30 for 30 (TV Series) Rand University (2014) User Reviews

Well done and compelling.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 14 December 2014]

This is yet another excellent installment of ESPN's "30 for 30" series. It's the story of Randy Moss--an incredibly talented but 'controversial' football player. Controversial is a nice way of saying that he had an insane pattern of self-sabotaging behaviors-- behaviors that easily could have resulted in his becoming yet another example of what might have been. Instead, he was able to somehow keep it together enough to become one of the greatest receivers in NFL history.

Like the rest of the shows, this one hooks you and is very watchable even if you aren't a big sports fan (and I certainly am not). I also appreciated how the show paralleled another athlete from his small home town--one who, at the time of the making of this show, was homeless and without prospects. Worth seeing...even if Moss is a difficult to admire character.

A man saved by uncommon faith in a nearly-hopeless place

[StevePulaski · 8/10 · 26 November 2014]

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.

Some Interesting & Valuable Context (If A Bit Hagiographic) To The Randy Moss Story

[zkonedog · 8/10 · 6 July 2023]

Randy Moss was one of the most mercurial figures to ever pull on an NFL uniform. His talent was undeniable-perhaps even eclipsing the great Jerry Rice. But run-ins with the law and a generally surly demeanor also hung in a cloud above him and affected his perception. In "Rand University", director Marquis Daisy & writer Aaron Cohen provide some interesting and valuable context to Moss's story-specifically his high school background-even if it is more-than-fairly hagiographic in nature.

For a very basic overview, "Rand U" delves into Moss's hometown of Rand, WV-an unincorporated map dot that produced many a high school sports superstar. The issue? Lacking much (if any) structure beyond high school (and embroiled in near-constant racial turmoil), most of those sports stars did not succeed in college or beyond-rather, they'd end up hanging out at the corner 7/11 (nicknamed "Rand U"). Input from Moss himself, fellow teammates/friends, and coaches from his high school and college days are used to illustrate the razor's edge of legitimate success (which Moss certainly achieved) and a serious prison rap sheet (which Moss largely avoided, if narrowly).

In large part, this documentary is a success (hence the 8/10 strong rating). It gives all the important context of Moss's experiences and certainly does help explain his often sardonic attitude as an NFL superstar. The racism and sometimes ticky-tack drug/fighting relating charges inflicted upon him in the mid-1990s would certainly be looked at differently (more sympathetically) in current times, to be sure.

That being said, "Rand U" is very much a "pro Moss" doc in that such a characterization is largely the only goal of the piece. There is little impartiality and the producers are clearly on the "Moss wasn't that bad" track all the way through. Nothing wrong with that approach, but it does cap my star rating at 8/10-as I don't believe Moss is quite as blameless for his foibles as this doc might have you believe.

Overall, though, this 30 For 30 installment is a solid one. I learned things about Moss I hadn't known before and do view him in a slightly different (if not entirely blameless, of course) light upon viewing.

Another Winner for ESPN

[Michael_Elliott · 11 December 2014]

30 for 30: Rand University (2014)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another winning documentary in the ESPN series. This one here takes a look at Randy Moss, one of the most talented athletes to ever play football. The documentary covers his early days growing up in Rand, West Virginia where we learn about the various troubles that he ran into, which almost cost him his career. We learn about the infamous fight that landed him in jail and we get to hear his side of the story. We also learn how both Notre Dame and Florida State ended up taking back his scholarship and how this led him to Marshall University. Fans of the series will no doubt enjoy this episode. It certainly covers ground that most people are going to know about Moss but the most interesting aspect is the look at the town he grew up in and what the title itself refers to. Running at just 50-minutes the documentary pretty much looks over his NFL career but this is still a highly entertaining film.