Former star pro football quarterback Paul "Wrecking" Crewe walks out on his wealthy girlfriend Melissa in Palm Beach, Florida.
Responding to pressure from the head guard and coach, Captain Wilhelm Knauer, a reluctant Crewe eventually agrees to play in an exhibition game.
Crewe forms a prison team that includes Samson, a former professional weightlifter, and Connie Shokner, a killer and martial arts expert.
Aided by the clever Caretaker, former professional player Nate Scarboro and the first black inmate willing to play, "Granny" Granville, plus long-term prisoner Pop—and the warden's amorous secretary, Miss Toot—Crewe molds a team nicknamed the "Mean Machine".
After witnessing "Granny" being harassed by some of the prison guards without breaking, the black inmates decide to volunteer their services and join the team.
The "Mean Machine" gets back into the game, trailing 35–30, one of their touchdowns scored by Nate despite his bad knee, and he is immediately cut down and crippled by guard Bogdanski.
The character of Paul "Wrecking" Crewe was also said to have been inspired by former college basketball and NBA All-Star player Jack Molinas, who was said to have shaved points for Columbia University during the CCNY point-shaving scandal period and for the Fort Wayne Pistons during his sole season in the NBA, as well as being a key figure in the 1961 NCAA University Division men's basketball gambling scandal.
Nitschke was a middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978, four years after release, and Atkins played for the Los Angeles Rams, the Washington Redskins and the Oakland Raiders.
Sixkiller was a collegiate star as a quarterback for the University of Washington Huskies from 1970 to 1972, and briefly played pro in the defunct World Football League.
The critical consensus reads: "Equal parts tough and funny, and led by a perfectly cast Burt Reynolds, The Longest Yard has an interesting political subtext and an excellent climax – even if it takes too long to get there.
"[15] Nora Sayre of The New York Times called the film "a terrible picture" with prison guards that "behave like leering sci-fi monsters" and Reynolds doing a "lumbering imitation" of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.
[16] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety declared it "an outstanding action drama, combining the brutish excitement of football competition with the brutalities of contemporary prison life.
Burt Reynolds again asserts his genuine star power, here as a former football pro forced to field a team under blackmail of warden Eddie Albert.
"[18] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that director Robert Aldrich "is effective in portraying black inmates as a world apart in the prison system; it's the one realistic element in this old-fashioned and brutal drama.
"[19] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times stated, "The story is both clever and unsubtle, the action riot-gun fast from start to satisfying finish, the characters vivid and boldly drawn, the jokes set up and paid off with old-pro efficiency: the bone-snapping, billy-club violence (of which there is inevitably a fair amount) is by Aldrich's standards restrained and by any standards allowable.
"[20] Tom Shales of The Washington Post wrote, "It might seem morally imperative at this point to condemn with indignation what this movie is trying to do—stir up gut-level reactions at a mob-baiting level.