As LeMarcus James paces hotel rooms—with fire in his eyes and intensity rippling through his football-built frame—he repeats the same sermon over and over.
He isn’t preaching Jesus. But he is rehearsing a message of deliverance as he propounds the need for change to his fellow Missouri Wolves’ teammates.
LeMarcus is this year’s Heisman trophy winner, the team’s star quarterback. He’s on the cusp of becoming a No. 1 draft pick and instantly earning a cool $35 million for the privilege. And he and his fellows are all just days away from playing in the College Football National Title game that might well reveal them to be them the best team in the nation.
But that’s not what LeMarcus is speechifying about.
He’s railing against disparity. Every year there are 12,000 draft-eligible football players coming out of college, he notes, but only 300 of them end up in the NFL. Most of the remaining college athletes walk away with bad knees and nagging injuries that will plague them the rest of their lives. They give their all and get little to show for it.
At the same time, universities, college coaches and NCAA executives rake in millions of dollars. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that survives on the backs of young wannabe atheletes.
Is that fair? Is that right?
LeMarcus thumps his fist into his palm and flares righteously at the idea. For they, he and his teammates, have a chance to change all that. If they stand together as one, if they boycott this incredibly public and immensly lucrative national game in the sold-out Superdome, they can force the NCAA to blink, to break from its corrupt ways. They can demand that college players—especially the guys who’ll never get an NFL contract—get what they deserve.
With raised voice and a mighty fervor, LeMarcus declares the justness of his cause. He’s convinced that his path is sure and his reason is sound. And he’s willing to put his lucrative future on the line for it.
Now he just needs … somebody to join him.
The fact that LeMarcus is willing to risk a potential $35 million paycheck for the sake of his fellow amateur athletes is a pretty selfless and honorable choice—especially if you are convinced, as the film is, that the collegiate system is corrupt. He and his fellow player friend Emmet Sunday stand firm against what they see as injustice.
National Champions also posits that the NCAA system, while driven by money, is also inherently racist in its approach to courting and recruiting young Black athletes. That’s not a good thing, obviously. But if that reality could be revealed and changed, that would be a positive outcome, the film states.
On the other hand, the movie also acknowledges that the very system athletes are beginning to rail against also offers young athletes a chance for a free college education they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
It’s implied that Emmett Sunday has come from a very poor and “Bible Belt” based family. That faith background doesn’t always show up in his choices, but he does make biblical references from time to time. Emmet mentions the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” when talking to a man who’s had an affair with a married woman. And he and LeMarcus say, “There’s a barn in Galilee that’s filled with grain, and we’re out here starving,” while talking to fellow players about the NCAA system.
Emmett and LeMarcus pray for God to guide them as they set about their game-boycotting plans, and they lift up prayers for strength as things proceed. (Those prayers often feel at odds, though, with their choices and the language they use outside of prayer.) Early on LeMarcus and Emmett also jokingly recite Ezekiel 25:17, reenacting a scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
As players drive by a homeless tent camp, the camera catches sight of a posted sign that says, “Jesus Forgives.” Someone notes that 40,000 kids look up to sports star LeMarcus as “Jesus Christ incarnate.” LeMarcus wears a gold cross necklace.
When we first see Bailey, Coach Lazor’s wife, she’s wearing a deeply low-cut dress. Later she flirts and leaves a party with a man with whom she’s having an affair. The pair kisses and caresses each other against a wall. Then we see them in bed in partial dress—he’s shirtless and she’s in an exposed bra and loose shirt.
A college rep notes that if he were a No. 1 draft pick he’d be “bouncing ’em out of my room three at a time.” It’s later revealed that this highly paid official has been using college funds to solicit high-priced escorts.
Someone crudely refers to L.A.’s reputation for breast implants. An NCAA employee propositions a handsome male waiter. And an older man references his poorly functioning sexual anatomy.
We hear of an athlete being blinded and nearly killed in a bar fight, an event that was then swept under the rug and kept from the public—his family paid off to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars—by college officials. We’re also told of someone who committed suicide in connection to that cover-up.
Emmett Sunday makes note of cracking and creaking bone breaks he’s incurred while playing football. And we hear of other players and their injuries.
Some 60 f-words and 30 s-words are joined by multiple uses of “d–n,” “a–,” “b–ch” and “h—.” God’s and Jesus’ names are profaned 25 times (God being linked with “d–n” in 19 of those examples, and Jesus connected to the f-word twice). The n-word is spit out several times. And crude references are made to male and female genitalia.
A Missouri University party features lots of champagne, mixed drinks and hard liquor; we see everyone imbibing. The camera catches sight of bottles in player’s rooms. Emmet gulps back a big mug of beer for breakfast. We see various people swigging back glasses of alcohol in various public and private meetings, some to the point of staggering drunkenness.
Bailey lights up and puffs on what appears to be a joint. LeMarcus is hooked up to an IV by a team doctor.
During the early stages of LeMarcus and Emmet’s boycott, a paid media consultant for the NCAA states that, “You either give them what they want, or we savage them.” And then the consultant sets about to do just, maliciously digging up dirt to destroy the offending player’s reputations.
We don’t see any directly racist actions, but a number of people suggest that the amateur athletic college system itself is inherently prejudiced. Or, as one person puts it, a “modern-day slave trade.”
Accordingly, much of the film focuses on various manipulations and underhanded ploys, everyone seeming to have their own less-than-upright agenda to pursue.
A guy states that he’s bet a half million dollars on the upcoming National Title game.
There are good podium-thumping sermons and bad ones. And National Champions—a proselytizing pic that makes no bones about its desire to promote paydays for amateur athletes—fumbles toward the latter camp.
This film certainly has some solid actors in its cast, who duly hit their marks and deliver their lines. And it unfurls a clear declaration of how broken and corrupt the current collegiate athletic system is.
Ultimately, though, that message is static and play-like; a one-note shout echoing back and forth in hotel rooms and conference suites. And when that fevered finger point is also fiercely profane, it quickly wears thin. That vulgarity clangs harshly against other moments where God’s word is referenced, if not always obeyed.
National Champions has passion to spare, but it’s more diatribe than compelling story.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
