Glory Road: The Mixed Legacy of the 1966 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship

It is most appropriate that the people at Disney used the Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday weekend to open Glory Road, a civil rights sports movie whose story is long overdue. It is amazing that it has taken Hollywood 40 years to portray the 1966 NCAA national championship game between Texas Western University (now UTEP), starting five black players, and the all-white University of Kentucky. Texas Western won the game, and the sport of basketball was revolutionized. The film focuses upon Texas Western coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), whose recruitment of black athletes is questioned by the university until the team begins to win.

Glory Road does many things well. The context of the civil rights era is well established in a historical montage during the opening credits. In addition, the Motown sound track provides an appropriate 1960s flavor. The film accurately portrays the basketball world of the period in which black players were a rarity in the South and Southwest. Even integrated programs practiced racial stacking in which the number of black players was limited and more “intelligent” positions such as point guard were reserved for white players. Don Haskins challenged the racial assumptions of the basketball establishment personified by Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight—perhaps better known to younger audiences as the father of Angelina Jolina).

The racial discrimination confronting Haskins and his basketball squad, with seven out of twelve players African American, is emphasized through traumatic events such as a beating in a public restroom, the trashing of the players’ hotel rooms, and spectators hurling racial insults. But the daily grind of segregation in finding restaurants and hotels to accommodate the team is largely ignored. It should also be noted that Glory Road perceives race in terms of black and white, with stereotypes of Mexican culture prominently displayed in the picture’s depiction of El Paso. For viewers who still may not comprehend the significance of the 1966 championship game, Glory Road concludes with a series of interviews featuring the real Don Haskins, former Texas Western players, and Pat Riley (who played for Kentucky before going on to an outstanding NBA career as a player, coach, and executive).

There is much to praise in Glory Road, but in the final analysis the film is formulaic, as one might expect from the Disney studio and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. In his first feature film, director James Gartner does a credible job with a screenplay which provides plenty of basketball but little character development. The stereotypical white coach provides direction for his black players who are flashy and play above the rim, but lack discipline. In this regard, Glory Road is like many Hollywood films dealing with racial themes. The emphasis is upon the white character, while blacks remain in a supporting role.

Josh Lucas does a decent job as Haskins prowling the sidelines and waving his trademark rolled-up program. Yet, we know little about his background other than he loves basketball and once coached girls. He has little time for his family, and his children disappear from the film. Mary Haskins (Emily Deschanel) is the almost stoic wife who stands by her man and never complains that he isn’t there for the family. She knows that he has more important concerns.

The players for Coach Haskins fare somewhat better. Jerry Armstrong (Austin Nichols) represents the white athletes who must sacrifice playing time for the good of the team. The black players are essentially an ensemble cast with little detailed development of individual stories. Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke) is the flashy point guard from Detroit, whose individualism must be tamed by Haskins. David Lattin (Schin A. S. Kerr) is the towering center who won’t back down from white intimidation. Rebounder Harry Flournoy’s (Mehcad Brooks) failure to hit the books is given somewhat stereotypical treatment when his mother shows up to attend his classes. Willie Cager (Damine Radcliff) suffers from a heart condition, but his mother insists that Haskins allow her son to play. Finally, Willie Worsley (Sam Jones III) provides some connection to the black power movement of the 1960s by reading Malcolm X.

Glory Road also plays a little loose with the facts. The 1965-1966 basketball season was not Haskins’s first year at Texas Western. He came to the school in 1961 and recruited black players before the championship season. Most coaches need a few seasons to develop a winning program, but this doesn’t translate quite as well into film. It is also interesting to note that in the film Haskins starts an all-black team to silence the racists. However, the real Don Haskins insists that his only motivation was to win the game by playing his best players. The historical implications of the game were only apparent to him in the weeks following the game when he began receiving racist hate mail. One also has to wonder about admissions standards at Texas Western with Haskins recruiting his athletes from the steel mills of Gary, Indiana and the playgrounds of New York City.

But Glory Road is all about the American Dream. With hard work and determination anything is possible as Haskins and his players demonstrate. The film concludes with brief notes outlining the achievements of Haskins and his players after the 1966 season. And, indeed, the accomplishments of Haskins and Texas Western did help open the doors of higher education, as well as the bankrolls of the NBA, to many deserving young African Americans. But this success comes with a price for the black community. Former Laker superstar Magic Johnson has expressed concern that basketballs are replacing textbooks in too many African American homes. There are more opportunities in law, education, and medicine than in the NBA. This short-sightedness is exploited by many institutions of higher learning which provide scholarships but pay little attention to graduation rates for their black athletes. Viewers would do well to balance Glory Road with the documentary Hoop Dreams (1994) to understand the mixed cultural impact of basketball upon the black community. Finally, Glory Road makes us feel good about ourselves. After all, this game was in 1966, and we have supposedly put racism behind us. De facto segregation and the intersection between race and class, as was so devastatingly pointed out to us by Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, shatters this myth for contemporary America. We still have miles to travel on our glory road.