That Championship Season

by Jason Miller

Book by Jason Miller

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Jason Miller was an Oscar-nominated actor and Pulitzer-winning playwright, known for his role as Father Karras in The Exorcist and for his popular play That Championship Season (which he also directed for film.)

Reviews

[Conor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright folks. It's that time again. I'm reviewing a book which I haven't read but which I've seen the film adaption of.

Honestly I'm not sure how to rate this. One of the strangest films I've seen in a long time. The first 1/3 was a surprisingly funny and enjoyable reunion of old friends that I'd give a solid 4 stars to. Then the last 2/3 were an intense, brutal examination of these flawed characters and their twisted relationships (as well as a dark, masterfully executed subversion of so many classic sports movie tropes) that was so intense I'm struggling to tell whether or not I enjoyed it, or if "enjoyed" is even the right word.

I decided to watch the film because the plot sounded interesting and it featured Martin Sheen. Sheen may be best known to my fellow millennials for providing the voice for the suave and villainous Illusive Man in the Mass Effect Trilogy (one of the best videogame series of all time btw) and for passing on his Tiger blood to his distinguished son Charles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QS0q...). I wasn't too keen going into the film as I knew it was based on a play, the plot sounded pretty grim and it had won a Pulitzer. All of this combined to leave me expecting a stuffy, "worthy" film that I was ready to turn off inside 5 minutes. So I was shocked when the first 40 minutes provided a fun, light-hearted adventure reuniting old friends. Essentially it was Grown-Ups if Grown-Ups was funny, warm and engaging rather than dumb, cynical and terrible (Sorry Adam Sandler, I still love The Waterboy at least).

Little did I know that this fun start was designed to draw me in for the dark, brutal character examinations to come. The seemingly idyllic characters and relationships are painfully deconstructed, revealing the dark underbelly of this film. The way the characters and their relationships are developed and evolved was skillfully done with strong performances from all the main characters (especially Bruce Dern as the Mayor who initially seems to serve as comedic relief but shows endearing, poignant vulnerability and Robert Mitchum who first seems to be a kindly father figure but soon is revealed to be a malevolent and manipulative (and super, super racist) force at the heart of the group).

The film also provided possibly the best deconstructions of any topic I've ever seen, in this case feel-good Sports film tropes. I normally enjoy sports films like these because even though they're incredibly predictable they make for enjoyable easy-viewing. This film subverts and picks apart pretty much every conceivable trope from this genre: from the father-figure coach to the inspiring team talks (that Mitchum delivers with the power of a Roman General addressing his troops before battle) to rooting for the scrappy losers against their arrogant, favored opponents (in this case the main characters are opposed by a political candidate who wants to stop their corrupt strip mining that's destroying the countryside and who they are really anti-semetic towards) to everyone coming together at the end ( I'm honestly not sure whether the end, where the lads listen to the broadcast of the last minutes of their championship match and then all seemingly forget their toxic, co-dependent relationships is heart-warming or horrifying ).

I'm honestly not sure if I should recommend this film, or it so who I should recommend it to. The films started as a warm-hearted comedy driven by the natural and comedic interactions between the friends before turning into a pitiless subversion of the genre and painful exploration of a cast of deeply flawed characters. If that sounds interesting to you this is a unique and engrossing, if often uncomfortable, viewing experience.

[Nicki · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bunch of old white dudes, who are having a hard time coping with not being high school super stars anymore, have a reunion with their coach who is still trying to convince them he's got all the world's shit figured out....but don't worry, at 40-50 years old, they're finally starting to wonder.
An anti-Semitic public figure, a struggling artist and a soulless millionaire are just a few of the characters that drive this plot. Well-written and surely hyper critical of issues that were still subtle in the 70s, this piece has now lost its subtlety as we have become fully aware of the failings of these majority characters. The critiques are still true, but the power behind the reveal has been lost for me.
It's always hard to decide how I feel about a piece from the past. On one hand, when you consider how relevant it must've been back then, you can appreciate the piece. On the other, how far can that take you into being interested in something that has become overplayed by today's standards? I'm sure it earned its Tony when it did, but I doubt it would even be considered today.

