Van Wilder

In today’s installment of Ivy On Celluloid, I’ll be taking a look at National Lampoon’s second most famous college-set comedy: 2002’s Van WIlder.

The plot of Van Wilder is summarized on IMDb as follows:

The most popular kid on campus meets a beautiful journalist who makes him realize that maybe he’s afraid to graduate.

Van Wilder was the directorial feature debut for Walt Becker, who has gone on to direct other comedies like Wild Hogs, Old Dogs, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. The screenplay was written by the duo of David Wagner and Brent Goldberg, who also penned the screenplays for The Girl Next Door and Underclassman.

The cast of the film is headlined by the charismatic Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Green Lantern, Detective Pikachu), along with Tara Reid (Sharknado, The Big Lebowski, Alone in the Dark), Kal Penn (House), Tim Matheson (The West Wing, Animal House), Emily Rutherfurd (Pain & Gain), Paul Gleason (Die Hard, The Breakfast Club), and Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad).

The inspiration for Van Wilder is rooted in the experiences of the comedian Bert Kreischer during his time at Florida State University, during which time he was named the “top partyer at the Number One Party School in the country” in a 1997 Rolling Stone feature. The article features a number of less-than-flattering testimonials and descriptions of Bert’s lurid behavior, and  concludes that his reputation on campus over six years has made him “a figure of vaguely totemic proportions.”

“I haven’t met Bert yet, but he’s well-known at the Tri Delt sorority. ‘If you ever meet a guy named Bert, run like hell.’ That’s what they said. ‘Run. Like. Hell.’”

Van Wilder was made on a production budget of $5 million, on which it took in a lifetime gross of just over $38 million, making it quite profitable. Ultimately, its success spawned two sequels: Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, and Van Wilder: Freshman Year.

However, as with many comedies, the reception to Van Wilder was split between critics and audiences. Currently, it holds an IMDb user rating of 6.4/10, alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 19% from critics and 73% from audiences

To begin the higher education analysis of Van Wilder, I’d like to start with the host institution for the story: Coolidge College. This institution, as is often the case with higher ed films, is entirely fictitious. However, two real institutions served as filming locations – the University of California – Los Angeles and California State University – Northridge. UCLA was the filming location for most of the campus sequences, whereas Cal State Northridge provided the gym for the basketball scene.

The mascot/nickname for Coolidge College is the Chickadees – a group of small bird species in North America that are known for their unique vocalizations. While chickadees are not particularly imposing, many colleges have confounding mascots and nicknames – there’s the University of California – Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, the Evergreen State College Geoducks, the Coastal Carolina University Chanticleers, and the St. Louis University Billikens, among many others.

One of the first scenes in Van Wilder shows a suicide attempt, as a student jumps from an academic building on their university campus. I covered the topic of college student suicide extensively in my coverage of Dead Man On Campus, but this sequence got me curious as to if students are known to jump off of campus buildings. In 2014, a University of Pennsylvania student died after leaping from a campus parking garage. In 2017, a student at the University of Tennessee died after jumping off of a six-story parking garage on campus. Again in 2017, an exchange student at Columbia University died after jumping from a dormitory building. In 2018, a University of Louisville student died after jumping off of a parking garage across from the campus. Unfortunately, it seems that jumping from campus buildings as a means of committing suicide is not unheard of.

A handful of times throughout the film, Van refers to his major as “Leisure Studies.” This is an actual major offered at many institutions, including California State University – Long Beach, University of Mount Olive, and Southern Connecticut State University. From what I can tell, these programs typically prepare students for careers in sports management, the management of recreation centers, recreation therapy, general event management, and tourism. This notably fits Van’s displayed skill set of planning and executing large-scale events, such as athletic-based fundraisers and intricate parties.

Tara Reid’s character in the film writes for Coolidge College’s student newspaper, and takes the position very seriously – it is stated that a reporter previously in her position went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, which she aspires to herself. She and her editor hope that an expose on Van Wilder will attract critical attention to the newspaper.

I decided to look into the world of college journalism, and there are a number of annual awards for exceptional individual stories, reporters, and papers. In particular, he Associated Collegiate Press has annual awards for exceptional cartoonists, reporters, individual stories, designers, and photographers who contributed their works to college newspapers, as well as Pacemaker Awards for overall outstanding work for college publications – magazines, newspapers, yearbooks, and online news outlets. Looking through the most recent ACP award winners for individual stories, most of them are on serious social topics – food insecurity, sexual assault on campus, student mental health, the opioid epidemic, institutional corruption, and misconduct among administrators and faculty. I’m not so sure that an expose on a local party animal would yield much critical attention, going by the stories that are most lauded.

