Perhaps the best football movie ever made . . .

Rating: 9/10 (29 April 2014)

. . . DRAFT DAY distinguishes itself from lesser gridiron dramas by carefully avoiding ANY football action on the part of its actors. No concussions for this crowd--No Siree, Bob! While such an inactive approach would doom a baseball or basketball flick out of the box, it turns out to be the perfect tactic for a film focused on the game with goal posts. I must confess that for the past ten years or so, if I heard that Kevin Costner was in a movie, my gut reaction was, "Yuk!" Ditto for Costner's co-star\lover, Jennifer Garner. Strangely enough, two "Yuks!" make a right here, akin to the crazed good fortune experienced by Costner's Sonny Weaver, Jr., character. Sonny avoids drafting everyone's #1 overall pick--Wisconsin Badger QB "Bo Callahan"--because of subtle doubts about whether Bo's a "good guy." It turns out his hunch probably is warranted, and he parlays his avoidance of one bad apple into picking up three future stars. This makes him even luckier than me (my football "career" consisted of just one play at linebacker, and I only scored a single "pick six"--thanks to the opposing QB throwing the ball right to me). On the flip side, during my much longer coaching career, I told just one athlete to his face that he was in danger of becoming a sociopath (due to his tendency toward chronic misrepresentation, like "Bo" in DRAFT DAY). As far as I know, he's the only one of my guys who went on to become nationally famous. Only in America.