[Chris Campion · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny and entertaining read with some deep undertones. Reads fast and hits you in the gut with heavy moments of introspection and self-analysis.

[Tarpley Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens to a man when the best part of his life took place in high school, twenty years ago? How can he navigate through middle-aged adulthood if his high school basketball coach has as much influence over him now as he did on that championship team? And what if that coach continues to subscribe to prejudices that should have been left on the court when that last whistle blew? The inability to escape the ghost of a glorious past, and then the sobering realization that the past itself might be a forgery, are the subjects of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season.
This play is a drama, novel-like in its vivid characterizations, almost a soap opera, about five men trying to cope with middle-aged angst against a backdrop of teen-aged invincibility. The play, broken into three acts, takes place continuously over the course of one evening in one setting, the Gothic-Victorian house of the larger than life Coach. The Coach (that is his only name) is the focal point of the play because he remains the focal point in the lives of the four other characters, all teammates on the 1952 Pennsylvania Champion High School basketball team. This is a very masculine play, but one of the great strengths, and a testament to Miller’s skill as a dramatist, is how he weaves the five men into a surrogate, dysfunctional family. The only woman whose name is mentioned more than once is, by everyone’s admission, a slut.
When the Coach makes his grandiose appearance early in Act I, not only does Miller describe his old fashioned clothes, but he also labels him a man of “Old Testament temperament. A superb actor. A man of immense and powerful contradictions” (15). The Coach strides through That Championship Season like a colossus, knocking over everything in his path. He still holds an uncanny power over his former players, and therein lays the crux of the drama because the Coach truly is a man of “powerful contradictions.” He is the glue that keeps his players together even after twenty years, a job that he relishes. His boys are “his trophies” (69). A fierce Catholic and a product of a Jesuit education, he couldn’t marry the one woman he loved because she was a Protestant and mother wouldn’t approve. There is a certain nobility to the Coach, and the greatest challenge for a director in That Championship Season is to make him likeable, in a kind of grandfatherly way, because he is also one of the most racist characters to ever walk the stage. His hold over his boys is so tight they have gathered on every anniversary of that championship game in his house where “the dominant theme of the room is nostalgia” (3). Portraits of JFK, TR, and Joseph McCarthy line the walls. But just as the coach is the glue that keeps his boys together, his powerful persona squeezes the life out of these thirty-eight year old men. If anything, he appears to have more control over their current lives than he did when he was their mentor on the court. The Coach still lives in an age, ostensibly 1952 but 1852 may be closer to the mark, when the white Christian man reigned supreme, and every black was a nigger and every Jew a kike. Miller discloses early in the play that the 1952 championship was won even though the other team had a “kangaroo-jumping nigger” (23), but this epithet pales in comparison to some of the venom hurled at the Jewish race. The great enemies of society, the Coach lectures to his boys on numerous occasions, are the Jews. He would be right at home in 1936 Nazi Germany.
Inbounds pass to George, the dim-witted mayor of the town. Not long ago his wife Marion gave birth to a “mongoloid” baby. The Coach, who has moved seamlessly from the basketball court to the political arena, advised George to institutionalize the baby to avoid any embarrassment that might complicate his political career. We learn later in the play that George wanted to keep the baby but gave it up after “an order from Coach” (101). Sounds like the Coach really is a figure from the Old Testament. George faces re-election, and his opponent is a man named Sharmen, a Jew. But George, thanks to the Coach’s digging, has an ace up his sleeve. Sharmen’s uncle was black listed communist twenty years back when Joe McCarthy’s Senate Committee was terrorizing innocent Americans. Coach and George are certain that this information will swing the election their way. They fail to recognize, and this is one of the play’s themes, that McCarthy’s committee was disbanded long ago and the country has moved on. George owes everything to the Coach. “He ran me” (7), George says with pride, and he isn’t referring to wind sprints. The Coach is George’s éminence grise.
Cross-court pass to Phil, the big Italian, the “dago” on the team. Phil is handsome, the beneficiary of his father’s business, but bored as hell. Boredom runs rampant among these men who should be living in the very prime of life. The Coach, forced into retirement after striking a student, “watches more TV than any man alive” (115). In a rage over the emptiness of his own life, Phil shouts, “I’m so bored half the time it kills me … mostly sit and replay the old games in my head” (86). He seeks solace in material objects, but his real passion is women. He has a seventeen-year old girlfriend, but this seems like a minor diversion when his relationship with Marion, George’s wife, comes to light. When she paid a visit to Phil to talk politics, they both made it (that is a tame summation) on the office couch. George is flabbergasted, and so is the Coach, at first. Act I ends with an enraged George pointing one of the Coach’s shotguns at Phil. When Act II opens, the men are in the same position with Phil staring down the barrel as the team gathers around. The Coach, who can’t bear any dissension between his boys, feels compelled to intercede, but when George tells him it’s a private matter, he yells, “there’s been nothing private between the men in this room for twenty years” (60). He then dissects the nature of the affair, trying to determine if Marion made the first move as if this will somehow exonerate Phil. The Coach can see into everyone’s mind but is blind when it comes to looking into hearts. He reminds George that he needs Phil, needs his whole team, because these days “you can’t make it alone. Those days are gone forever” (66). The Coach is stuck on a basketball court in 1952, and he isn’t letting anyone else out of the gym. It’s dangerous out in the real world, especially if “Joe McCarthy isn’t out there to protect us anymore” (76).
Phil and George are inexorably tied at the hip, and even the tryst can’t break the bond between them. The Coach just won’t let that happen. George is depending on Phil’s campaign contributions to beat back the progressive challenger Sharmen. Sharmen is a new kind of politician, a rigorous environmentalist, and he pledges to shut down Phil’s strip mining operation. Phil, leery of George’ shabby record and dubious popularity, is in a quandary. Should he give $30,000 to George’s campaign, or should he be the good businessman and back Sharmen to play it safe? To put it another way, does he have the strength to break away from the shackles of his past? Sounds like just the kind of dilemma the Coach should resolve, and this leads us to a behind the back pass to James. Poor James, the hard working, unappreciated high school principal, has been George’s campaign manager, but the stakes are getting a little too high for his amateurish skills. James has five kids, an alcoholic brother he provides for, and a detached wife. In a speech that says exactly what That Championship Season is about, he laments
I’m thirty-eight years old, used to have a thirty-two inch waist, used to be the most popular boy in school, used to have friends. Everything is in the past tense. I’m in the past tense. (91)

