Despite often having small runtimes to profile and describe the lives and impact of a certain athlete or group of athletes, ESPN's documentary series 30 for 30 has, from what I've seen on three separate occasions, consistently risen to the challenge in creating effective documentaries on a narrative basis on an informative basis. Marquis Daisy's Rand University, one of the newer documentaries profiling renowned NFL wide receiver Randy Moss, is no exception, as it details the life and upbringing of one of contemporary sports' most enigmatic players, who had a greater chance to fail and fade away than he did to succeed.
Rand University makes the case that, many times, Moss should've floundered into obscurity and that his professional career was salvaged by second chances and a strong amount of belief others had in him. Moss grew up in Rand, West Virginia, a small, unincorporated town fifty miles south of Charleston. A small, tight-knit community, residents of Rand thrive on the optimism and light from the local church and the entertainment provided by DuPont High School, particularly the school's football team. Moss played for DuPont while in high school, and put up exceptional numbers, scoring two or three touchdowns a game. In highlights shown in the documentary, we see that almost every time Moss was thrown the ball, he'd return it for an extraordinary amount of yards. "Even if they were playing touch-tackle football," one commentator says, "Moss would still lead the game in touchdowns. They couldn't touch him."
Despite what would lead outsiders to believe that the college recruiters would be fighting over the untouchable receiver, the locational reality set in fairly quickly. We learn that Rand is a community where education traditionally stops after high school, with very few going to college due to the high costs and the heavy emphasis on work placed on the residents. With that, there exists a 7-11 in Rand where all the post-high school kids are known to hang out, with the townspeople nicknaming it "7-11 University." Bobbie Howard, one of Moss's longtime friends and teammate in high school, recalls how it didn't matter if you were an all star quarterback on the football team or a person with high academic ambition; the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against you and you were bound to end up at 7-11 University.
Moss made headlines while in high school after helping one of his friends attack a white student, who had allegedly made racist remarks against Moss's friend, sending his promising career as a football player in an early tailspin. This ruined Moss's chances of going to Notre Dame, his original top choice for college, and a subsequent marijuana charge dismissed him from joining the Florida State Seminoles with coach Bobby Bowden, a coach known for handling troubled individuals. Ultimately, Moss took his talents to Marshall University in West Virginia, where he put up record setting yardage and pulled off touchdown-after-touchdown.
At fifty-one minutes long, Rand University doesn't go into Moss's NFL career, playing for teams like the Minnesota Vikings and the New England Patriots, but such isn't the documentary's goal. The film's ultimate focus is Moss's roots, coming from a pessimistic environment and almost falling prey to the drudgery of being another hopeless statistic, and with that, brews a film about a community and an uncommonly talented and literally unstoppable player who beat the odds and grew to be one of the best wide receivers in the NFL.
Directed by: Marquis Daisy.
Rand University makes the case that, many times, Moss should've floundered into obscurity and that his professional career was salvaged by second chances and a strong amount of belief others had in him. Moss grew up in Rand, West Virginia, a small, unincorporated town fifty miles south of Charleston. A small, tight-knit community, residents of Rand thrive on the optimism and light from the local church and the entertainment provided by DuPont High School, particularly the school's football team. Moss played for DuPont while in high school, and put up exceptional numbers, scoring two or three touchdowns a game. In highlights shown in the documentary, we see that almost every time Moss was thrown the ball, he'd return it for an extraordinary amount of yards. "Even if they were playing touch-tackle football," one commentator says, "Moss would still lead the game in touchdowns. They couldn't touch him."
Despite what would lead outsiders to believe that the college recruiters would be fighting over the untouchable receiver, the locational reality set in fairly quickly. We learn that Rand is a community where education traditionally stops after high school, with very few going to college due to the high costs and the heavy emphasis on work placed on the residents. With that, there exists a 7-11 in Rand where all the post-high school kids are known to hang out, with the townspeople nicknaming it "7-11 University." Bobbie Howard, one of Moss's longtime friends and teammate in high school, recalls how it didn't matter if you were an all star quarterback on the football team or a person with high academic ambition; the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against you and you were bound to end up at 7-11 University.
Moss made headlines while in high school after helping one of his friends attack a white student, who had allegedly made racist remarks against Moss's friend, sending his promising career as a football player in an early tailspin. This ruined Moss's chances of going to Notre Dame, his original top choice for college, and a subsequent marijuana charge dismissed him from joining the Florida State Seminoles with coach Bobby Bowden, a coach known for handling troubled individuals. Ultimately, Moss took his talents to Marshall University in West Virginia, where he put up record setting yardage and pulled off touchdown-after-touchdown.
At fifty-one minutes long, Rand University doesn't go into Moss's NFL career, playing for teams like the Minnesota Vikings and the New England Patriots, but such isn't the documentary's goal. The film's ultimate focus is Moss's roots, coming from a pessimistic environment and almost falling prey to the drudgery of being another hopeless statistic, and with that, brews a film about a community and an uncommonly talented and literally unstoppable player who beat the odds and grew to be one of the best wide receivers in the NFL.
Directed by: Marquis Daisy.