A recurring gag throughout the film revolves around a specific reserved campus parking spot for a faculty member. In my time spent on a number of different college campuses, I’ve never once seen a parking spot reserved for a specific faculty member – typically, they have a similar permit to students and staff. For instance, here is information on faculty parking from a handful of universities, which all require paid permits for zoned parking – University of Tennessee – Knoxville, University of Houston, and University of Arkansas. From what I can tell, these paid permits are pretty much the ubiquitous policy for faculty members at universities.

During the sequence where Van Wilder’s father financially cuts him off, he claims that taking seven years to complete undergraduate coursework is unacceptable:

“Seven years and no degree, you should have graduated twice by now…if you don’t have your doctorate you haven’t done enough”

Clearly, Van’s father had high expectations – he anticipated Van graduating early, not hanging around on campus for the majority of a decade. However, his thinking is indicative of a pretty significant misconception about how long it takes many students to complete coursework at four-year institutions. Institutions like the National Center for Education Statistics and National Student Clearinghouse Research Center track four-year college graduation rates primarily at the six-year mark – and those numbers aren’t perfect, regardless of institution type. Assuming Coolidge College is a four-year, private non-profit college, it is likely that (according to 2016 data) 1 in 4 enrolled students at the college won’t complete their degree in six years – Van isn’t in as much of a minority as one might assume.

One of the key supporting characters in the film is Taj – an international student at Coolidge College who appears to have not adapted well to the American college experience, particularly in regards to his initial expectations of sexual activity, issues with his personal anxiety, and general loneliness. I decided to dig around for some information on international student experiences, to see if Taj’s depiction is consistent.

There are a number of qualitative studies that have been done with the goal of understanding adjustment issues for international college students at American universities, including one from the Ohio State University that concluded that interviewed international students experienced significant problems in their coping with US education, cultural differences, and language challenges. Other studies have focused on specific groups of international students, such as African or Chinese/Taiwanese international students, and found that social challenges were common. However, I wasn’t able to find anything written about international college students and sexuality – the most I was able to dig up was an informational packet on supporting LGBT international students, which includes the following:

For LGBT international students coming to the United States from cultures where exploration of one’s sexuality or gender identity is discouraged or unsafe, this opportunity to develop and explore in a supportive environment can be revolutionary.

From what we know of Taj, this is the basis of his decision to come to college in the United States. Though he is not shown to be LGBT, his primary motivator is certainly the “exploration of…sexuality.” What is particularly interesting about this, however, is that American colleges have a uniquely sexual reputation in his mind, to the point that it influenced his enrollment decision. As far as I know, there isn’t any data on sexual activity that can be compared between universities globally to prove his assumptions correct or incorrect, but there is some data about sexual activity and colleges in the United States.  While this doesn’t confirm or debunk Taj’s sexual assumptions about American colleges, it is interesting data that could be construed as support for the view of these institutions as sexual exploration centers. That said, I would wager that Taj’s view of the college experience is the result of media portrayals more than anything else – the proliferation of raunchy sexual comedies like Animal House or Van Wilder, for instance.

During the pep talk at the Coolidge College basketball game, one of the players asks Van if the victory party will feature students (“freaky honeys”) from  Mount Holyoke. Mount Holyoke College is a real, notable women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

At one point in the film, Taj catalyzes a dormitory fire through a mishap with romance-inducing candles. It is pretty much common knowledge that candles are not allowed in dormitories for this very reason, which has inspired numerous on alternatives. Despite this, candles are still a frequent cause of fires in dorms – in just the past year, fires at Boston University, Bowdoin College, and Colby College have been attributed to errant candles use. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 87% of reported dormitory fires have explicitly involved cooking equipment, but candles are also cited as a leading cause of accidental fires in dorms.

On top of planning parties and fundraisers, Van Wilder is also shown to be a general problem solver for his fellow students. At one point, a student comes to Van complaining of having acquired an STI – something that is not treated as out of the norm by Van. Young people between 15-24, which includes traditional college students, are known to have high-rates of sexually-transmitted diseases, which poses a challenge for colleges. In 2016, the University of Oregon launched an STI Screening Clinic as part of the University Health Center, in order to provide convenient and affordable testing for students. Free distribution of condoms is a common practice at many universities as well, including condom delivery services at schools like Boston University, Brown University. and Elizabethtown College. The proliferation of STIs on  college campuses has also inspired the condom company Trojan to compile a campus sexual health ranking system.  The 2016 report card featured the University of Georgia and Oregon State University at the top of the list, and schools like Brigham Young University and the University of Notre Dame at the bottom.