He’s more past tense than he knows. James is about to get cut from the team, because the Coach thinks that George needs professional handlers to win this election. James threatens to expose the relationship between Phil and Marion (after he tells George that maybe Marion slept with Phil to garner a contribution, a theory that George actually accepts) in revenge, but George’s ravaged stomach finally has had enough. He vomits in the championship trophy, an act dripping (literally) with symbolism. This closes the curtain on Act II.
The last character is the most enigmatic. Tom, James’s brother, is an alcoholic, a “rummy.” He is the play’s conscience, the spirit of truth and honesty that his three teammates and his coach have discarded over the past twenty years. When George initially refuses to take Phil’s contribution, Tom says, “stop the tragic act and take the money. Stop this … dishonesty” (88). He is the only character who can see through the phony life that his teammates have been leading ever since that last season ended. Tom carries a secret about that championship game deep inside his soul, and maybe it’s that secret that has driven him to drink. There are only four men and a coach in this play, but a basketball team requires five on the floor. Where is the fifth man? The fifth man is the elusive Martin, the player who made the shot with one second left to win the championship game, but Martin has never been to one of these reunions. Not one. All of his teammates recall his grace on the court, his contribution to victory. Tom knows why he has never been to a reunion. The Coach gave Martin orders during the game to “get that nigger center, that kangaroo” who played on the other team. Martin did his job only too well—he broke the kangaroo’s ribs, the game was won and Martin vanished, but not before begging the Coach to reject the trophy. As Tom and Coach argue over the legitimacy of Martin’s action and that entire championship season to boot, Tom says, “we have to go through this phony ritual, champions? Shit, we stole it!” (124)
The Coach isn’t buying any of this. The trophy is more deeply engrained into his very being than the names of his players are etched into its silver sides. The championship trophy is real and not stolen—can’t everyone feel it, read the immortalized names? As he waxes eloquent on the past, a past that pre-dates the championship game, Coach recalls great slabs of beef at colorful picnics, buckets of ice cream, kites in the sky, Bach playing in his house, and his father quoting Shakespeare. But Miller has already told us that Coach is a man of many contradictions, and when he remembers his father, all of his old demons come back in a rush, and nostalgia doesn’t look quite so good anymore. The Jews, he fumes, ruined his father, who went bankrupt during the depression. “Never forget that Marx was a Jew, Jews will ruin this country” (127), he cries. As Coach staggers about the room in a stupor, he manages to put on a scratchy old record, and we hear a harsh, cracked voice calling the last few seconds of the game and Martin’s buzzer-beating shot. Fillmore High School wins it!
The recording ends; silence reigns for a moment, but then George begins the old fight song, and soon the entire team joins in. Even Tom is overcome with emotion, but as the song dies out he starts “whooping.” What are you doing, the others ask him. Tom replies, “on the way out. Cranes. Whoop” (130). Men like Coach are on the way out, just like good’ole Joe McCarthy. The fact is the four of them are on the way out with him, but only the drunk has the presence of mind to realize it.
That Championship Season is divided into three acts, but this structure serves no obvious purpose since the play follows such a linear time line. Act II and III begin at the very same point where the previous acts stop, but the first two acts do end on cliff hangers (the shot gun and the barfing in the trophy), and this technique adds power to the drama. Miller was faithful to the unities of time and place, but he must have recognized that his play blitzes the audience with its provocative language and over-the-top characterizations. He needed to insert rest periods just to let his audience, and his actors, catch their collective breath. This play is incredibly intense, especially if good actors dive into the meaty roles, and Miller was right to just let his characters duke it out on stage without any artifice or manipulation.
In spite of the incessant name calling, numerous betrayals, and the horrible realization that time has stolen twenty years from each of the five characters and left little in return, That Championship Season ends on a high note. The players and their coach, momentarily divided by the present, rally around their hallowed past and the trophy for a ceremonial picture. Coach got it right when he said that the trophy was undeniably real. For one brief moment, the five men are once again Pennsylvania State Champions, and Miller implies that winning the trophy is more important than how it was won. That must be the difference between the game of basketball and the game of life. The language of That Championship Season seems a little archaic today, but its themes of youthful invincibility, of middle-aged disillusionment, and man’s unwillingness to repudiate his past resonate in any age, be it 2012 or 1952. It’s a safe bet that this sorry lot will never be champions again. Miller flays his characters alive on the stage, but he doesn’t have the heart to squeeze that championship season out of them. Everyone likes a happy ending.

