[2][3] It stars the Four Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo), Thelma Todd and David Landau.

[4] The term horse feathers is U.S. slang for "nonsense, rubbish, balderdash," attributed originally to Billy DeBeck.

Through a series of misunderstandings, Baravelli and Pinky are accidentally recruited to play for Huxley instead of the actual professional players.

The climax of the film, which ESPN listed as first in its "top 11 scenes in football movie history,"[6] includes the four protagonists winning the football game by successfully performing a version of the hidden ball trick and then scoring the winning touchdown in a horse-drawn garbage wagon that Pinky rides like a chariot.

Groucho sings a sarcastic verse, sitting in a canoe strumming a guitar as Miss Bailey paddles.

In the opening number Wagstaff and a group of college professors sing and dance in full academic robes and mortarboard hats: I don't know what they have to say It makes no difference anyway; Whatever it is, I'm against it!

A notable scene taken from the earlier revue Fun in Hi Skule consists of the brothers disrupting an anatomy class.

Foreshadowing the "stateroom" scene from the 1935 film A Night at the Opera, all four Marx brothers and the main antagonist take turns going in and out of Connie Bailey's room, and eventually their movements pile up on each other, resulting in a crowded, bustling scene, notable both by Groucho's breaking of the fourth wall during Chico's piano solo, and his constant opening of his umbrella and removing his overshoes upon entering the room.

Eventually, Pinky and Baravelli are sent to kidnap two of the rival college's star players to prevent them from playing in the big game.

The intended victims (who are much larger men than Pinky and Baravelli) manage to kidnap the pair instead, removing their outer clothing and locking them in a room.

Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times wrote that the film "aroused riotous laughter from those who packed the theatre" on opening night.

"Some of the fun is even more reprehensible than the doings of these clowns in previous films," Hall wrote, "but there is no denying that their antics and their patter are helped along by originality and ready wit.

"[8] "Laffs galore, swell entertainment," wrote Variety,[2] while Film Daily reported, "Full of laughs that will rock any house.

Production of the film was hindered when Chico was severely injured in a car accident, suffering a shattered knee and multiple broken ribs.

This is a ‘minced oath’, an expression used in sports stories of the time to show the colourful language used by coaches, without using actual samples, not then considered fit to print.

This particular one also alludes to the notorious stock market performance of Anaconda Copper immediately preceding the Great Depression.

Groucho had delivered other jokes related to the stock market in the Brothers' preceding films (for example, "The stockholder of yesteryear is the stowaway of today" in Monkey Business), and used Anaconda itself in a Eugene O’Neill parody in 1930's Animal Crackers.

The damage is most noticeable in jump cuts during the scene in which Groucho, Chico and Harpo visit Connie Bailey's apartment.

)[17] The August 15, 1932 Time magazine review of the film[18] says of Harpo in the speakeasy scene, "He bowls grapefruit at bottles on the bar."