Razorback Book Soon to be Movie
Switzer
A Former Arkansas Razorback football player and legendary collegiate and professional head football coach is days away from signing a contract for a movie adaptation of his book “The Bootlegger’s Boy,” according to Michael Smith, Tulsa World Movie Critic.
Barry Switzer, who is one of the only two head coaches to win both a college football national championship and a Superbowl, released “The Bootlegger’s Boy” in 1990. The only other coach to accomplish this was also a UA alum, Jimmy Johnson.
The book looks at Switzer’s life, experiences and years coaching at Oklahoma and the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.
“It’s a story about growing up in the Mississippi delta during segregation, before integration,” Switzer said of the upcoming film. “Football is a side note.”
Switzer was born in Crossett, Ark., and his father was a drunk, a bootlegger and a money lender who spent time in prison. The former center and linebacker for the Hogs was a part of Frank Broyle’s team that shared the Southwest Conference title and finished with a record of 9-2 in 1959.
After Graduating with a business degree from UA in the Spring of 1960, Switzer joined the Army. However, the following year, Switzer returned to Fayetteville as an assistant coach under Frank Broyle from 1961-1965. It did not take long for Switzer and the coaching staff to develop the Arkansas football program as they appeared in back-to-back Sugar Bowls.
He was a pivotal part of the all-star coaching staff that led the Razorbacks to their only national football championship title in 1964. That season, the Hogs went 11-0 and captured the national championship after beating Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl. The next season, the Razorbacks went 10-1, with their only loss being an upset in the Cotton Bowl against LSU.
“In this explicit autobiography, the poor boy from the Arkansas swamp bottoms answers his critics while providing a game-by-game rundown of his 16-year career at the University of Oklahoma. He discusses his groundbreaking enlistment of black players, explains the ‘feud’ with Texas coach Darrell Royal, condemns the hypocrisy of big-time college athletics, and berates sportswriters who base stories on opinion, not factual investigation,” said Kim Holston, an autobiographer and book reviewer.
“Producer Molly Smith (‘The Blind Side’) has formed Belle Pictures, a production banner to develop and produce theatrical motion pictures and television properties in association with Warner Bros.-based Alcon Entertainment in a new four-year discretionary first-look deal,” according to Smith and Alcon co-founders and co-CEOs Andrkew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
The film is still in pre-production as the production company seeks funds and the script. This will not be your typical football movie.
“If you saw ‘The Blind Side,’ you know that wasn’t a football movie but a human-interest story,” Switzer said. “That’s the way that we see ‘The Bootlegger’s Boy.’”
