Glory Road

"Glory Road" is like other sports movies, and different from all of them. It is the same in the way it shows a rookie coach with an underdog team; he finds resistance from his players at first, he imposes his system and is a merciless taskmaster, and do I have to ask if they win the big game? This has been the formula for countless films, and "Glory Road" will not be the last.But the movie is not really about underdogs and winning the big game. It's about racism in American sports, and how coach Don Haskins and his players on the 1965-66 basketball team from Texas Western University made a breakthrough.In Texas at that time college basketball teams had been integrated, but there was an "informal rule" that you never played more than one black player at home, two on the road or three if you were behind. After Texas Western won the 1966 NCAA championship with an all-black team on the court, by defeating an all-white Kentucky team coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp, the rules were rewritten, and modern college and professional basketball began.
"Glory Road" is an effective sports movie, yes, but as the portrait of a coach and team and the realities of administrations and booster clubs in a state obsessed with sports.Where it succeeds is as the story of a chapter in history, the story of how one coach at one school arrived at an obvious conclusion and acted on it, and helped open college sports in the South to generations of African Americans.