One of the most curious sequence of events in the film involves Van Wilder’s student records. In one scene, Tara Reid’s character is handed all of Van’s disciplinary records by a university official without so much as showing identification. However, when she later goes looking for Van’s official transcript, another administrator stonewalls her, saying that divulging that information would be illegal. Ultimately, Reid’s character steals Van’s record after setting off a fire alarm. These sequences touch on the details of FERPA – the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act – which is a federal law that was passed in 1974, and applies to any education institution that receives federal funds. FERPA specifically relates to student records and privacy, and makes it clear that student disciplinary records are protected information that require the student’s consent to release, except in very specific cases:

A postsecondary institution may disclose to an alleged victim of any crime of violence or non-forcible sex offense the final results of a disciplinary proceeding conducted by the institution against the alleged perpetrator of that crime, regardless of whether the institution concluded a violation was committed. An institution may disclose to anyone—not just the victim—the final results of a disciplinary proceeding, if it determines that the student is an alleged perpetrator of a crime of violence or non-forcible sex offense, and with respect to the allegation made against him or her, the student has committed a violation of the institution’s rules or policies.

Based on these limited exceptions, it is fair to say that Tara Reid’s character should not have been given Van’s disciplinary records, and that the administrator committed a FERPA violation by doing so. However, FERPA violations are not as uncommon as you might assume: universities are in a constant struggle with administrators and professors in an attempt to keep everyone within FERPA guidelines with their communications. FERPA trainings are commonplace on college campuses, and other resources include tutorials, walkthroughs, and FAQs for staff and faculty members at universities. This is because, particularly thanks to modern technology, the scope of what is a FERPA violation is broader than you might first assume – even emailing a graded paper directly to a student is a FERPA violation, as email is not considered a secure medium for transmitting protected information. Even the fact that Reid’s character was able to steal Van’s physical records means that they were not sufficiently secured, which is another violation – typically education records are encrypted and stored electronically for this very reason (though digital vulnerabilities also exist).

Late in the film, Van Wilder is expelled from Coolidge College after a number of minors get drunk at a party he hosted. Ultimately, he decides to appeal the administration’s decision, which leads to a hearing with a disciplinary committee, shown to be made up of a combination of faculty, administrators, and students. From what I can gather, committees like this are pretty commonplace, and feature a similar makeup of faculty, staff, and students. Princeton University’s Committee on Discipline, the University of Chicago’s University-wide Student Disciplinary Committee, Bates College’s Student Conduct Board, and Morehead State University’s Student Disciplinary Committee all have similar guidelines, with some degree of variation.

As part of the ruling of the disciplinary committee, Van is required to complete his degree and graduate, “auditing” the final classes he needs to graduate. This phrasing is particularly peculiar – a class audit is specifically taking a course without receiving a grade or credit, which means it would not contribute towards the achievement of a degree. This mechanism – in which a student blows through a bunch of classes in a montage at the last minute, as a sort of gauntlet challenge – seems to pop up in other education-based movies pretty often, but as far as I can gather, it isn’t based on anything factual.

When Van Wilder first faces financial hardship following being cut off by his father, he initially earns his tuition money by pioneering a service called “topless tutors,” in which he convinced employees of a local strip joint to act as tutors with a risque incentive system. Ultimately, this service is put to an abrupt end, but it tangentially hits at a very real issue: college students turning to sex work to cover costs. While Van’s situation is not the way student sex work is usually envisioned, what Van did could fall technically under the terminology of sex work, as he is shown to be managing the logistics of the program.

In general, I think that Van Wilder is a shockingly heinous movie – it constantly trivializes serious issues like suicide and rape, expresses contemptuous misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, and seems to relish in it all as a collective badge of honor. As a portrayal of higher education, it does touch on a handful of interesting topics, but almost always by complete accident as it shambles through stereotype-laden dialogue and caricatures with crass disregard. For the most part, the movie is a dated, nearly-unwatchable atrocity of a film with little overall value. It does speak to Reynolds’s charisma that he has gone on to the career that he has now, and was able to squeeze an ounce of charm from this desolate, hateful stone of a movie. It goes without saying that this is yet another college movie that I don’t recommend revisiting – it might be the most odious of the bunch I’ve covered so far.

So Undercover

Today, in my continuing series about portrayals of higher education on film, I’m taking a look at the Miley Cyrus vehicle So Undercover.

The plot of So Undercover is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A tough, street-smart private eye is hired by the FBI to go undercover in a college sorority.

