Pitarresi: Express didn't get it quite right

“The Express,” the just released movie about Syracuse University Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis, is becoming almost as controversial as the statue of Davis that depicted Ernie wearing Nike football cleats even though the company wasn’t founded until several years after he died.

 

There are several scenes in the movie that don’t follow the facts, including one in which West Virginia fans are shown throwing garbage and hurling racial epithets at Davis and the SU team.

 

People in West Virginia are upset. They say it never happened. They appear to be correct.

 

To start, Syracuse did not play at WVU in 1959, the year SU won the national championship. The game was at Archbold Stadium. The Orange won, 44-0. For another, Dick Easterly, the Orange quarterback, said the incident was completely fictitious. So did center Pat Whelan.

 

“Jeez, where did they get that from?” Whelan said.

 

Some people have weighed in and said it doesn’t matter. They say the incident reflected the attitude in West Virginia. Variety, in its review of the movie, said the state, along with Texas, were – or are – not exactly bastions of racial tolerance. Maybe so, but how racially tolerant was Central New York 50 years ago?

 

If you are going to make the accusation, you have to provide evidence, and there doesn’t appear to be any. You can think what you want, but you can’t make things up. Ernie Davis certainly faced a lot of intolerance, but not in that way in that place at that time.

 

Yes, it’s a movie, and, from everything I’ve heard, a good one that honors a great player who was very highly thought of as a man, but you’re dealing with real events and real people. Do not indict people for sins they did not commit.