Coach of the Year

I don't know if this type of movie was as cliché then as it seems to be now.

Considering how many "Bad News Bears" films had already been released by 1980, however, I think that this sort of movie was already a tired idea.

A former football player is partially paralyzed in Vietnam and is confined to a wheelchair. The Chicago Bears offer him a PR job but he wants to coach. At the same time, his underage nephew is picked up for armed robbery. We are told that he has already been arrested over a dozen times before and he must now serve some hard time...which turns out to be less than a year!

Of course, the kid is actually a good kid who only needs a tough male role model in his life. The same goes for all of the kids in the detention facility. Yes...even the one locked up for attempted murder! I'm sure you already know what happens so I'll try and keep the rest of this brief.

Our protagonist becomes the coach of the kids' football team. He overcomes the delinquents' cynicism and earns their respect. His team faces off against a local high school team (yeah right!) and they get their butts kicked. Now determined more than ever to prove himself a worthy coach, he demands a rematch. Will these underprivileged, scrappy kids with hearts of gold be able to improve enough to win the rematch? Awful execution of the football sequences ruins any possibility of excitement in this film. "Coach Of The Year" should get penalized for roughing my brain. 1/10

I received this movie in a pack called "50 all-star Movies" for $18 (45 cents each). Many are good. This one was terrible. It was a hackneyed retread done 1000 times before and each time better. A crippled ex-jock is dared to coach a team made up of juvenile delinquents. They learn from him that they can make it if they play by the rules. I'm sure the kids and the locals were thrilled to be included in a "real TV movie", but I can't imagine what the folks that launched and produced this project figured they could bring to this already over beaten subject. I kept waiting to see that 'new twist' or 'new angle' but, honest, it doesn't come. Avoid this movie. Forget about the 45 cents, I want the 96 minutes of my life back.

"Coach of the Year" is one of many films about returning Vietnam War veterans adjusting in life. A number of others also had handicapped veterans, such as Jim Brandon in this film. Robert Conrad plays the paraplegic veteran who gets a job as football coach for the juvenile boys prison in Illinois. The film is about his struggles to make a life for himself and to be accepted and lead these kids in something meaningful.

This is such a familiar plot that many may find it way over-used. If the story and screenplay were anything special, and/or the acting was superb, it might be a noteworthy film in this genre. But neither of those situations apply here. So, this is a so-so film that most people may find tolerable at best.

Take away the paraplegic component of the story and what you have is an Eighties version of The Rock's Gridiron Gang from last year.

Paralyzed Vietnam veteran, Robert Conrad, left behind a career with the Chicago Bears to serve his country in Vietnam where he got the spinal wounds that left him in the wheelchair. He can't get any kind of coaching job due to his injuries. When his juvenile nephew gets himself arrested however for armed robbery and sentenced to a juvenile facility, Conrad takes on the job of athletic director of the place.

Just like in the big screen Gridiron Gang, football proves to be therapeutic for both the kids and the coach who's pretty down on himself. Conrad is fine in the part and he gets nice support from an old friend Red West who plays the warden at the juvenile center. West was a regular on Conrad's Black Sheep Squadron series. Erin Gray is Conrad's sister and Ricky Paul Goldin is the nephew.

Nothing outstanding here, but it's a decent enough made for TV film.

When this movie was made in 1980, I was a teenager in the football stands playing as part of the audience. This was done at Mooseheart, Illinois. The big letters spelling out "MOOSEHEART" at the top of the stands were covered up with a banner in the movie. The director would tell us to cheer loudly at certain points, as if a touchdown was being made. St. Charles juvenile correction center is a real place less than 30 miles from Mooseheart, although I think it may have closed down recently. During one scene, they show a black woman and a white man in the audience watching the game. Right below them, you can see my sister Noel's head (she was 11 at the time). In the VHS version, I can only see the top of her head, but when I saw it on TV in 1981 I could see her whole head and my sister Jacqui as well.

I thought the movie itself was OK for a made for TV movie. Since there's already a description of the movie here, I need not repeat it. It's worth seeing at least once.