A conversation with another college football blogger via IM, after finding out Randy Shannon liked the movie 300:

CFBlogger: So, so disappointing.

Orson: What coach won’t like that movie?

CFBlogger: A humanistic coach with a sense of pacing, scale, acting and suspicion of fascistic undertones?

Orson: All coaches love fascism.

CFBlogger: It works for them.

Many coaches attempt to defuse the tension before games by having a team movie night, or by cutting up Gladiator-type action flicks into dramatic montages for motivation. (If Mike Leach’s trend of one is any indication, watching teen vampire soft-core porn before big games is a strong indicator of future FAIL.) This led to the concept of “Name a movie that is completely useless to a coach,” or better still, “movies one should not show to your team ever, ever, ever prior to a game.”

A quick list of five films completely devoid of motivation to a football coach follow in no particular order:

5. Twilight. It has a one game losing streak as pregame movie of choice, and why not: little could be less motivating to a man seeking to lead a team to victory than the sad reminder that what women really want in their heart of hearts is a spellbinding but cold-blooded lover they can never attain. And unless you’re an Alabama, LSU, or Michigan State fan or in love with a vampire, you’ll never really know what that feels like.

4. The Perfect Storm. Never has a movie so willingly cut its balls off after demonstrating such great testicular potential. You spend 90 minutes gearing up the final moment where the storm destroys the ship, and instead of George Clooney shooting fate a non-index and ring finger assisted bird as he bites down on a pressure activated plastic explosives charge, you get Marky Mark mooning over love looking into the clouds on his way to a shivering death by water. Nothing sets up an overwhelmed team going in for a sheer asswhipping for a paycheck like, “It’s okay, at least you got to have sex with someone you like.”

3. Everybody’s All-American. Hey, kid. This is a real important game. Here’s a tale about how you will never, ever get back these three seconds of glory, and how the rest of life is one long slide into the twin oblivions of responsibility and mediocrity. But hey, in the book he kills himself, so the movie’s way, way better. LET’S GO. [/losesbyfiftypoints.]

2. Old Yeller. If ever a game would be forfeited due to an outbreak of sorrow, this would cause it. Not even turning this into a “we’re going to have to put our opponent down like they do to Ol’ Yeller” offers a shred of help, because then it implies your opponent has rabies, and even football players know this is a bad, bad thing. (Unless they’re defensive tackles, and even then saying “DOG BITE FOAMY OWIE SHOT CRAZY” should do the trick.)

1. Blue Velvet. The only possible positives of exposing a group of young men to Blue Velvet before a game would be filling the room with weapons-grade hallucinogenic gas, strapping them to their chairs, hiring animal control men in gas masks to patrol the room randomly shocking players with cattle prods, and then unleashing them on the field below. They might start attacking the crowd, but at least something is going to happen. It would be the only hope of anything positive coming out of this, as they’ll be just as damaged as we were from watching it at the age of 13 and buying gas masks for unspeakable purposes afterward. (Those poor, poor women.)