Tuesdays with Tom: We Still Remember the Titans
Lessons learned and truths unpacked from Remember the Titans, plus thoughts on the NFL's ESPN takeover, Instagram's controversy, and dial-up internet
At the turn of the 21st century, I suited up to play tackle football for the first time. My first year with the St. Mary’s Demons was a blur. But that season kicked off a lifelong relationship with me and football, one that remains as vibrant as ever in 2025. That same fall, Disney released Remember the Titans: an inspirational sports film about a Virginia high school football team. The timing couldn’t have been more poetic for a young football rookie.
Remember the Titans had a strong impact on my obsession with football. It was a heartwarming tale of young men and crazed coaches, enmeshed in racial tension, learning to find common ground to achieve a singular goal. It captured the epic highs, devastating lows and everything in between the lines of a football field. Every August, I still feel residual anxiety and excitement around training camp season, a spillover from my decade of intense practices in delirious summer heat. Rewatching it, I started thinking about what Remember the Titans gets right, what it misses, and what football has taught me along the way.
Touchdowns & Celebrations - What Works Best in Remember the Titans
Denzel Washington stars as Coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans. An all-time A-lister leading a Disney sports movie? In hindsight, this cast is way better than it deserves to be. Washington is the clear headliner, but there are others who went on to massive careers.
Will Patton delivers as Coach Bill Yoast. Wood Harris (The Wire) plays defensive end Julius Campbell. Donald Faison is the rambunctious Petey Jones. An 11-year-old Hayden Panettiere plays Yoast’s football-obsessed daughter, Sheryl. Kate Bosworth even shows up for a thankless girlfriend part. The biggest shocker of all? Ryan Gosling as the struggling Alan Bosley. You’d never see so much talent in a mid-budget sports film today.
Remember the Titans spends most of the first act at Gettysburg College, where the newly integrated T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, drops off its promising football for a two-week training camp. Herman Boone is named head coach, despite incumbent Bill Yoast being highly qualified for the job and, more notably, being a white man in 1971. The town is up in arms over Boone’s appointment. Somehow, Boone and Yoast must work together to get their racially diverse roster to become a unified team. They have competing ideologies and personalities. How will they do it? The commentary is on-the-nose, but you get it immediately.
I had several flashbacks watching the Titans rigorous and painful practices at Gettysburg College. Remember the Titans accurately portrays the harsh camp conditions and the nonstop barking from hard-ass dictator coaches. Actually, the barking starts before they get on the bus, when Coach Boone verbally undresses Petey for giggling during the first team meeting. While it’s played for laughs, Boone wastes no time instilling fear and control into his team. He demands that each white and black player spend time getting to know each other. Failure to cooperate results in more punishment laps.
Training camp takes a dramatic turn when Coach Boone stages a pre-dawn team run through the woods. Boone stops them at a graveyard with soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg, recounting the gruesome details of the famous Civil War battle. He implores the team “if we don’t come together, right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed.” It's the turning point of the tumultuous camp. The team begins to bond, solidified later with Bertier and Campbell, the two defensive leaders at odds all camp, razzing each other with the famous “Strong Side! Left Side!” chant.
Now if you think it's absurd for a high school football coach to leverage the Civil War as a rallying cry for teenagers, you clearly don’t know football coaches. In my senior season, one of our coaches gave a rousing speech in the locker room that ended with him firing a starter’s pistol indoors. Did we lose by six touchdowns afterwards? Oh yes! But it landed, even if for a fleeting moment. Moments like the Gettysburg speech have aged quite well for us football lifers.
Once the season begins, Remember the Titans follows a predictable playbook. The team experiences early success, followed by overconfidence and light struggles, and redemption that leads them to the ultimate prize. But it's the little things that stand out upon rewatching.
Despite Boone’s insistence that football isn’t fun, there’s plenty of fun happening. Watching the Titans deliver crushing hits game after game gets me riled up. As a passionate chanter, I love watching their militarized call-and-response chants. Halfway through the season, the Titans insist on dancing through warm-ups, with their catchy tune “We are the Titans” happily nesting in my brain. We did similar things while stretching and doing jumping jacks.
Now that I’m closer in age to Boone and Yoast than the players, I couldn’t help but watch the movie through their eyes. Boone and Yoast are like yin and yang. Boone is the inspirational screamer, utilizing anecdotes and manipulation to get his players where he wants them to be. Yoast is the calm, steady hand, pulling aside disheartened players to build them back up after Boone rips them to shreds.
It’s a classic good cop-bad cop relationship. For a 1970s coach, Boone isn’t just progressive by existing. He uses a math teacher to study coaching tendencies. He’s malleable when his starting quarterback goes down, adapting to a passing-forward game when that was uncommon. As Boone demands in his Gettysburg address, they might not like each other, but they do respect each other. You can learn something from each of their leadership styles.
By the time the credits roll, Remember the Titans has filled your heart with so much sentimental football passion, you’re ready to strap on a helmet and run through a homecoming sign. The indelible 1970s soundtrack and unforgettable orchestral theme go a long way towards driving those emotions. The relationships between the players feel earned and authentic. It really captures the insular feeling within a football team. The belief that nothing else in the world is more important than this team and its goals. Anyone who stands in the way is an enemy to pulverize. If that doesn’t fire you up, find something that does.
