You're with me, 'Leatherheads'
More on Rick Reilly and this "Leatherheads" deal:
In the current (April 7) issue of Sports Illustrated, co-script writer Duncan Brantley outlines his end of how the movie finally got made in the "Players" section (page 20).
It started as something he came across while searching the SI library in 1986, fact-checking a story about the Duluth Eskimos, a team that folded in 1927, seven years before the NFL, but possessing a player named John McNally (aka Johnny Blood) who used the alias to it wouldn't cost him his eligibilty at Saint John's University in Minnesota.
He writes: "Because of Blood's gregarious nature, a film inspired by him had to be funny. For a project born at SI, it seemed only natural to turn to Rick Reilly, one of the funniest humans on the planet." The two had worked on college football stories together -- he as a writer, Brantley as the reporter.
Gotta read the magazine for the rest of that story ...