I had the good fortune of seeing That Championship Season on Broadway in March of 2011, the first time the play had been produced there since its debut in 1972. The cast included several TV heavy weights like Kiefer Sutherland (James) and Chris Noth (Phil). Some of the theatergoers undoubtedly came to see Jack Ryan from 24 and Mr. Big from Sex in the City, and huge crowds gathered outside the actors’ exit for autographs. This says more about the power of television than the allure of the theater. The performance, however, was spell binding. The characters were so well defined and delineated, the dialogue so realistic, I felt like I was watching a novel portrayed on stage. The way Miller intersperses camaraderie and nostalgia with betrayal and downright ugliness made a great impression on me. Some lines in the play haven’t aged very well--the references to Joe McCarthy seem a little stale to modern ears, and the non-stop anti-Semitism, with words like “kike” and “mockie,” is a little hard to take. But there is something compelling about these five flawed men who try to reconcile the broken lives of their present with the unbroken glory of their past. The Coach, played by Brian Cox, was surprising sympathetic in the production. After reading the play again, I am more alienated by his heavy-handed prejudices on the page than I was hearing him rant in the theater. The director of the 2011 return must have been faithful to Miller’s unforgettable description: the Coach was a man of “Old Testament temperament.” Brain Cox was very good, but I regret that Charlton Heston wasn’t alive for the remake.

