Word: vermeil
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...really did make the team in 1976, at age 30, having played just one year of high school football, plus a lot of pickup games in empty lots. He is impersonated here, quite appealingly, by Mark Wahlberg. There also really was (and is) a football coach named Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear) who came out of a college career to coach the then downtrodden Eagles and, as a gimmick designed mostly to hearten their discouraged, if ever raucous, blue collar fans, held open the open tryout at which Papale was discovered...
...spends a lot of time stoically awaiting "The Turk," the assistant coach who visits the players training camp rooms to summon them to the head coach's office for their dismissal. Happily, for him, doom does not come a-knocking at his door. As the movie would have it, Vermeil resists everyone's advice and opts for Papale's spirit over the perhaps greater skills of another player, and Vince makes the team, hanging on to the lower edges of the roster for three seasons. It is not much, but it is something...
...inherently corny. And however realistically they're shot, they are generally regarded as bad for us, encouraging false dreams of hope, even of glory. I agree - in theory. And as sports become an ever more smoothly functioning and soulless corporate machine I doubt that a modern-day Dick Vermeil would try to energize his team's fan base with an open tryout. Even at the time he was criticized...
...Dick Vermeil retired after finally winning a Super Bowl ring as coach of the St. Louis Rams in 2000. It was the perfect ending to a wonderful Cinderella story. Of course, that didn't last. Vermeil has just signed on to coach the Kansas City Chiefs...
Regardless of how well Vermeil does in KC, this development takes something away from the St. Louis story. Some happy endings should stay that way--endings. The athletic "unretirement" resembles the unwanted sequel to a movie whose original ending was satisfying enough. The modern fan becomes a perverted version of Michael Corleone--just when we thought they were out, they pull us back...