A friend of mine decided to ruin my childhood by telling me that most of the movie Remember the Titans movie is FAKE. It’s not surprising that Hollywood embellished their story lines a bit, but this one hurt. Growing up playing football, I loved watching this movie. I’ve memorized every line and watched it over 100 times. Coach Boone was an inspiration and Gerry Bertier was my idol.Here are some LIES about the famous Titans from the movie that didn’t happen in real life.
T.C Williams High School was integrated and not segregated when the movie takes place in 1971. In Fact, all the schools at that time had been integrated for about 5 years. This creates a real dilemma because it removes the entire plotline to the movie. Coach Yoast, the proud leader with a loud and proud daughter that’s obsessed with football is a broken storyline as well. Also, Coach Yoast never made the Virginia Football Hall of Fame because it never existed.
A few of the characters were exaggerated like Gerry Bertier’s story. Bertier and Julius Campbell were friends but not best friends like the movie would have you believe. Bertier was paralyzed but the accident happened after the season had ended. The California hipster Quarterback, Ronnie “Sunshine” Bass, with the long blonde luscious hair was embellished a bit. He’s been on record to say that he never grew his hair out and wasn’t really a hippie.
Coach Herman Boone was depicted pretty accurately, he was a rude hard a$$ that was hated by most of the league. He may have been hated because his T.C Williams Titans were never the underdogs they were made out to be. They in fact smoked everyone and in the finals of their undefeated season, they won by over 30 points. Maybe they did use the Fake 23 Blast with a Back Side George Reverse play but it wasn’t the game winning TD by a Rev.
Now that I discovered that one of my favorite movies of all time is a sham, I’ll still quote the hell out of it and won’t change the channel if it’s on TV.