February 11, 2009 6:51 PM

Jerry Bruckheimer's 'Glory Road'

By
Brian Dakss
(CBS)  Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer has the Hollywood Midas touch. He has nine shows on network TV, including mega-hit "CSI," "Without a Trace" and "The Amazing Race," among others. And his movies have earned more than $13 billion worldwide.

Bruckheimer's latest big-screen effort is "Glory Road," an uplifting look at how sports can break down barriers.

It's the true story of the Miners of Texas Western, a little known team from El Paso that beat the powerhouse Kentucky Wildcats in the NCAA basketball championship game in 1966.

But there was much more to this story than just the underdog pulling off an upset. It helped break the racial divide that was still very evident in college sports in the '60s.

The film tells of Don Haskins, who left his job as coach of a local high school girls' basketball team in Oklahoma to coach the Miners.

While school administrators seemed content with a mediocre team full of white players, coach Haskins insisted on searching for authentic talent.

He aggressively recruited in a color-blind fashion, heading into the inner-cities of Detroit and New York, where basketball was still a hotly-contested, up-tempo street game.

Ultimately, Haskins forged an integrated team that was, in a rare change for a Southern university, predominantly black. With his tough-love style of coaching, Haskins brought his men together for a dream season, leading his squad to the NCAA tournament, where they topped Kentucky to win the 1966 Championship.

The story was part of the larger civil rights movement in the '60s.



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