hide the shady side of college football or the NCAA. Players allowed to play despite bad grades and failing exams? Check. Steroid use? Check. Underage drinking? Check. Sexual assault? Check. Boosters handing out cash for good plays and winning games? Check. The coaches, coordinators, athletic directors and boosters ignoring or covering it all up in order to make it to a bowl game? Double check.
If you aren’t familiar with the film Caan plays the head coach of the fictional Eastern State University Timberwolves with Craig Sheffer as the Heisman hopeful star quarterback Joe Kane. Omar Epps is the incoming freshman running back Darnell Jefferson and Berry plays his tutor who’s also dating the starting running back, but Epps has his eye on her. Kristy Swanson is a tennis player rehabbing a knee injury who Kane has an interest in. Other cast members include Abraham Benrubi on the offensive line, Joey Lauren Adams as Caan’s daughter who gets expelled for taking an exam for the backup quarterback and Andrew Bryniarski as the roided out, iconic character Steve Lattimer.
The movie is over 30 years old now, but if you are a fan you remember Lattimer’s sexual assault and getting run over by the running back when he’s off the juice forcing him to dope again. You remember Jefferson having to carry a football with him at all times because of a fumble in practice and the ball coming loose in the middle of class interrupting the professor. You remember Duane Davis as Alvin Mack getting injured and losing his NFL dream. If you were one of the first audiences to see the film at the theater you remember a scene where Kane lies down in the middle of the road and is joined by other players as cars drive by which was then cut from the film because people tried it in real life and someone died because of it.
I’ve enjoyed The Program since day one. I owned it on VHS and DVD which I just rewatched before writing this. It’s a film that captures an era of college football and college life perfectly. From the clothing of the early 1990s to the non-cellphone/non-social media lifestyle of the time, it reminds me of a simpler and better time that today’s generations probably wouldn’t relate to. Now NCAA players get money and can transfer for even more money, but The Program is there to show us what it was like when players and coaches did whatever was best for the program.
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