National Champions (2021)

During the week of the national championship, Heisman winner Stephan James announces he is enacting a player strike against the NCAA. I have complicated, but mostly disinterested, feelings regarding compensation for student athletes and this film didn’t do anything to get me on their side. While there are some good ideas thrown out, like taking care of athletes who experience career ending injuries, it comes across that James might not be acting of his own volition but instead is just a pawn in a pissing contest between his coach J.K. Simmons and labor dispute education professor (Do universities really have such classes and is it smart to send a motivated football player to it?) Timothy Olyphant who is shtupping Simmons’s trophy wife, Kristen Chenowith. It’s details like that that overwhelm the movie. There are multiple bedroom scenes between Olyphant and Chenowith which do little to further the plot until it allows for dumb reveals toward the end. Even when relevant details like the disproportionate salaries of various NCAA officials are brought up, nothing is done to explain where the rest of the extraordinary football earnings go. There are so many similar subplots thrown out as if the writers were trying to just see what would stick, but offered no follow through.