As a football player coming of age in the early 2000s, I found “Remember the Titans” (2000) to be required viewing.
The number of times my friends and I declared we were “mobile, hostile, agile,” called our blonde friends “Sunshine,” or yelled, “Let the boys play,” is as countless as the descendants of Abraham.
But this movie is more than fun quotes, playing football, and winning championships. “Remember the Titans” is about overcoming prejudice, loving your neighbor as yourself, and striving for perfection.
“Remember the Titans” was co-produced by Disney, so it is a sentimental, family-friendly telling of how a White school and a Black school combined to form T.C. Williams High School in 1971 and the football team that united the city of Alexandria, Virginia. The real-life accounts of what happened are slightly different from the movie, but the essence of the change that occurred is present.
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Overcoming prejudice and uniting as one human family
The overarching plot of “Remember the Titans ” involves merging two sets of High School football players into one, unified team. This revolves around two basic questions: Will Coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) accept his position as a local civil rights leader? Will Coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) be accepted into the Virginia High School Football Hall of Fame?
Every plot line in the movie serves these two major character arcs. Both characters also get their questions answered in ways they don’t expect.
Coach Boone denies his position as an influential civil rights leader in the beginning of the movie when he says to a crowd outside his house, “I’m not an answer to your prayers. I’m not a savior or Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, or the Easter Bunny. I’m a football coach, that’s all.” However, it is through him being a football coach that he unites the community and breaks down the walls of prejudice.
The avenue Coach Boone uses to unite the players is taking them to a two-week camp in Gettysburg.
At first, the camp is dysfunctional. Tensions are high. Fights break out. The young men become more divided than before.
Then, Coach Boone flips the script. Inspired by Louis Lastik (Ethan Suplee), a military kid who recently moved into town and doesn’t display any racial prejudice, Boone has each player spend time with a teammate of the opposite race and learn about their life. Through learning about each other, the team becomes more united.
What happens to the players relates to the Catholic principle of solidarity, as outlined in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, “Solidarity highlights in a particular way the intrinsic social nature of the human person, the equality of all in dignity and rights and the common path of individuals and peoples towards an ever more committed unity” (192).
Coach Yoast also begins to see Boone’s genius and changes his thinking of what it means to be a Hall of Fame coach. Later in the film, Coach Yoast is faced with letting the Hall of Fame committee coerce a referee to make the Titans lose and forcing Boone to get fired. With Boone fired, Yoast is promised a place in the Hall. Yoast stands firm on his integrity and threatens the ref with going to the papers if he does not call a fair game. The Titans win the game, and Yoast discovers there is more to being a good football coach than being in the Hall of Fame.
Yoast’s actions to stand with Boone stem from the newfound solidarity of the team, “commitment to the good of one’s neighbour… to ‘serve him’ instead of oppressing him.” (Compendium, no. 193)
What’s better than any victory or championship is the uniting of the team and showing the whole community that we are all a part of one human family, each member created in the image and likeness of God. This is reminiscent of what it means to be a part of the Catholic Church: “The word ‘catholic’ means ‘universal,’ in the sense of ‘according to the totality’ or ‘in keeping with the whole’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 830).
No matter a person’s race, country, ethnicity, or background, Christ calls all to belong to His Church, which has “the fullness of the means of salvation.”
Love of neighbor
The key to uniting the team is learning to follow the commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31b).
Some take to this process right away, but others do only after being broken down in three-a-day practices, including leaders Gerry Bertier (Ryan Hurst) and Julius Campbell (Wood Harris).
This process is true of the faith. Some can take to following God easily. Others hold back until they are broken down, at their wit’s end. Many adults fall in the latter category.
After a morning run to the field of the Battle of Gettysburg and an inspiring speech by Coach Boone, Gerry shows he is ready to genuinely learn more about Julius by getting on his white teammates for not performing to the best of their ability and congratulating Julius on a good hit. This comes with the famous “Left side, strong side” chant.
Gerry and Julius’s friendship develops powerfully over the movie, and we learn that the real-life Bertier and Campbell lived next to each other until Gerry’s untimely death.
