Goofs

David is right-handed. From the receiver's point of view, the ball should rotate counter-clockwise when he throws it. At the end of the first game against Winchester, the last two shots of David's game-winning touchdown pass, from the receiver's point of view, the ball rotates clockwise.

During the introductory scene in David Green's room, when Van Kelt grabs McGivern from behind and administers a noogie, McGivern elbows Van Kelt and escapes his grasp, leaving his overcoat in Van Kelt's hands. He then darts out the room. In the next cut, a long shot from down the crowded hall, McGivern waves his overcoat over his head as he runs away from the room and Van Kelt chases him.

At the homecoming football game, David first appears in a soiled jersey. When the game begins, it's clean.

When the class asks David whether or not he trusts them to determine whether he or Dillon cheated, his sweater collar changes between shots.

After David's brawl in the alley, his face is bruised. This brown mark fades, then darkens between shots of him walking through the preparatory school for the first time.

Though it is a funny scene, there are only two ways that the boys could have been able to put Cleary's car in his room: Carrying it inside or disassembling the car outside and reassembling it in his room. Both are totally impossible, given the effort it would take for either method and the amount of time they had during Cleary's stroll.

David Green chooses to play football on Rosh Hashana, as opposed to observing the holiday. That evening, the scene cuts to David reciting "Avinu Malkenu" in the school chapel, when the principal walks in and reminds David that his holiday ended at sundown. In actuality, Rosh Hashana is a two-day holiday and would have extended through the following day. Assuming the football game was played on a Saturday, there is no possibility that this was the second day of Rosh Hashana, as Rosh Hashana never ends on a Saturday night (the two-day observance may only begin in the evening on a Sunday, Monday, Wednesday or Friday).

When David picks his father up at the steel mill the car he is driving has a front license plate on it. Pennsylvania did not have front license plates in 1956 (as seen on a close up of the bus) or any time since.

When Gray Dillon is inducted into the Saint Matthew's Hall of Fame it is announced that he is in the class of 1951. It's is then said he's currently attending Harvard where his playing for their football team. However, the film takes place during the 1955-56 school year. This is evident by the Rebel Without A Cause on the theater marquee in Scranton at the beginning of the film, which was released in the fall of 1955. Thus Gray Dillon would have graduated from Harvard as a undergraduate by that point. Additionally if he was a graduate student he would not have been eligible to play football.

When David Greene goes outside in the rain to wait for whoever made the sign with the swastika, the rain falls diagonally from two different directions.

At the very beginning of the "Smokey Joe's Cafe" scene, actor Anthony Rapp is caught directly looking into the camera while playing drums on his pillow.

When David finds the sign in his room on his wall with the swastika and the words "Go Home, Jew" on it , he grabs it down, goes outside and throws it at them; then he enters his room and a second later returns with the note he wrote for whoever made that sign to meet him later; there was no time for him to have written the note! There were two to three seconds in between his going into his room after throwing the offensive sign at them, and his coming back out with his newly-written note.

At the dinner after the football victory, Matt Damon's Charlie stands up from the table and his zipper is open.

A 1965 Ford Mustang appears prominently In the Concours d'Elegance.

When David drives to the diner, the town has modern traffic lights.

When David picks up his father at the coal mine, and they're waiting for the train to go by, several cars are marked Penn Central and Conrail, which didn't exist in the late 1950s.

In the French class, two students do a "fist bump," which no one did back in the 1950's, after one of the students gets a high grade on an assignment or test. The fist bump came many years later.

In the dance in the school gym, one of the wall decorations is a Gone with the Wind (1939) poster designed for the 1960s re-release of that film.