PLOT: Just a few days before what’s supposed to be a career-defining game, star college quarterback LeMarcus James (Stephan James) and his best friend Emmett Sunday (Alexander Lugwig) go on strike. They refuse to play in the championship game to protest how student-athletes are never compensated despite college football being an obscenely wealthy sport. Soon, more players begin to go on strike, and the NCAA has a significant problem on their hands.
REVIEW: National Champions is a movie that seemingly came out of nowhere. It’s directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who – in addition to the recent Greenland – made the incredibly underrated Shot Caller and has a knack for making down and dirty dramas without any easy answers. This story of college players on strike could have been corny or two-dimensional in a lesser director’s hands. Still, everyone, from LeMarcus to his coach (played by the great J.K. Simmons) and the NCAA fixers, gets equal screentime. There are definitely heroes and villains here, but the question of remunerating college athletes isn’t one that can be answered quickly.
With his noble qualities and faith, Marcus James could have been portrayed as too likable a character, but Waugh and writer Adam Mervis give him some flaws. He’s self-righteous and possibly dishonest about a career-changing injury that jeopardizes his status as a future number one NFL draft pick. He’s also one for the ladies, so much so that he infected his whole team with Covid-19 (with this set in a vague post-Coronavirus era where no one needs to wear masks anymore). However, he has a point about the athletes needing to be paid, with him noting that many, including his best pal (Ludwig’s Emmett), end their college days with broken bodies, no health insurance, and no future in the sport.
James has always been a brilliant actor, and he sinks his teeth into one of his best roles to date by making him a human being. Ludwig is also good as James’ buddy, who doesn’t have the flair for talking his buddy does but is willing to back him up no matter what. Outside of those two, the key character here is J.K. Simmons as their coach, who’s struggling with the fact that their game may bring him the first championship of his life. He’s also got a wife (Kristin Chenoweth) that’s leaving him for the very same college professor (Timothy Olyphant), whose fiery speeches inspired James’ revolt.
Simmons starts the film as wholly sympathetic, unwilling to play dirty with the NCAA’s fixer, played by an amazing Uzo Aduba, who he knows can destroy lives with the touch of a button on her ever-present smartphone. But, he’s also worth millions and, in the end, is out to serve himself, and to the film’s credit, he’s not demonized for that. Even Aduba has her moments of introspection. Along with Jeffrey Donovan’s NCAA honcho and a couple of boosters played by Tim Blake Nelson and Andrew Bachelor, she is the closest this movie has to a villain. However, she’s right when she warns James that if he wins and athletes start getting paid, any college sport that’s not a moneymaker like football and basketball will get cut.
Again, there are no clear-cut answers handed out here, and the film never lectures you about who’s right or wrong. While Waugh and Mervis have a strong opinion about the right of college athletes to get paid, they look at the other side as well, even if the NCAA is ultimately portrayed as a perilous group to tangle with. All that makes National Champions food for thought and a movie that’s bound to provoke a much-needed conversation, even if the answer isn’t clear-cut at all.
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