Yes, names so familiar to us Aggies. I remember just last week as my father reminisced about being in the stands at Kyle as "Skeet" tossed the winning pass to Haynes as the Aggies upset favored TCU. Man, remember that bone crunching hit Gearhart put on the TCU receiver coming across the middle that day?

OK, so what's the deal with ESPN's Junction Boys? I'm over one their website and the players have made up names. Where they just too lazy to get the guys permission?

http://msn.espn.go.com/eoe/junctionboys/cast.html

http://msn.espn.go.com/eoe/junctionboys/junction_boys.html

From the 12th Man magazine earlier this fall (October 26, 2002).

quote:

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GETTING IT RIGHT
Meeting with ESPN goes well, as Junction survivors ask for accuracy
By Homer Jacobs




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ESPN’s association with Texas A&M football goes back 17 years, when the network once televised three straight Aggie games in primetime during the month of November in 1985. The broadcasts proved to be a boon for both the A&M program–thirsting for national exposure under Jackie Sherrill–and ESPN programming, yearning for interesting storylines to jump-start its now blossoming college football coverage.

The "Worldwide Leader in Sports" returned to Aggieland in 2001, chronicling the Aggie football team with its edgy "Sidelines" shows. The 13-part series was supposed to document the lives of everyone associated with football in Aggieland, from the players to the coaches to the fans who live for Aggie football each autumn.

Yet, more often than not, the show fizzled into a poorly-produced reality show that probably belonged on MTV, not ESPN. A&M athletic department officials, including coach R.C. Slocum, felt the ESPN brass had misled A&M into thinking that the show was going to be a docu-drama about football, not the goings-on at Northgate each and every night.

While Slocum and the school ultimately appreciated some of the exposure the show provided for A&M, many Aggies remain bitter toward the network for its somewhat inaccurate portrayal of life in College Station.

Those wary Aggies also include Gene Stallings, Jack Pardee, Dennis Goehring and other members of the 1954 Aggie football team who survived the training camp in Junction under coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Many of the Junction survivors not only believe they were misrepresented in the best-selling book "Junction Boys," but now ESPN is turning the book into a cable movie, set for its premiere on Dec. 14.

Fortunately, ESPN producers called a meeting of the Junction players in College Station on Oct. 5 in hopes of alleviating any concerns about the product they hope to deliver to television screens worldwide.

"They really outlined for us what they wanted to do and what they were doing," said Goehring, who helped organize the meeting as part of the 45th class reunion of the 1954 Aggies. "We were just concerned how they would orchestrate those 94 minutes on the air and what kind of impact it would have not only on us, but Texas A&M, in general.

"We just had some concerns about how the public would view it and what impression it would make. We certainly didn’t want to have the same kind of results last year with ESPN’s "Sidelines" show. We expressed that pretty aggressively in our meeting with them."

ESPN, along with HBO Films, is producing the movie, which is currently being filmed in Australia. Tom Berenger drew the lead role as Bear Bryant, but no other familiar names like Stallings or Pardee will be used in the movie.

Instead, the film will use a composite of players to tell the story of how a bunch of green, wide-eyed farm boys bought into the fabled regimens of Bryant under the searing sun of the drought-stricken Hill Country. Of course, only 35 players actually survived the grueling, 10-day training camp after 115 players had shown up in College Station in late August to start the first season under the hard-driving Bryant.

But those 35 players would stroll into Aggie football history–and college football lore–by becoming SWC champions in 1956… and Bryant’s boys forever.

Jim Dent’s best-selling book on the Junction experience drew the ire of many of the A&M players on the 1954 team, mainly because of the exaggerations and inaccuracies they say the book created.

Goehring says ESPN assured the 13 Junction survivors who attended the Oct. 5 meeting that the movie would portray the scene as accurately as possible. ESPN producers also have called several A&M sources for interviews and to locate memorabilia that would give a true feel to the times in 1954.

"Gene Stallings and I both had some real concerns in what they had planned," Goehring added. "If it was going to be based solely upon the book, we were going to be violently opposed to that. We expressed that. They understood and sympathized with us. They called the meeting, after all."

Goehring said he read the book quickly after refusing to at first. Marvin Tate, a guard on the Bryant teams and a former A&M athletic director, said he enjoyed the "Junction Boys" book and admitted that, while the piece was exaggerated, many historical publications about sports tend to lean on stretching the truth.

"I think a little bit of it was exaggerated in certain parts," said Tate. "But you know, after 50 years when Jim (Dent) goes around and talks to these people, you have a tendency to exaggerate. You know the definition of an All-American is a guy who has been out of school 20 years and is 50 miles away from home.

"When I talk to my kids, I was a whole lot better player than I probably was. How are they going to check it out?"

The movie likely will emphasize Bryant more than any other aspect of the Junction training camp, and the legendary coach also will be featured in ESPN’s award-winning "Sports Century" series. ESPN producers interviewed the Junction players on Oct. 6 for that show, set to air on Dec. 13.

"They are going to use the Junction team and that story as the genesis for Coach Bryant who later became an icon in football," Goehring said. "It was more of a human interest story as it relates to what Coach Bryant did with his life, but putting an emphasis on the Junction camp, which really began his climb to the top in football."

The Aggies would add players like John David Crow and Jim Wright to the championship mix after the Junction camp, as A&M rose to lofty heights in 1956 and 1957. The Aggies soared to No. 1 in the nation in 1957, before word spread that Bryant would be leaving for his alma mater, Alabama. Crow would even win the Heisman Trophy that year, and Life Magazine would chronicle much of that season.

Yet, the 1954 season, in which A&M won just one game, will forever be etched in the minds of Aggies and college football fans as a defining moment for Texas A&M and Paul Bryant. And now a made-for-TV movie will try to paint the picture of one of the most intriguing football training camps in sports history.

Aggies everywhere just want ESPN to get it right this time.

"They will get lots of flak if they don’t handle it any other way," Tate said. "They’ll probably have a hard time doing anything with A&M down the line if they screw this up."

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Burdizzo,

Thanks for pointing me to Homer's article. It seems to me that if you're going to be "more accurate" you should use the guys real names.

Good lord, its called composite characters. Done all the time in Hollywood.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/sports/barron/1675624

Tampax, aisle 5.



One time, at band camp...

whasty:

I guess I am an old crumudgen. I already have it in my mind that this movie won't be as good as the novel. It usually works that way. My only legitimate complaint is that the book was about the Boys at Junction, and ESPN is promoting this movie as a story about Bear Bryant.

Zone:

Thanks for the help but I already know what a "composite character" is. Your classy post just makes me more proud of my Aggie status.

If you read the book you would understand that there were a few players that just might rise to the level of "important enough" to actually be included in real form.



[This message has been edited by whasty (edited 11/25/2002 8:46p).]

Anybody have any idea of what some of the players objected to in the book? I read it, liked it, thought it portrayed the players heroically.
What are some of their concerns?

[This message has been edited by Aggie88 (edited 11/25/2002 7:14p).]

I heard somewhere that the book really wasn't that accurate.....