So Undercover was directed by Tom Vaughan, who has primarily worked on television shows like Big Love, The Royals, Victoria, and Press. The screenplay was provided by Allan Loeb (Collateral Beauty, The Switch, Here Comes The Boom) and producer Steven Pearl (New Amsterdam).

The cast of the film is headlined by pop star Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana, Black Mirror) and Jeremy Piven (Entourage, Smokin’ Aces, PCU, Car 54 Where Are You?), with supporting roles filled in by Mike O’Malley (Glee, Justified, My Name is Earl), Eloise Mumford (Fifty Shades of Grey), and Megan Park (Diary of the Dead).

So Undercover went through some hiccups in regards to distribution – after a number of delays and rights exchanges, it never ultimately made it to theaters in the United States, though it did in a handful of international markets. For domestic audiences, the film was only available direct-to-video.

The reception to So Undercover was generally negative: it currently holds an IMDb user rating of 5.1/10 alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 6% from critics and 49% from audiences, though the direct-to-video release meant that not very many people ever even saw the film.

To begin the higher education analysis of So Undercover, it is worth digging into the host institution for the story. While the school is never named, it is clear from dialogue and external shots that the setting is New Orleans, LA, and the majority of on-campus shooting is done against the backdrop of Tulane University’s scenic campus in uptown New Orleans. The institution itself is never given much detail, but the specific setting and appearance make it clear enough that it is a vaguely fictionalized stand-in for Tulane.

A number of times throughout the movie, Miley Cyrus’s character is shown to have guns in her sorority house room, which shocks a number of her sisters. Laws regarding the possession of firearms on college campuses vary by state – in some, guns are outright banned, while others only permit their presence when secured in a locked car in a parking lot. Other states, like Utah, allow for open and concealed carry at public higher education institutions. In Louisiana, the law on the topic applies to both public and private higher education institutions, and reads as follows:

Carrying a firearm, or dangerous weapon as defined in R.S. 14:2, by a student or nonstudent on school property, at a school sponsored function, or in a firearm-free zone is unlawful and shall be defined as possession of any firearm or dangerous weapon, on one’s person, at any time while on a school campus, on school transportation, or at any school sponsored function in a specific designated area including but not limited to athletic competitions, dances, parties, or any extracurricular activities, or within one thousand feet of any school campus.

However, there are a number of exceptions to this rule. Notably, one of these states that “a student who possesses a firearm in his dormitory room” is exempt – while I am not a lawyer, I suspect this wording would include a personal sorority house room. Thus, according to Louisiana law, Hannah Montana is a-ok to be armed in her sorority house. That said, there have been a number of real news stories of Greek organizations having firearms issues in their houses. In 2006, the investigation of a shooting led to a search of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity house at Oregon State University, which yielded over two dozen firearms throughout the house.

After a Corvallis man, Dennis Sanderson, was shot Oct. 14, in the alley behind the house, police searched Alpha Gamma Rho and found more than two dozen weapons including .22-caliber rifles and 12- and 20-gauge shotguns.

In February of 2018, a fraternity member at Washington University-St. Louis was suspended and removed from campus after an AR-15 was discovered in his possession at his fraternity house, in violation of school policy. Other firearm incidences have occurred involving fraternities at Yale University and Kettering University. Fraternity hazing incidences involving firearms have led to disciplinary actions at the University of Central Florida and Oklahoma State University. However, as you may notice, these are all specifically involving fraternities – I wasn’t able to dig up any particular instances of sororities or sorority members being disciplined for possession or use of firearms. This is perhaps not surprising – Pew Research Center data indicates that women are more likely to become gun owners later in life, and are less likely to keep their guns easily accessible and loaded in their homes.

The central plot of the So Undercover revolves around the FBI needing to embed on a college campus for a case. In truth, it is not unheard of for the FBI to be active on college campuses. Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities by Daniel Golden is a book that spotlights the actions of intelligence agencies on American college campuses, including research espionage by foreign powers, attempts to turn foreign students into American assets, and faculty acting as informants on all sides. The FBI was also instrumental in the “Operation Varsity Blues” investigation, which uncovered widespread college admissions fraud at universities like the University of Southern California, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown.

What I have not been able to dig up, however, are any examples of the FBI infiltrating a sorority. The closest thing I found was the story of Tracy Walder, who went from being a sorority member at the University of Southern California immediately into a career in CIA counterterrorism after graduation, and eventually a position at the FBI. Her story has been turned into a forthcoming book, The Sorority Girl Who Saved Your Life, which is set to become a television show at ABC.