Penalties & Errors - What Doesn’t Land in Remember the Titans
For all the ways it nails the spirit of the game, Remember the Titans takes some serious liberties with the truth. Bill Yoast did agree to stay on as an assistant, but he didn’t lose the Virginia Coaching Hall of Fame over it. There’s no evidence that Boone would have been fired over a single loss either. One of the biggest shifts involves Gary Bertier, the All-American linebacker at the heart of the story. In the movie, he’s hit by a car that paralyzes him from the waist down before the state championship game. That really happened, but it was after the season ended. So, they had their star linebacker in the title game after all.
These characters were real people, but the details are exaggerated for cinematic convenience. Alexandria is shown as bitingly racist and anti-integration. But in the real Alexandria, they were much more open to integration than other towns in the area. You could make that sweeping critique of the entire movie. Nearly every white character outside the team is cartoonishly racist. Nobody’s pretending the ’70s were post-racial, but the movie cranks the dial for dramatic effect.
During one practice, Boone bellows that “water is for cowards.” This might be era appropriate, but it hilariously stands out as illogical machismo. The most essential element on the planet is for cowards? Okay! I’m glad sports science has evolved beyond insane intimidation tactics. I got a kick out of watching Boone run with the team before his pivotal speech. I was endlessly dragged through laps and sprints, but I could count on three fingers how often a coach volunteered to be tortured with us. We fantasized about our out-of-shape coaches running laps, but it never happened.
The Titans did finish 13-0 in 1971, but most of their games were uncompetitive blowouts. The real Titans didn’t need that much convincing to integrate. In fact, they were the second best high school team in the nation that year. Bringing those guys together basically made them a high school superteam. This begs the question: was Boone that essential? I’ll take it a step further. Why did he have Ronnie Bass on the bench to start the season? He was a Division-I caliber quarterback and clearly the best athlete on the team. It seems that Boone inherited an incredible squad that didn’t need a Gettysburg pep talk to win. By the way, that speech never happened.
It’s always been clear that Remember the Titans is more fable than fact, but it suffers from the ability to fact check these things today. No, a high school football team can’t end institutional racism. But is a great football team enough to sway hearts and minds in trying times? I think that’s undeniably true. That’s probably a lowlight, but you can make your own judgments.
Football Life Lessons - Why We Still Remember the Titans
Although I played many sports growing up, none of them taught me more about life than football. Many of those lessons appear in Remember the Titans. I recognize that a lot of you never played, so I’ll outline the ones that stood out to me.
The Pursuit of Perfection
Coach Boone is a domineering, unforgiving force that demands perfection of himself and his players. Consider Boone an avatar for life’s greatest obstacles. We will never be perfect, but the closer we can get to perfection, the more successful we will be. The team’s pursuit of perfection inspires them into greatness.
The Ultimate Team Sport
On each play, there are 22 players on the field, each one a unique variable that is critical. If a single player doesn’t do their job, it all falls apart. Football is the perfect metaphor for teamwork in life. We cannot do much alone. A deep connection with others goes much farther than we ever could. This is why Boone and Yoast are hellbent on working through their differences to improve the team.
Adaptability Wins
This one was drilled into my head by my father. Petey Jones thinks he will be the team’s starting running back. His fumbling issues put him on the bench, but he’s given a second chance to play linebacker by Yoast. He thrives at linebacker. It might not be what he desired, but Petey’s adaptability made him essential. In life, we don’t always get what we want. But if we can learn and adapt, we might end up where we were meant to be.
Self Awareness Goes A Long Way
Petey replaced Alan Bosley at linebacker mid-way through the season, sparking outrage from Alan’s father. I knew a lot of fathers like Mr. Bosley, who thought their son deserved more than he got. But Alan takes the high road, recognizing he wasn’t getting the job done. Later, Alan returns to the lineup. But in the state championship game, he effectively benches himself, acknowledging that Petey is a better match-up for the opponent’s shotgun offense. Alan’s self awareness is a godsend for the team and a valuable trait that carries us down the road.
Next Man Up
One of football’s most famous slogans: next man up! Look no further than quarterback Ronnie “Sunshine” Bass. He shows up late to training camp, waiting patiently for his chance to play. When quarterback Jerry "Rev" Harris goes down, he comes in and saves the day. Ronnie was prepared for the moment, even though he wasn’t sure when it would happen. In the championship game, they draw up a trick play for Rev that Ronnie power blocks through for the winning score.
Both Ronnie and Rev represent the sobering reality that we get limited opportunities to prove ourselves in life. Football players spend several months practicing for a handful of moments and games that ultimately judge everything. All that preparation and work could boil down to a single play. Is it fair? Hardly. But that’s life. We must be ready at any moment to seize our opportunities.
