In real life, Coach Marvin Wood was hired the previous season to replace Coach Herman "Snort" Grinstead, who was fired for ordering new uniforms against the superintendent's orders. The team's star player, Jimmy Chitwood, refuses to play for part of the season because he's so upset. In the film, Coach Norman Dale is hired to replace a well-liked Coach who dies. Was the Coach really hired to replace a former Coach who had died? I went back and made the character older, a guy with a last chance." At the time of the actual championship, Coach Marvin Wood had been a recent graduate of Butler University, where he played both baseball and basketball.Īt Butler, Marvin played on two Hoosier Classic championship teams (1947-49) when Butler defeated both Indiana and Purdue in the same tournament. If he had failed, he still had the rest of his life. Screenwriter Angelo Pizzo said the following about keeping the Coach in the movie the same age as his real life counterpart, "I wrote it that way and the movie didn't work. played by Gene Hackman who was 55 when the movie was being filmed.
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