His campus girlfriend Babs Rogers, nephew Donnie "Cake" McCaslin, and teammate Ed Lawrence adore his personality and charm.

During the Sugar Bowl game, Gavin's play, defining his competitiveness throughout his career, causes a player from the opposing team to fumble the ball, which he returns to score a game-winning touchdown.

He enters a failed business relationship with entrepreneur Bolling Kiely, whom he despises, spending countless hours telling old college football stories to clients.

Donnie moves on with his life, becoming an author and getting engaged to a sophisticated woman named Leslie Stone, while supporting Gavin and Babs through a marital breakdown.

A lost and pathetic figure, in the end, Gavin mends his relationship with Babs as he spends his withdrawal from professional sports reminiscing about his famed athletic youth.

A key scene featuring a candlelight parade involving large numbers of extras was filmed, on the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol, when snow started falling.

Michael Apted was all set to direct Thomas Rickman's script in 1982 until Warner Bros. balked at the $16 million price tag, leading man Tommy Lee Jones and the fact that American football movies never do any business overseas.

He won the Heisman Trophy in 1959 and played eleven seasons for three professional teams, but served two and a half years in federal prison in the mid-1980s for his role in a counterfeiting ring.