Seventy-two hours before the championship game, Missouri Wolves Heisman-winning quarterback LeMarcus James vanishes from the team hotel with his best friend, tight end Emmett Sunday. LeMarcus drops a televised bombshell. He's organizing a players' strike of the game. LeMarcus demands that student-athletes be regarded as employees and be compensated as such. Consequently he starts the fight for fair compensation, equality, and respect for the athletes who put their bodies and ... (Full plot summary below)
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Seventy-two hours before the championship game, Missouri Wolves Heisman-winning quarterback LeMarcus James vanishes from the team hotel with his best friend, tight end Emmett Sunday. LeMarcus drops a televised bombshell. He's organizing a players' strike of the game. LeMarcus demands that student-athletes be regarded as employees and be compensated as such. Consequently he starts the fight for fair compensation, equality, and respect for the athletes who put their bodies and health on the line for their schools.
Leave your thoughts about National Champions.
| VarietyJoe LeydonAs timely as last night’s episode of “ESPN Sports Center,” and as riveting as a well-crafted tick-tock suspenser, National Champions adroitly avoids most of the pitfalls common to conventional “message movies” by raising and debating issues in the context of a solid and involving drama that can be enjoyed even by people who couldn’t tell an offside kick from a cheerleader’s cartwheel. |
| Christian Science MonitorStephen HumphriesBy peeling back the layers of the characters on both sides of the issue, the movie offers a potent reminder that, often, policy debates become mired in talking points. The danger is that we’ll miss the human stories at the heart of such matters. |
| Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerIt’s bleak and brutal, and Waugh’s cold tone (a definite throwback to Shot Caller) leaves no one with clean hands. But as a testament to the costs of a noble sacrifice in the face of institutional inhumanity, it’s as vital as any of his earlier films. |
| TheWrapTodd GilchristIt’s a story ripped from at least a few years of headlines, and a subject about which there has been much debate. It may or may not come as a surprise, then, that a single two-hour film fails to sufficiently capture its complexities, even working from a compelling premise with a gifted cast. |
| Los Angeles TimesMichael OrdonaYou don’t have to be into football to appreciate the high-stakes struggle in National Champions. |
| ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNational Champions remains effective as an ode to cynical realism but it’s uneven at best as a slice of drama. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreIt’s a sports movie that’ll make you think, and its release — cleverly-timed for the weekend when the only college tilt is the rare one with real “student athletes,” the Army/Navy game — invites fans to put down the beer, get off those Internet sports gambling sites, and think about what’s going on. |
| RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonYou need a blackboard full of X’s and O’s to keep track of the petty plays this movie's running. |
| Washington PostThomas FloydAs an attempt to expose college athletics for what it is — a laughably lucrative hierarchy that relies on free labor by student-athletes to line the pockets of coaches, commissioners and other bigwigs — National Champions gets a notch in the win column. |
| CNNBrian LowryAt its best, National Champions feels calibrated to provoke a conversation about the flawed framework of college sports, which is talked about plenty and still not enough. Then again, TV networks and sports-related media outlets benefit from the existing system, and many fans would rather just hear about wins and losses. |