[Bobby Keniston · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition I read was the Penguin Plays edition with an introduction by the brilliant Joe Papp, who said he saw so many problems with the play, but that it was an "actor's play"...

Maybe he's right. Maybe I would like it better if I saw a production, I don't know.

I will say, it's not every play that you see a blurb from "Sports Illustrated" on the back cover...

Maybe it's just that these characters should feel dated, but they still exist. Middle-aged men who look back on a "championship season" as though it was the most important thing to ever happen to them. None of the characters are really all that likable, except for the alcoholic Tom (at least he's honest). And that's okay--- characters don't have to be likable for a play to work.

And who I am to criticize a play that won the Tony and the Pulitzer in the 1970s?

The racism and the misogyny just got old. And I know that the play is neither promoting or encouraging racism or misogyny, but it still gets old. And I feel that there are far too many points of crisis, and the acts feel more like cliffhangers than hitting a climax and striving for a resolution.

But, whatever.

There's some very good dialogue, and I'm sure plenty of actors would love to play these parts.

My grade: B-

[Hamed Sehat · Rating 5 out of 5]

نمايشنامه آن فصل قهرماني نوشته جيسون ميلر، برنده جايزه پوليتزر، توني و درامادسك شده است. اين نمايشنامه سه پرده اي در خانه مربي مي گذرد. مربي هر سال به مناسبت سالگرد قهرماني دبيرستان فيلمور در مسابقات بسكتبال دبيرستان هاي ايالت پنسيلوانيا دورهمي گرفته و اعضاي آن تيم رويايي و قهرمان در خانه مربي گرد هم مي آيند. امسال بيستمين سالگرد قهرماني آن ها بوده و آن پسرهاي دبيرستاني، حالا براي خود مردي شده اند. بچه محصل هاي ديروز، هر يك درگير زندگي دوران بزرگسالي بوده و در آستانه چهل سالگي هستند. جورج شهردار شهر شده است. فيل با ثروتش شهر را دگرگون كرده است. جيمز مدير دبيرستان و برادر نابغه اش تام يك دائم الخمر كارتن خواب شده است. نفر پنجم آن تيم قهرمان هرگز در هيچ يك از دورهمي ها شركت نكرده و از آن شهر رفته است. شهر در آستانه انتخابات جديد شهرداري بوده و مربي درصدد است تا براي پيروزي دوباره جورج، شاگردان سابقش را يك بار ديگر متحد كرده و از آن ها يك تيم بسازد. رفته رفته حقيقت هاي هولناك از پس پرده عيان شده و آن دورهمي را به يك جهنم تمام ناشدني تبديل مي كند. :)

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, but disturbing. Not a play I want to actually see. None of the characters have any redeeming qualities at all. From the first time they open their mouths we see how despicable and dishonest they are. Read because a play reading group I'm in is set to discuss it. All I have to say about it is that I hated it. Only positive is it was an easy read. Miller writes great dialogue, but I don't care to get to know these people any better at all!

[Daniel Levy · Rating 3 out of 5]

20 années se sont passées depuis leur conquête du championnat et, réunis autour de leur ancien entraîneur, les membres de l'équipe (sauf un) se révèlent être devenus comme lui, aigris et corrompus. Une critique acerbe d'un monde sclérosé s'effritant face à une nouvelle réalité. Et malgré un humour mordant, la pièce désarçonne par sa franchise crue. Pas pour tous.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This show depicts five men who benefitted off of a lie and use their privilege and disparagement of minorities to advance themselves in life. This play can be used to challenge society to think. Some may use it to justify their actions. Greed, sexual harassment, cover-ups, cheating, adultery, and manipulation abound as themes and main story elements in the play.

