Season 9 Episode 10: Dud Bowl

The episode opens at a funeral. Skippy, one of Al’s Polk High teammates, has died, and the surviving Panthers gather to sing “Amazing Grace” over him. Afterwards, at the Bullpen, Al is approached by Jack Franklin, the half back from the only other undefeated school in the league, whose championship game against Polk High was cancelled nearly thirty years earlier and never played. Franklin wants to settle it now. Al’s position is that Patton High were cheaters who fielded ringers in their twenties and thirties, and Franklin’s counter, that Polk had men that old too, gets the best comeback in the episode. So the game is arranged, and both sides go looking for players. Al’s team has a quarterback problem, because Thad, who threw to him in 1966, has transitioned in the intervening decades, and the episode’s handling of that is very much of 1994 and has not aged well. Franklin, meanwhile, brings ringers of his own, and they are real ones: Bubba Smith, Lawrence Taylor, Ken Stabler and Rod Martin all appear as themselves. Bubba Smith had already been on the show twice, most memorably as Al’s rival Spare Tire Dixon in season 5.

The rest of the half-hour is the game itself, staged on a real field with real ringers. The producers brought in former NFL players rather than stunt casting actors, which gives the Polk High side an opponent the script does not have to pretend is formidable. Al’s conviction that a championship from the 1960s can still be settled is treated with complete seriousness by everyone involved, and the episode gets most of its comedy from how far a group of middle-aged men will go to resolve a question nobody else remembers asking.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 13, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 10
• Overall episode number: 193
• Written by: Kim Weiskopf
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: November 4, 1994
• Production note: Four former NFL players appear as themselves. Bubba Smith had already appeared twice, as Spare Tire Dixon in season 5’s “All Night Security Dude.”
• Production note: The football scenes were shot at Monarch Stadium, Los Angeles Valley College. Grant High School and its Lancers logo are visible in several shots.
• Title note: A play on the Bud Bowl, the stop-motion Budweiser commercials that ran during the Super Bowl at the time.

Guest Cast

• Bubba Smith as himself
• Lawrence Taylor as himself
• Ken Stabler as himself
• Rod Martin as himself
• John S. Reynolds as himself
• Stan Ivar as Jack Franklin
• Drew Pillsbury as Thad
• Dean Norris as Rodent
• Chuck LeFever as Speedy

The Game That Was Never Played

The grudge is a good one because it has no resolution available to it. Two undefeated teams, one cancelled championship, and both sides have spent twenty-eight years certain they would have won. Al’s explanation of why Patton High do not count, and the exchange about the respective ages of each team’s players, is the funniest writing in the episode. His justification for Polk’s own over-age personnel is a complete argument in eight words.

Dean Norris plays Rodent here, nearly fifteen years before Breaking Bad. Chuck LeFever had played Skippy in season 8’s “Hood ‘n the Boyz,” and in this episode he attends his own former character’s funeral as a different Panther, Speedy.

The Thad storyline is the part of this episode most likely to make a modern viewer wince. The character has transitioned since high school, and the series treats it as a punchline throughout, with Al’s reaction scene in particular playing for shock in a way that no current sitcom would attempt. It is worth knowing about before you watch it.

The real NFL contingent is the main attraction. Lawrence Taylor had retired from the Giants the year before this aired, Ken Stabler had been the Raiders quarterback through the seventies, and Rod Martin had played linebacker alongside him. Casting four of them against a team of middle-aged men from a shoe store is the joke, and the show does not soften it.

A nice period detail: the episode aired during FOX’s first season carrying the NFL, and the announcer mentions it rather more often than the plot requires.

Famous Quotes

• Jefferson: “What’s the deal with Patton High?” Rodent: “They were the only OTHER undefeated school in the league. We were supposed to play for the city championship but the game got cancelled.”
• Al: “Because they were cheaters, that’s why. They used ringers. Guys 25, 30 years old.” Jack: “You had guys that old!” Al: “They were there honestly! They were stupid!”
• Al, opening the door to his rival: “Jack Franklin. What brings you to the undefeated neighborhood?”
• Jack, having mistaken Peg for the quarterback: “Then who is she?” Al: “I, uh… I don’t know.”

Notes

• The Panthers sing “Amazing Grace” at Skippy’s funeral.
• The theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly plays twice during Al’s confrontation with Franklin.
• Patton High has been renamed Jacqueline Onassis High, and the team is now the First Ladies.
• Goofs: a tumbling mat is visible behind the players who catch and throw Al, and two players on the same team are wearing number 35 in the overhead shot.