Motivation: Whatever It Takes
To inspire Ronnie, Boone tells him that he became the man of a 12-sibling household, despite being the youngest child, as a metaphor to encourage him. He quickly admits to his assistant that this is wildly embellished. Coaches never let the truth get in the way of a good story. This is a common tactic in many leaders and managers. Persuasive people lean heavily into rhetoric over pinpoint accuracy. It’s how elections are won. As Steve Rogers once said, whatever it takes. Even if it’s a starter’s pistol.
Football Isn’t Always Fun, But It is Very Rewarding
Coach Boone’s assertion that “football is not fun” is more truth than fiction. If you think about the most rewarding things in life, they are always the most challenging. Choose your own adventure: school, athletics, work, hobbies, friendships, romance, families. Our dreams are earned through hard work and determination. Football instilled many skills that I’ve taken well beyond the gridiron. It teaches players discipline, perseverance, consistency, and time management.
When you add it all up, football lays out a foundation for lifelong success. There are few things more exhilarating than victory through achievement. It wouldn't be as satisfying if it were easy. And if you do it right, it can be fun, too. Twenty-five years later, I still feel that same August nervous energy. Remember the Titans reminds us that with the right team, the right effort, and the right moment, you can change the course of the game, whether that game is under the Friday night lights or in the life you are building.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
In the last two episodes of Friday Night Beers, we reviewed Kingmaker and Rebirth of Cool. Kingmaker is our first Eisbock, a German-style beer that was discovered through accidental freezing. We highlighted some of our favorite freezing cold takes and various kingmakers in the entertainment world. If you’ve ever questioned your coolness, Rebirth of Cool is the episode for you. We got existential and honest about who and what is cool, what’s not cool and everything in between (including ourselves). Lastly, thank you to everyone who attended our live show last Friday. We had a very lively and engaged crowd for possibly our best show yet! We appreciate the support and enthusiasm. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast here and follow our Instagram page for relevant updates!
I’ve long been annoyed at how cozy the NFL and ESPN have operated as business partners. Now, they’re about to get as close as possible. They’ve reached an agreement that gives the NFL 10% ownership equity of ESPN, while off-loading NFL Network and linear rights to the NFL’s RedZone channel. The timing is quite intentional: ESPN is launching their new $30-per-month standalone streaming app in two days. This might seem like a savvy business venture by the Worldwide Leader in Sports and America’s most popular product. But in reality, this is a hostile takeover by the NFL and an inflection point for ESPN that erases any credibility they had left.
It’s one thing for ESPN to pay $2.7 billion per season to broadcast Monday Night Football and air an upcoming Super Bowl in 2027. But with this agreement, the NFL is now literally an owner of ESPN. That completely changes the dynamics of their relationship. ESPN’s coverage of the league was sketchy before, but that’s child’s play compared to what will unfold going forward. The RedZone component also annoys me. It’s possible that RedZone will eventually become an exclusive within this new ESPN app. If that happened, millions of football fans would have to consider an additional $30-per-month for a duplicative product just to have one weekly channel. RedZone is currently a $10-per-month add-on to use across various platforms. Adding $40 more monthly dollars to an increasingly luxurious football television tab would be terrible for football fans. ESPN was desperate to keep afloat after spending billions on live rights and their disastrous attempt to become a gambling outlet (which now goes right into the NFL’s pockets) put them further into the red. With this move, the NFL rids themselves of directly managing live television and allows them to quietly create a state-owned network that’s airing in 70 million U.S. households.
It used to be very common for the major social media platforms to shamelessly steal successful ideas from each other. So, I chuckled when Instagram inexplicably dove back into that playbook to unveil their “new” Instagram Map feature for its two billion users. This idea is so old that I referenced it in my story about white lies in (checks notes) 2018. Snapchat rolled out their interactive, geo-location user map for users in 2017 and, like its predecessor, this feature is completely optional for users to opt into and share their location with their followers. Naturally, that hasn’t stopped the predictable outrage take cycle, with many questioning the ethics and safety behind Instagram Map. I agree that this is a poorly conceived feature that invites more trouble than it’s worth. However, it’s really easy to avoid. Are we really doing this again? I guess so! If Meta wants any more well established and archaic ideas, I’d be happy to consult for them.
I was shocked to learn that AOL is finally shutting down its dial-up internet product. Now? In 2025? But according to the Census Bureau, there were 163,401 U.S. households still using AOL’s dial-up internet service. AOL became synonymous with the popularization of home Internet, with its creaky door and chaotic beeping cadence signaling that you were officially online. It is fitting that it required shutting off the home landline to use it. I remember many screaming matches about that consequence. “Get off the phone! I need to go online!!” Imagine someone saying that now. Nostalgic 2000s Internet users have said goodbye to some very memorable, if wildly outdated, products in recent years. Microsoft shut down Internet Explorer in 2022 and Skype just a few months ago. AOL Instant Messenger ended in 2017, but somehow AOL held onto dial-up internet for eight more years. AOL peaked in value and prestige around 2000, when it was valued at $164 billion. In 2021, AOL was included in a sale with Yahoo from Verizon to private equity for $5 billion. So, what does AOL have left? Believe it or not, emails! There are still 1.5 million people with AOL email addresses. I suppose that’s next. But for now, pour some out for dial-up internet. It won’t be missed, but it also will never be forgotten.