One aspect of loving your neighbor as yourself that many miss is that it has to be rooted in truth. It follows the greatest commandment, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:29b-30).
With that foundation, loving others sometimes means not accepting their views since they are antithetical to Christ, who is the Truth (John 14:6). As Christians, this does not mean we have to stop being friends with someone because they live a different lifestyle. Still, we are called to speak the truth with clarity and compassion.
If they turn away, that is their choice. Our hope is that a seed is planted that will grow and inspire them to come back. When they do come back, it is our duty as ambassadors of Christ to welcome them with open arms, like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).
Gerry experiences this dilemma with his childhood friend, Ray (Burgess Jenkins). Despite most of the team seeing the dignity in one another, Ray refuses to give up his prejudice. Gerry mostly tolerates Ray’s behavior in hopes that he will eventually come around. That is until Ray intentionally misses a block that causes Jerry “Rev” Harris (Craig Kirkwood), the quarterback, to injure his wrist. In the professional world, we call this a self-terminating action. After the game, Gerry has Ray cut from the team.
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The pursuit of perfection
In the beginning of camp, Coach Boone says, “We will be perfect in every aspect of the game. You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts, and then you will run a mile. Perfection. Let’s go to work.”
On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a bad way to discipline the players in order to drive the players to not mess up. But then you have the case of Petey Jones (Donald Faison). Petey was a great running back at his former school, but can’t seem to hold on to the football very well under Boone’s leadership.
After watching the movie again after all these years and after 9 years of football coaching experience, Petey’s struggle resonated with me in a different way. I realized that the reason Petey (and some running backs I coached in High School Football) fumbled the football frequently because all he focused on was not fumbling the football. By honing in on just not fumbling the football, his eyes weren’t focused on reading his blockers, gaining yards, and scoring touchdowns. He could not succeed because all he focused on was avoiding failure.
Is this not also true of the faith? Like Petey fumbling the football, one can fumble the faith life because their focus is not Jesus, but only on avoiding sin. If avoiding sin is the only thing one focuses on, sin becomes the only thing one thinks about.
Jesus says in Matthew 5:48, “So be perfect,* just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This not only means avoiding sin, but also striving for perfection in our relationship with God. It means becoming fully human in the sense that we are living by God’s design for humanity. It is diving fully into the Sacraments, Scripture, praying, growing in virtue, practicing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and developing any other devotion that leads us deeper in our relationship with God. Jesus coaches us in this matter when he says in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”
Petey becomes a successful defensive back when thrown into the position during a game because Coach Yoast tells him not to just cover one player and they will worry about the particulars later. His focus was on the end goal, and not purely on avoiding mistakes.
“Remember the Titans” also offers that perfection is not something that can be achieved alone. When they are struggling against their mighty opponent in the Championship like David facing Goliath, Coach Boone starts to soften and says doing their best is all anybody can ask. Julius speaks up and says, “No, it ain’t, Coach. With all due respect, you demanded more of us. You demanded perfection. Now, I ain’t saying that I’m perfect, ’cause I’m not. And I ain’t gonna never be. None of us are. But we have won every single game we have played till now. So this team is perfect. We stepped out on that field that way tonight. And, uh, if it’s all the same to you, Coach Boone, that’s how we want to leave it.”
Our faith is personal, not private. We are not meant to live this journey alone. We have each other in the Church, and when life’s circumstances find us in moments in isolation, we also have the angels and communion of saints helping us on our journey to Christ.
Hebrews 12:1-2a sums it up well, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”
Final thoughts
Remember the Titans remains a classic, feel-good Disney film. It has Denzel Washington at his best, iconic scenes and quotes, and shows how championships can be won on and off the field.
Some scenes are unnecessary, like the Ronnie Bass (Kip Pardue) joke kiss against Gerry, its effects, and Coach Boone blaming himself for Gerry’s car accident, but those scenes do not take away from the overall impact of the movie.
The overall messages of overcoming prejudice and loving your neighbor as yourself still resonate today. Perhaps they always will.
We also learn that perfection might not be attainable individually, but if we come together as a people and keep our eyes fixed on a common end goal, we can reach it.