At one point in the film, there is a passing reference to sorority members having eating disorders. A 2013 article cited that eating disorders affect 12-25% of college women, and that there is a positive correlation between sorority membership and eating disorders. In the study, the authors sought to confirm a causal link between the two. However, they concluded the following:

we confirm that sororities exert a negative effect on the weight-related behaviors of their members. However, females who are more resilient to these outcomes self-select into sororities, implying that females in sororities are less adversely affected by them than a female who was randomly selected to join a sorority would be.

Another study, however, found that their “results…suggest both that sororities attract at-risk women and that living in a sorority house is associated with increased likelihood of disordered eating.” The topic is very much in the public consciousness as a real issue facing college women and sorority members, and will almost certainly spur further research.

The sorority at the center of the story is named Kappa Kappa Zeta, a wholly fictitious organization. However, there is a Kappa Kappa Zeta website, which features stills and a gallery of characters from So Undercover in a facsimile of a real sorority website.  The real-life inspiration for the sorority, judging from the name, is likely Kappa Kappa Gamma, a prominent sorority located at roughly 170 campuses in the United States.

One of the characters in the film, who doesn’t quite fit the traditional mold of the sorority, claims that the organization leadership “had to let me in,” due to her being a “legacy.” As she explains, her mother was a member of the same fraternity, meaning that she was guaranteed membership. In reality, this isn’t always necessarily the case – different organizations treat legacy benefits differently. Alpha Gamma Delta only guarantees legacies “a courtesy invitation to the first invitational round,” and no assurances of acceptance. Delta Delta Delta leaves legacy treatment policies entirely to the local chapters,  giving them “full discretion over how they treat legacies, so long as a specific policy is clearly outlined in the collegiate chapter policies.” As an article on TotallyTailgates claims, legacies are no longer generally given the latitude they once received for membership, primarily due to a lack of available slots for membership and an increasing popularity of Greek organizations.

Miley Cyrus’s character in the film operates under the cover story of being a transfer student from another chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Hawaii. As far as we see, she is accepted into the sorority without any issue. However, as with the legacy point, this doesn’t seem to be how the process typically works now. I haven’t been able to dig up much information on the topic, but based on the responses to a reddit question in r/GreekLife, typically a vote is taken as to whether a transfer student is accepted into the chapter at their new school. However, as with most policies, this can vary by organization and chapter.

One member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority is shown at one point to be pregnant. I did a little bit of searching for studies on the perception of pregnancy among sororities, and wasn’t able to find anything. However, I did come across an interesting 2010 thesis on communication in sororities about condom use and sexual activity, that mentions the declining sexual health and rising pregnancy rates of teenage women.

The head of the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter in the film, Sasha, is said to have taken three years away from school before starting college. This means that the character is on the cusp of being classified as a “nontraditional student.” This term, which is problematic in many ways, is also not well-conceptualized. Typically it is loosely defined as an umbrella term for college students outside of the 18-22 age range, but it is often expanded to include students along a number of other classifications, including those who are enrolled on a part-time basis, those who work full time or are financially independent, and students who defer college admission immediately after finishing high school. In the most wide usage of the term, Sasha qualifies as a non-traditional student. This got me to wondering: do nontraditional sorority sisters experience sorority culture differently? Are they particularly more or less likely to be involved?

To my surprise, I couldn’t dig up much information about this topic. However, there is one study that indicated that surveyed non-traditional students in Southern California who transferred into four-year colleges from community colleges were comparatively more satisfied with fraternities and sororities than traditional students. However, that is based on just one question from a much larger study, and fraternity/sorority satisfaction rates weren’t high among either group.

At the beginning of the film, quite a good deal of time is spent assembling the sorority wardrobe for Miley Cyrus’s character, to her dismay. However, the attention to detail in this segment is important: research has indicated that dress customs are an important means by which sororities communicate membership and establish collective identity. Likewise, sorority dress customs have been cited as a means of instilling idealized, traditional gender roles among new members. Essentially, if Cyrus didn’t perfectly look the part, matching the chapter’s conception of femininity, her cover as an existing member from another school was likely to be blown.

Similarly, a significant amount of time is spend acquainting Cyrus’s character with the slang and language norms of the sorority, which she is shown to struggle with throughout the film. While I found far less than I expected about language norms in sororities, I did find a dissertation written about the importance of language as a resource for the formation and expression of ethnic identity among the members of an Asian American college sorority – which I think is still notable and relevant. A book, Slang & Sociability: In-group Language Among College Students discusses the specific use of slang to delineate sub-groups within colleges, including sororities and fraternities. This ties in to the emphasis on slang terms in Cyrus’s sorority preparation, with terms like “amaze-balls” to flesh out her cover with the sorority chapter.

