Jack Black to produce movie based on NYT Sports article

This is a little strange...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003221431

Universal Pictures has picked up movie rights to a New York Times article with the headline "In College Football, Big Paydays for Humiliation" for Jack Black to produce.

The Aug. 23 article by Pete Thamel looks at a college football practice in which teams pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have weaker teams play them for easy wins. The movie would be a lighthearted take.

 

How much will he have to pay for using Temple's logo?

 

Like San Jose State playing betwen the hedges?

Like (RIP) Long Beach State playing at the Big House?

 

And like Cal State Fullerton (RIP) playing Hawaii, Georgia and LSU in successive years, all for that guaranteed $200,000 payday my intrepid alma-mater prostituted itself to get -- just for the privilege of getting beat by a combined score of 119-0.

This, a couple of years after we went 11-1 and should have gone to a bowl game with Damon Allen and Mark Collins. But candy-ass Iowa wouldn't play us. So the late, unlamented Freedom Bowl took Texas and watched Chuck Long pass for 1,000 yards or something on them.

But I digress. Did a story on this subject 19 years ago for the cable station attached to our school. Our asst. AD at the time and our head coach at the time (Gene Murphy) were matter-of-fact about the whole thing. One of those you-do-what-you-have-to-do things.

 

The Long Beach game at Michigan was interesting. It was circa 1985, maybe '86 or '87. The Wolverines had 1st and goal at the 1, but thet 49ers held on 4 straight running plays early in the game.

That would be the last highlight. Final: 49-0. I thought it was balls, though, for LB to play Michigan. Too bad George Allen died when he did. He wouldn't have turned Long Beach into a power or anything, but he brought such a passionate vigor to town.

 

BTW, anyone else find humor that Perry "White" started a thread about Jack "Black?"

 

Since Tulane plays Auburn in two weeks, I guess I can scratch my alumni donation for the year.

 

Come to think of it, the story of Allen at LBS belongs on the sports stories that would make a good movie thread.

 

Pope, yes it does. I grew up in LB and loved it when he arrived there. He'd call Long Beach State "the Harvard of the west," which made everyone chuckle. But the day he died, so did Long Beach State football. No, really. They killed the program the next year.

 

No. Sorry.

 

It happens.

Every day's a fishing day. But not every day's a catching day.

 

I went to West Texas State back in the '80s when it was still D-IAA and a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. In 1982, the Buffaloes played Floriday at Gainsville for a big paycheck. The Gators won the toss and elected to receive, so WT pulled an onside kick on the opening kickoff and recovered. First play, TD bomb. Lineup for the kickoff and do the same thing: onside, bomb, WT 14, Florida 0.

Final: Florida 76, WT 14.

But for about 48 seconds, the Buffs were taking it to them.

Back on campus, we spent way too much time discussing whether the beating would have been so bad had WT not tried to put up a fight. You do this kind of stuff when you go to college in Canyon, Texas.