Most Egregious Historical Untruth in a Football Film

[BD Sullivan]

It's fictional, but the awful remake of The Longest Yard tries to make the case that Adam Sandler was once a big-time quarterback.

[JeffreyMiller]

I love Invinceable, but Vince Papale never scored an official touchdown. A friend at work insists that he did because it was in the film.

[Ronfitch]

In "Hot Tub Time Machine," Denver's failed drive to win the AFC Championship against the Browns (when the squirrel on the field distracted receiver Mark Jackson while trying to catch Elway's pass on the third-and-one with :37 seconds left) is portrayed as occurring in 1986.

Everyone knows that happened in January of '87.

[Todd Pence]

The biggest problem I remembered having with the movie is I couldn't keep Don Meredith and Frank Gifford straight. John Turturro was not bad as Howard Cosell, but the other guys were awful.

Brad Beyer tries, but he is so badly miscast as Meredith in that film.

But Turturro - you gotta love an actor who is versatile enough to play both Cosell and Billy Martin.

[BD Sullivan]

The biggest problem I remembered having with the movie is I couldn't keep Don Meredith and Frank Gifford straight. John Turturro was not bad as Howard Cosell, but the other guys were awful.

Brad Beyer tries, but he is so badly miscast as Meredith in that film.

But Turturro - you gotta love an actor who is versatile enough to play both Cosell and Billy Martin.

I mentioned this in the Films thread that this movie made no effort to be accurate when it came to certain events. They just threw NFL Films footage on the screen and assumed that no one would care if it wasn't accurate--and I'm not even referring to the embarrassing Chuck Foreman blunder.

[Rupert Patrick]

The biggest problem I remembered having with the movie is I couldn't keep Don Meredith and Frank Gifford straight. John Turturro was not bad as Howard Cosell, but the other guys were awful.

Brad Beyer tries, but he is so badly miscast as Meredith in that film.

But Turturro - you gotta love an actor who is versatile enough to play both Cosell and Billy Martin.

Turturro was closer to hitting the mark as Cosell than Jon Voight in the Will Smith Ali biopic. I always thought Cosell would make a great subject for a biographical film as he led a fascinating life, but he was such a unique figure in the way he looked and talked that I doubt any actor could ever pull off the role and suspend disbelief and it wouldn't become comical. With respect to Cosell, I am always reminded of the scene from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper where Woody played a modern man who was frozen and woke up a couple hundred years in the future. In the future era, the scientists had fragments of the past that they didn't quite understand, and asked him if he could help them understand what they meant. One was a clip of Howard Cosell droning on, and the future people thought this must have been some sort of torture device for disciplining really bad criminals, forcing them to watch Cosell talk continuously, and Woody Allen said that they were correct.

[BD Sullivan]

Cosell had appeared in Allen's earlier film, "Bananas":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1QVthvDhPo

Ironically, given this thread, Howard makes an error in referencing the Liston-Clay fight. He says it happened in March of 1964, when it actually happened the month before.

[Evan]

Billy Crystal used to do a pretty good Cosell imitation, I wonder if he was ever approached about playing Cosell in any form.

[rhickok1109]

Eugene Levy did a very funny take on Cosell in a hilarious skit by the Second City troupe called "Battle of the PBS Stars." Aside from Cosell, one of the features was a boxing match between Mr. Rogers and Julia Child. I'm not sure who played Mr. Rogers, but John Candy was Julia Child.

[BD Sullivan]

Eugene Levy did a very funny take on Cosell in a hilarious skit by the Second City troupe called "Battle of the PBS Stars." Aside from Cosell, one of the features was a boxing match between Mr. Rogers and Julia Child. I'm not sure who played Mr. Rogers, but John Candy was Julia Child.

Martin Short played Mr. Rogers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Pfj4MVUZE