Goofs

At the very start of the movie, during the huddle of the first play during the Texas game, the quarterback calls a Shovel Pass. When the play is run, it's a direct hand-off to Ernie Davis, not the shovel pass that was called.

When Ernie Davis first sees the stadium at his college, the sky is filled with cumulus clouds. By the time he gets there, the sky is nearly cloudless, and much duller. Obviously the scene was shot on a different day.

When Jack Buckley and Ernie Davis are walking into the dance, JB is complaining about the Syracuse newspaper article declaring Pete Dawkins of Army as the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. The camera pans to the newspaper, which reveals a two-lined stacked headline above a three-column width article that has a column-width photo centered below the header. The shot zooms in for a close-up, but now the headline is one line and the photo is two columns wide with the byline to the right of the photo.

In the movie, Texas leads Syracuse 15-14 in the 1960 Cotton Bowl. In real life, the game was never that close in the second half. Syracuse was up 23-6 when Texas scored their second and last touchdown with 7:39 remaining in the game. Texas was not in a position to tie Syracuse even with a touchdown and 2-point conversion.

In the movie, the team is told outside the Cotton Bowl that the hotel where the banquet is held will not allow the team's black players to attend, and the team decides to skip the banquet and go for barbecue. In real life, the entire team, including the black players, attended the banquet awards ceremonies. Once the awards were over, the team was informed that the three black players could not stay for the dinner or dancing. The team stood up and left the banquet before dinner began. Afterward, two different establishments hosted them for dinner.

At the end of the movie, Ernie Davis is introduced with the Browns before their preseason game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, wearing his Cleveland Browns uniform. In real life, owner Art Modell wanted Ernie introduced in his uniform, but Coach Paul Brown wouldn't allow it because Ernie wasn't officially on Cleveland's roster. According to John Brown, his former Syracuse and Browns teammate and best friend, "That night, he had on his skinny tie, tweed jacket, and nice shirt."

The night game played versus West Virginia University is fiction. West Virginia's stadium did not have lights until two years after the movie took place. Plus, the movie is set in a year when the West Virginia v. Syracuse game was played at Syracuse.

Ernie Davis did not sit out the 3rd quarter of the game.

Before the 1961 Heisman Award ceremony, stock footage of Broadway includes a movie marque with Stalag 17 (1953), released in 1953. Some Manhattan movie theaters regularly screen popular older films.

The big bonus check Art Modell presents to Ernie Davis, and the letter Davis mails to the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, contain addresses with ZIP codes. They were introduced to the public in 1963, a few weeks after Davis died. Before that, city addresses had zone numbers (ex. Cleveland 14, O.).

During the Syracuse v. West Virginia game, one of the props in the back of the end zones has a Flying WV logo from the 1970s. At the time, West Virginia's logo was the letters WVU diagonally through the state on a gold ribbon.

The American flags shown in the fall of 1959 and on January 1, 1960 have 50 stars. At the time, the American flag had 49 stars. The 50-star flag was officially introduced on July 4, 1960.

At the end of the movie, Ernie Davis mails a letter to the Saturday Evening Post. The address clearly says "Indianapolis, IN". Until 1971, The Saturday Evening Post was published by the Curtis Publishing Company, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

When Jim Brown is first introduced in the movie, he receives his Cleveland Browns jersey from Art Modell in 1957. Modell bought the Cleveland Browns in 1961.

At the end of the movie, when Ernie Davis runs out on the field at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, he is actually running onto a computer-generated version of Wrigley Field in Chicago.

During the West Virginia football game, Ernie Davis gets hit out of bounds and is lying on the sideline. The football announcer states Davis is hurt lying prone (face down) on the field when the scene shows him lying face-up.