Plot
The Texas State University Fightin' Armadillos were once one of the most powerful teams in college football. After winning consecutive national championships, massive NCAA violations resulted in the program having to forfeit years' worth of victories. All of the previous players and coaches are banned from returning except Charlie Banks, the only "clean" player, who never got to play despite having "heart".
The new coaching staff, led by Ed "Straight Arrow" Gennero (Elizondo), has nothing to assist them in building the team as no athletic scholarships are available, forcing them to hold tryouts. Along with this, they must worry about Dean Elias (Miller), who wants the team to fail so he can scrap it. The coaches soon have a makeshift team in place.
Only 17 players are allowed on the team—not enough to have offense and defense—due to Dean Elias declaring many prospective players ineligible, so they are forced to play ironman football. The team lacks experience and talent in all areas, especially at quarterback, placekicker, and the defensive line. Assistant coach Wally "Rig" Riggendorf (Loggia) recruits a 34 year old former high school star Paul Blake (Bakula), who never attended college due to his father's death. Rig convinces him to enroll and play for the team.
Blake arrives on campus and catches everyone's attention due to his age, especially Professor Carter (Kozak). Paul then recruits a graduate student teaching assistant named Andre Krimm (Sinbad), who is also enrolled at the school and eligible to play for the team. Blake convinces him to join, and he is positioned on the defensive line, where he excelled years earlier. Even with the new members, the team continues to lose games. Things get so bad that, at one point during the film, announcer Chuck Neiderman (Schneider) covers his microphone with his hands and screams, "SHIT!!!!" at the top of his lungs.
Professor Carter tells Blake that she knows him from years earlier. Carter's ex-boyfriend was a high school football star, but Blake and his team humiliated him and his team in a championship game. This episode actually caused Carter to become infatuated with Blake. Now, years after the fact, the two begin a romantic relationship, which Dean Elias opposes, due to the fact that Blake is a student, and Carter is a teacher.
Coach Rig makes one more recruiting move to secure a kicker. He shocks everybody by selecting Lucy Draper (Ireland) from the school's soccer team. When she is brought on board, the team has its first taste of success, as Draper kicks a field goal in a driving rainstorm to forge a 3-3 tie with Kansas (in real life, Kansas holds the all-time NCAA Division I-A record for number of tie games with 57.). After this game, Blake quits the team after arguments with the head coach (Elizondo) and Professor Carter, but convinces himself to come back after a teammate, who is also quitting, inadvertently changes his mind and both come back. With the coaches and players now on the same page, the team plays their last game of the season against the number one ranked team in the country, the University of Texas Colts, with whom the Armadillos were involved in a barroom brawl earlier in the season.
They head into the game as huge underdogs, and without Coach Gennero, who is hospitalized just prior to the game, leaving Coach Rig in charge. After a horrible first half, they come back in the second half to make it a one point game with a few seconds left, and Gennero returns to the sideline, having only suffered from indigestion, though he lets Coach Rig call the final play. The team decides to try to win it all with a two-point conversion. They fake a point after attempt and pass for two. Blake scrambles and finally finds Banks in the end zone to win the game.
Read more about this topic: Necessary Roughness (film)
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