Overall, So Undercover isn’t a good movie, but it was far more charming than what I anticipated. Miley Cyrus is clearly a gifted performer, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see more serious acting from her in the future (her upcoming role in Black Mirror seems to be indicative of this). Jeremy Piven channels his typical douche-bag energy effectively into this role as well. The humor, however, is often mean-spirited, and places targets on the various sorority members. A number of moments feel misogynistic or just generally punching-down at young women, but the wild tone shifts are dramatic and weird enough to leave those concerns quickly in the rear view.

As portrayal of higher education, I can’t speak to the veracity of the sorority portrayal beyond the research I could dig up. However, the concept of the story is interesting, and touches on a handful of real issues in the sphere of higher education, such as the entanglement of intelligence organizations with various collegiate institutions. As far as a recommendation goes, I think this movie has been rightly forgotten, and isn’t particularly worth seeking out.

Blue Chips

In honor of tonight’s conclusion of the 2019 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, today’s installment of Ivy On Celluloid is going to take a look at director William Friedkin’s 1994 college basketball tale, Blue Chips.

William Friedkin is often cited as one of the key luminaries of the New Hollywood era of film, with classic works like The Exorcist, The French Connection, and Sorcerer to his name. However, since the late 1970s, his works have garnered far less critical and popular attention, outside of sporadic praise for films like To Live and Die In LA, Killer Joe, and Bug. Among his less analyzed films is Blue Chips, which connects his film work to his passion for the sport of basketball, through a fictional portrayal of desperately rebuilding college basketball program.

The screenplay for Blue Chips was written by Ron Shelton, who has carved a career niche for writing up sports-based tales like The Great White Hype, Bull Durham, Tin Cup, and White Men Can’t Jump.

Perhaps due to connections through Friedkin and Shelton, both noted sports fanatics, Blue Chips is littered with notable basketball figures, in both character and cameo capacities. The most notable of these are Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway, who were then early-career basketball stars, in roles as the eponymous “blue chip” talent prospects.

While Hardaway and O’Neal adequately perform their roles, the heart of the film and focus of the story is Nick Nolte’s portrayal of an aging college basketball coach, facing fading glory and mounting pressures to re-capture success.

Despite best efforts, Blue Chips was ultimately a financial flop, as it only took in $23 million on a estimated budget of $35 million. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post referred to it as “a dreary lecture about ethics and moral corner-cutting.” However, one of its few critical advocates was Roger Ebert, who remarked that it was “a morality play, told in the realistic, sometimes cynical terms of modern high-pressure college sports” in his three star review.

In 2019, Memphis Commercial Appeal interviewed Penny Hardaway, who is now the University of Memphis basketball coach, about his experience with the making of Blue Chips.  Apparently, the reason for hiring basketball players into key roles was because of Friedkin’s staunch desire to feature actual basketball action in the movie, rather than using creative editing, stunts, and camera trickery. Thus, no actors could be found who could pull off the basketball demands of the roles.

“It was a good movie,” Hardaway said. “Not just because I was in it – it was a great basketball movie. I really liked that they just allowed us to play basketball. It wasn’t much acting. It was playing ball.”

Notably, the chemistry between Hardaway and Shaq that was built over the making of Blue Chips ultimately led to Shaq requesting that his team, the Orlando Magic, draft Hardaway in the 1993 NBA Draft.

Friedkin’s dedication to filming real basketball for the film extended to the climactic final game between Indiana University and Western University, which was filmed as a real basketball game with a live audience of extras. Outside of the conclusion, the game was completely unscripted, and just allowed the basketball players to play out the game while cameras filmed the action. Indiana University’s coach, Bobby Knight, known for his competitiveness, caused some issues for the filming behind the scenes, as he apparently wasn’t happy with allowing the fictional Western University team to win as scripted. Towards the end of the game, Indiana had a three point lead, and one of the filming crew caught audio of Knight saying the following:

“Let me tell you something, boys,” he said. “We’ve got 24 seconds to play and fate’s got us up by three. We sure as hell aren’t going to lose to a bunch of (derogatory term) from Hollywood now.”

To begin the higher education analysis of the film, I want to try to establish the higher education setting of the story. As is typically the case, the central institution is fictional – Western University. While there is an institution that goes by this name today in London, Ontario, it is technically the University of Western Ontario, and only took on the new moniker as of 2012. There was once a Western University located in Kansas, but it closed in 1943 due to the economic strains of the Great Depression.

