By Rich Eldridge
This past February 2024 marks the 30-year anniversary of this sports drama movie about an established head coach whose best days are behind him and trying to regain the success after his first losing season of his then-job before he can be ousted of his head coaching job.
I was told that this movie had a lot of ideas for the basis of this film. The Pete Bell character was based off then-Indiana Head Coach Bobby Knight and his well-documented behavior on those hardwood courts and towards the press during press conference. Seeing Coach Bell kick a basketball in the air towards the upper deck was like seeing Coach Knight throwing a chair on the hardwood court during a basketball game. Before this movie went into production, we all understood why college sports teams cheat to win and how college athletics became big business. There is some speculation that the writers and producers used some stuff from the SMU football scandal (from 1985-87), including stuff written in that one book called A Payroll to Meet, used in this movie to incorporate ideas in this movie. Everything was well-put together.
The one thing that made this movie less than what it is was the critics panned this movie. Washington Post film critic Hal Hinson panned this movie very heavily the most with too much for me to write down in this column. I will point out that famed Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert gave this movie three stars (among five stars), which like a teacher giving one of his students a D (or 60%) on some kind of exam. This movie had a budget of $35 million but made $26 million at the box office.
This movie casted a who’s who in the world of basketball and film. Megastar actor Nick Nolte played the main character named Western Head Coach Pete Bell, who once was riding high as one of the elite head coaches in men’s college basketball Of course, then-Orlando Magic All-Star C Shaquille O’Neal, who would go onto be a headlining first-ballot HOF selection in 2016, played this star gigantic player named Neon Boudeaux, who could help Pete get back to the NCSA men’s basketball tournament (aka March Madness; rather than using the NCAA trademark name) . HOF PG Bob Cousy, who is not a trained actor, did a great job of playing the athletic director named Vic Roker, who is Pete’s boss in the athletic dept. We had cameos and special appearances made by former HOF F Larry Bird (as himself helping Coach Bell find Ricky Roe in his hometown of French Lick, IN) and basketball coach-turned ESPN studio analyst Dick Vitale (as himself hyping up the big game of Indiana at Western while the teams were coming onto the court). Then-Kentucky Head Coach Rick Pitino (coaching a fictitious college named Texas Western who beats Western in the beginning of this movie) and then-Indiana Head Coach Bobby Knight (coaching the Hoosiers, who were billed as the #1 team in the nation losing in upset fashion to the Dolphins before this movie would end) would play opposing head coaches against Coach Bell and the Western Dolphins. Then-Indiana F Calbert Cheaney, who would be the 1993 National Player of the Year award winner, would play on the Hoosiers during filming of this movie. Between coaching against Pitino and Knight, Pete made a recruiting trip to see Butch McCrae (played by former Orlando Magic PG Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway) play in person and ran into then-UNLV Head Coach Jerry Tarkanian and then-Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim while watching Butch play and put on another great performance. Former Indiana F Matt Nover, who played pro basketball in foreign countries on multiple continents, plays Ricky Roe, a tall farm boy basketball player who is not afraid to express what he wants Also, other actors such as Robert Wuhl (playing the recruiting services advisor) and Louis Gossett Jr (plays this school official named Father Dawkins talking to Coach Bell in his office while Pete is recruiting Butch) play a cameo role in this movie. Great casting work for this movie.
Actor J.T Walsh played this sleazy and wealthy tycoon-like booster named Happy Kuykendahl in this movie. He hates Head Coach Bell but also wants to the men’s basketball program get back into contention and be apart of the NCSA men’s basketball tournament. Happy assures Pete to not worry and let us “Friends of the Program” take care of this problem of what players or their families want. Of course, Ricky Roe gets what he wants, which was a cash gift of $30,000 (coming out of a capacity travel bag). Happy has some of his friends deliver Ricky’s father got a new tractor at their home farm. Of course, Happy becomes bigger enemies with Pete when things become worst than anticipated, such as Coach Bell facing the possibly of being exposed about his knowledge of what his players got. Also, Happy confesses to Pete that that alleged point shaving incident happened and he bought one of his boys. Walsh will never get the credit he deserves for being a great actor even after he passed away at age 54 in 1998. Walsh performed great roles in Good Morning Vietnam (1988), Backdraft (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), The Client (1994), and Sling Blade (1996).
Before seeing this movie, I didn’t know how actor Ed O’Neil could play a bad guy role in any project that he did. Keep in mind, O’Neil was still playing that lovable TV dad named Al Bundy on Married with Children while filming this movie. That TV series kept airing for two more years after this movie was released in theatres. O’ Neill played a sportswriter and investigative reporter (named Ed) trying to take down Coach Bell and the Western Dolphins basketball program. At press conferences, Ed would ask Pete tough questions that Coach Bell would hate answering and respond to, such as bringing up recruiting allegations from recent years in the first press conference scene. After getting new information from his newswire machine, Ed talks to one of his colleagues (named Charlie), tells him “he bought them”, and uses his microfilm machine to show hidden black and white photos of recruits and their families receiving those illegal inducements to Charlie. Years later, I saw Ed O’Neill play guest starring roles as bad guy characters while watching rerun episodes of Hunter and Miami Vice. Later that year (1994), Ed did another sports movie called Little Giants in which he is a former All-American football player coaching a pee wee football team in his hometown team.
I had a lot of favorite scenes in this movie. I loved the recruiting trips Pete makes to meet Butch, Ricky, and their families in their residence. I love how Butch’s mother tells Coach Bell what she would like to have if her son becomes a Dolphin, such as a new job and a house with a lawn in the same city surrounding of where Western University is located. Pete warns that single mom that there are rules about recruiting in college sports and she says back to him “a foul is not a foul unless the referee blows his whistle.” Then we transition to another set of scenes. I love how Coach Bell comes to the Roe home to eat dinner, including how they say grace before eating dinner, and then talks to Mr. Roe to hear what is on his mind. I like that lounge room (of that basketball arena, including a refrigerator with Pepsi drinks) that Coach Bell and his coaching staff have to hang out in after practice or make time to look at game films. In one of those scenes, Ricky Roe comes in to talk to Pete about what it will take to sign on and play for him, which is that $30,000 cash gift. We all have to love when Pete’s ex-wife named Jenny (played by Mary McDonell), who is a grade school teacher, tutors Neon to learn how to take the SATs, which would help allow him to attend Western if Neon could score over 700 points on that test. Of course, it is cool when Pete gets to have dinner Jenny at a popular restaurant near campus and so on. After Coach Bell resigns from his job after coaching the Dolphins to a season-opening home win over the Hoosiers, he decides to do something else. I am glad there is an epilogue about the featured characters and what happens next for them before we go into the closing credits.
Like Hoosiers (1986) and more to name, Blue Chips is one of the all-time greatest basketball movies.
