while the site is working again…
Five points
- The idea, at least in part, seemed to be to give more attention to a team lost in the fog of racism and a riot. I never felt like that happened. I couldn’t tell you what the undefeated 1962 Mississippi team did well or who were the key players on the team. The highlights made them look like a team which made key plays to win every game, which doesn’t separate them from any team in an NFL Films post season wrap up. I learned about their achievements and I learned a little bit about who they were away from the field, but the team itself still seemed lost among everything else.
- If it wasn’t about the football team, it might have been about our willingness to remember things we’d rather not, but seemed to come down to “let’s remember what other people did while not totally holding it against them, and make sure not to look to close how people close to us acted”, which is not the most satisfying theme.
- Re-enactness usually come off to me as hokey, but how it was done here amidst all the interviews of the riot. That whole section was the strongest portion of the documentary.
- It is crazy to see a full football stadium all waving confederate flags. I don’t normally feel sheltered, but I did then. It didn’t even look like something of the past, it looked like something of an alternate time line.
- They didn’t do polls after the season! There are so many smart people in colleges and universities, and they’ve always had the dumbest ways of determining the best football teams.