While Western University as featured in Blue Chips is fictional, I believe that it is functionally a stand-in for UCLA. While the campus sequences in the film were shot at the nearby rival school University of Southern California, there are some clues that point to Western being a surrogate for UCLA. First, the location of the school is firmly established as Los Angeles, which narrows down the institution candidate pool significantly. Additionally, the Western University color scheme (blue and yellow) is clearly reminiscent of the UCLA Bruins. Perhaps most compellingly, the established history and legacy of repeated basketball success (vis-a-vis championships) at Western University lines up pretty well with the UCLA basketball dynasty of the 1960s and 1970s under John Wooden.

A number of other higher education institutions are also represented in the film, both fictional and real. One in particular blurs the line between the two – Texas Western. In the film, this team is referred to as the Texas Western Cowboys, and are coached by controversial college basketball figure Rick Pitino. In reality, today’s University of Texas – El Paso Miners were once referred to as the Texas Western College Miners until a formal name change in 1967. Interestingly, this was implemented just one year after the Texas Western Miners won the NCAA basketball championship, and cemented the name in college basketball history.

Another higher education institution that is shown in competition with Western University is never referred to by name – however, the uniforms identify the school by the abbreviated nickname, “Coast.” This is most likely a loose stand-in for Coastal Carolina University, which often uses the abbreviation “Coastal” on the front of their basketball jerseys. The team is notably shown coached by Nolan Richardson, who is known for his coaching success at multiple levels of the sport.

The one definitively real university athletic team featured in Blue Chips is the Indiana University Hoosiers, who are shown coached by Bobby Knight, whose tenure at the school stretched nearly 30 years.

As with the majority of higher education institutions in the film, the National Collegiate Athletic Association itself has a fictionalized stand-in: the NCSA. While the initialism is never defined, its prominence on championship banners and referee uniforms makes it clear that this is the fictionalized NCAA.

Western University’s athletics teams are known as the Dolphins, and are accompanied by a dolphin mascot. While this is certainly a curious choice, it is by far not the most bizarre. That said, I was curious if any other universities have embraced the “Dolphins” moniker – as it turns out, there are a handful. According to The Los Angeles Times, California State University – Channel Islands teams go by the name “Dolphins,” though there doesn’t appear to be much athletic activity at the school. Likewise, the College of Mount Saint Vincent has also embraced the Dolphins name, along with Jacksonville University, which also has a humanoid dolphin mascot named “Dunk’n.”

During the recruiting sequences in the film, a player’s parent asks whether student-athletes wind up taking easier classes than other students. While the coach insists this isn’t the case, a number of college athletics scandals have involved just that situation. Most famously, the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill was caught offering effectively fake courses for athletes that  essentially guaranteed that they would remain academically eligible for play.

Early in the film, one of the student-athletes on the Western University basketball team confesses to struggling in “TV class” – one of his courses. While this might sound like a joke at first glance, a number of real college courses have centered on various television shows, the impact of television, or television criticism. Georgetown University has offered courses in philosophy centered around shows like The Wire and Star Trek, Whitman College has offered a course titled “Mad Men: Media, Gender, Historiography,” and I took an American studies course on The Twilight Zone when I was in college at the University of Alabama. Mental Floss put together a list of 25 other fascinating television-based courses at a variety of higher education institutions, which includes studies of South Park, The Colbert Report, and Twin Peaks.

In a blurring between fiction and reality, Blue Chips star Shaq confessed in 2016 to receiving monetary bribes to attend Louisiana State University and play for the school’s basketball team, not unlike the eponymous blue chip prospects featured in the film.

Nick Nolte’s character is shown to have a hot temper and contentious relationship with both officials and media, which at one point culminates in the punting of a basketball and a subsequent game ejection. At times, he is shown bordering on verbal abuse of his players during games and practices. Unfortunately, these sorts of behaviors from college basketball coaches are based in reality. Mike Rice, a former coach as Rutgers University, was fired after recording surfaced of his verbally and physically abusing his players.  A number of NCAA basketball coaches, including Indiana University’s Bobby Knight, have developed reputations over the years for their quick tempers. Like Rice, Knight was ultimately fired after video of his physical abuse of players surfaced. cementing his reputation as “college basketball’s greatest villain.”

Much of Blue Chips is dedicated to portraying the recruiting process to bring new players into a college basketball program. In particular, there is a specific emphasis on recruiting practices that violate regulations. As mentioned previously, the real NCAA has a fictional stand-in in the form of NCSA – however, the regulations of the two organizations appear to be the same. The violation most prominently featured is the explicit ban on “extra benefits” offered to athletes beyond their scholarship, which are defined as:

“any special arrangement by an institutional employee or a representative of the institution’s athletic interests (including fans) to provide a student-athlete or the student-athlete’s relative or friend a benefit not expressly authorized by the NCAA legislation.”

