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  • Basketball’s Great White Hope and Ronald Reagan’s America:Hoosiers (1986)
  • Ron Briley (bio)

In 1986, first-time feature director David Anspaugh and Orion Pictures released the commercially successful basketball film, Hoosiers. The popular film has remained a staple for video rentals and cable television, leading Sports Illustrated to tap Hoosiers as the sixth best sports movie of all time.1 Based upon a screenplay by Angelo Pizzo who met Anspaugh at the basketball-infatuated University of Indiana, Hoosiers attempts to reconstruct the so-called "Milan Miracle" of 1954 in which the Milan Indians, a school of only 161 students, defeated Muncie Central, with an enrollment of over 2,000 students, for the one-class Indiana boys' state basketball championship. Milan's victory was a classic David and Goliath story in which the underdog, through hard work, virtue, and cunning, defeats the seemingly invincible adversary.

This story line resonated well with audiences during the 1980s as President Ronald Reagan attempted to return America to a mythical patriarchal 1950s in which divisions of race, gender, and class did not exist for a homogeneous middle class nation. In an effort to restore the simplistic certainties of the post World War II liberal consensus, Reagan reinvigorated the Cold War with the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union and assumed that issues of inequality could be addressed through sustained economic growth spurred by tax cuts and supply side economics.2

For contemporary Americans beset by recession, loss of jobs, a divisive conflict in Iraq, and the threat of international terrorism, the exploits of the Milan basketball squad continue to evoke a nostalgic yearning for a mythical garden in which life was easier and simpler. In February 2004, therefore, ESPN Classic provided cable subscribers with a telecast of the 1954 Indiana state basketball championship. According to National Public Radio commentator Bob Cook, Milan represented the "triumph of the small-town-way of life and perhaps the pull-up-your bootstraps ideal, that no matter where you are from and what disadvantage you may have, if you work hard, you'll succeed."3 This is the imagery employed by Reagan in asserting that America must be restored to a city upon a hill where all things are possible; a concept rendered in less oratorical splendor in 2004 by President George W. Bush. But it is questionable whether such rhetoric reflects the realities of contemporary American life or the more recent past of the 1980s and 1950s.

For example, the "Milan Miracle" was achieved against the background of school consolidation. In 1954, there were 754 high schools in the state of Indiana. Consolidation has reduced this number to 383 schools, while seven of the eight schools Milan beat in the 1954 tournament no longer exist. In addition, the last time that a school with an enrollment of under a thousand students won the Indiana state basketball tournament was 1982. With the small schools increasingly being dominated in tournament games, school principals from around the state split the 1998 championship into four classes based upon school size. As radio commentator Cook concluded, "The small-town ideal, it seemed, didn't meet reality."4

The film version of the "Milan Miracle" also took considerable liberties with the actual story. Hollywood placed even more obstacles to the team's success, providing an even more Cinderella story, than the considerable challenges confronted by the 1954 Milan basketball squad. Despite its small size, Milan, led by young local coach Marvin Wood, was a basketball power, having reached the final four of the 1953 state tournament and had most of the players from that team returning for the following season. In the 1954 championship contest with Muncie Central, the ten-man team from Milan played a slow-down stalling strategy against a more athletic opponent. The tying and winning shots were made by Milan guard Bobby Plump, who held the ball for agonizing minutes before attempting a basket. With the shot clock employed in modern basketball, Coach Wood would be unable to employ the strategy that resulted in a 32-30 victory for Milan. Holding the ball provides an opportunity for undermanned teams, but this approach to the game tends to bore...

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