[Alex Puthoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking read about how people revert back to their old selves when placed in an environment that was familiar in the past. A sort of tragic story about men who "peaked" in high-school, and cannot move on with their lives.

[Blane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not unlike its contemporary--'Boys In The Band'--this play comes across as slightly dated. Like 'BITB', the issues raised remain relevant.

[Brian McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of drama and cliches in this Pulitzer Prize winner from 1973. Language seems real graphic. As I was reading it, I wondered what it said about America at that time?

[Sarah McCauley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Jake Van Hoorn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rarely encounter a play I completely detest but wow wow wow did I despise this awful story about awful people that makes no effort to examine or unpack their awfulness

[BookLover · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this during college for one of my classes. I know I read the whole thing, but it really hasn't stood out to me.

[rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

dance moms for middle aged white men

[Andrew Benvenuti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having seen the 2011 Broadway revival of this Pulitzer price winning play, I didn't have much hope in reading it. I must say that the play itself is much more compelling than the production I saw.

How many of us know a man (or men) whose greatest acheivement was winning the big game in high school or college? People who spend their whole lives trying to live up to that expectation of greatness. Worse yet, people who try to recapture that one moment of faded glory?

These characters are not likeable people, for the most part. There is something genuine about them though that makes them exceptionally interesting. The text is very dated and it's sometimes hard to connect with specific social issues of the time period, but for the most part it's excellent.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of this play. I first saw it on Broadway in the early '70's, and it was a bold and powerful piece of theatre. The movie didn't succeed as well as the stage version. I was fortunate to be in a production of the show in the late '70's. It has always remained one of my favorite plays.It's been a while since I had picked up a copy of the play, but upon finishing it, I came to the realization that it hasn't aged well (not my copy of the play, the actual play itself). All of the 5 characters are not very likable people. They are selfish, delusional, bigoted individuals, and the play itself has lost a great deal of its impact. I've downgraded my original 5-star revue to just 4-stars, probably because of my memories of performing in it and how important it was to me at the time.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twenty years after winning the state basketball championship, members of the team and the coach gather for their annual reunion.

A winner of the Pulitzer, That Championship Season is a dysfunctional twist on that old adage about high school being the greatest time of one’s life. For these men, high school was the pinnacle for them, despite their later success. The conflict of the play revolves around an upcoming election for mayor, and while I liked the individual moments, the assembled whole felt lacking. That and the supposedly big twist at the end was decidedly anti-climatic, which I think says more about the state of sports and sportsmanship in America than anything about the play. Quasi-recommended.

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This play hasn't aged well. It is a critique of white masculinity from 1972, and its insights are interesting, but how Miller's play goes about offering us these insights is not very pleasurable. The play is populated by five white guys, four of which are actually just terrible human beings. The fifth guy is also a terrible human being but makes a lot of funny, snide jokes. That Championship Season is a critique of misogyny, white supremacy, and fascism; unfortunately the play is also filled with all of those things, so it's a tough slog.

Incidentally I recently read Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody, another Pulitzer winner from this period. It hasn't aged well either.

[Sherry (sethurner) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first reaction after reading this Pulitzer winning play about a championship high school basketball team's twentieth reunion was that I was glad I didn't know these dishonorable men. Their behavior toward one another was disloyal, their treatment of women disrespectful, and their language disreputable. That said, they grew on me. Each was damaged in some way, and all had difficult relationships with their fathers. The whole play turns on how they were shaped by their "win at any cost" coach, and what they did to win the championship game, I found the characters and their moral issues to be interesting and thought provoking in the end.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty great for a play. i think i added it to my to-read list a few years ago for basketball reasons. men and drinking and cheating and all that jazz.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second favorite play ever, (Lemd Me A Tenor is my favorite.) Unfortunatley, the ending feels a little forced, but it is still very good.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic work of the American Theatre, almost Greek in its tragic proportions.