The extra benefits rule is applied to items as minute as flowers and apparel discounts and as grand as automobiles and housing. A University of Minnesota wrestler lost his eligibility due to selling an original song because the NCAA ruled that he financially benefited from his reputation as an athlete. Numerous college athletes have been the subject of NCAA scrutiny for benefiting from the sale of autographs or memorabilia, such as the University of Georgia’s Todd Gurley and Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel. A simple Google search will yield numerous lists of bizarre and seemingly nonsensical NCAA violations from institutions around the country.

In the film, a number of extra benefits are shown, including duffel bags of cash delivered by “friends of the program” (typically referred to as boosters, defined by the NCAA as  “representatives of the institution’s athletic interests”), mysteriously delivered tractors and Lexus automobiles to students and their families, family employment opportunities, and fully-financed housing, all of which have some basis in the reality of NCAA recruiting violations. The University of Mississippi’s recent recruiting scandal alone featured cash payments via duffel bag, car payments, and free lodging to athletes’ families.

What is most interesting about the portrayal of recruiting violations in Blue Chips is that each of the families has an expectation of payment from the outset, with full knowledge that this is in violation of rules. One prospect’s mother justifies her financial requests by stating that “a foul is not a foul unless a referee blows a whistle,” and another athlete’s father succinctly claims that “they ain’t my rules” after requesting a new tractor. The high-profile nature of NCAA recruiting violations have, in a way, apparently created a normative expectation of special privileges for star athletes and their families, which is arguably reinforced through popular culture portrayals like Blue Chips. Every time a school like Baylor University or the University of Louisville is caught in an athletic scandal that gets covered extensively in the media, the message is sent to aspiring prospects that opportunities for payment and compensation exist if they look for them.

At one point in the film, Western University’s coach mentions Proposition 48 when approaching a basketball prospect who scored poorly on their SAT. This is a real NCAA regulation that governs the minimum academic qualifications for college student-athletes, which takes into account both high school grades and standardized test scores. In this case, the student’s SAT was too low to qualify, which prompts his retaking of the test after receiving tutoring.

The electric conclusion of Blue Chips sees Western University’s basketball coach publicly confess at a press conference about a litany of recruiting violations, after which he resigns. The closest parallel to this event in real life was actually in response to the film, when Coastal Carolina University’s Russ Bergman was inspired by Blue Chips to confess to his coaching misdeeds to a local reporter. However, both he and his program were already the subject of an NCAA investigation at that time, and the walls were likely already closing in.

Prior to the events of Blue Chips, the Western University basketball program was at one point embroiled in a point shaving scandal. Point shaving is the the willful act of manipulating the score through intentional play for the purposes of promoting a specific outcome that has gambling implications. In the 1978-1979 season, a number of Boston College basketball players were bribed for the purposes of point shaving, in order to benefit a mob-orchestrated gambling scheme. A documentary about the scandal, Playing for the Mob, was released in 2014, and a comprehensive book about the incident, Fixed: How Goodfellas Bought Boston College Basketball, was published in 2001. In 2015, former criminal and FBI informant Henry Hill, Jr., who was intimately involved in the scandal, co-authored a book that went into more detail about the planning and execution of the plot.

On the whole, Blue Chips is in an intriguing portrayal of a college basketball program. If anything, it is a bit oversimplified and glossy in its characterizations and portrayals of the dynamics between players, coaches, administrators, and boosters, but is done so for the purposes of the story. As a portrayal of college athletics, it certainly touches on a number of real issues, though some of them are framed oddly. For instance, the idea that student-athletes should be paid is scoffed at off-hand, and the portrayals of the players focuses on wanting money exclusively for luxuries rather than necessities, which simplifies the very real issue of student-athletes struggling to live on their scholarships alone. In order to portray boosters as villainous, the position that work merits compensation is explicitly frowned upon with melodramatic flair.

That said, I think the film merits critical reconsideration – while not a masterpiece, Friedkin’s attention to detail and focus on the fidelity of the basketball portrayal comes through in the game sequences. In the same way that Friedkin has conveyed the frenetic energy of car chases in his career, he catches lightning in a bottle in putting basketball to celluloid in Blue Chips. While the higher education portrayal is perhaps a bit spotty, the film as a whole is not bad, and is an interesting counter-narrative to many college sports films in its morally-conflicted central character portrayals and de-emphasis on competitive glory as the ultimate ends.