6 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘The Longest Yard’

Gabrielle Moss August 30, 7:00 am

The Longest Yard, Burt Reynolds, anniversary — Images Credit: Everett Collection

A comedy about a disgraced football star who finds himself leading a team of prison inmates through a no-holds-barred game against the guards, The Longest Yard was released on August 30, 1974, and touched down into cinema history, where it is now widely regarded as one of the greatest football film of all time.

And that reputation is built on more than Burt Reynolds‘ winning smile and luxurious chest hair. The film involved real football plays, real injuries, a real prison and Reynolds’ real lifelong passion for the game.

1 The Film Was Full of Real Football Players … Including Burt Reynolds

THE LONGEST YARD, Ray Nitschke, Burt Reynolds, 1974

Everett Collection

The Longest Yard‘s cast is famously stacked with real professional football players including Green Bay Packer and Hall of Famer Ray Nitschke (pictured below) and Pervis Atkins, who had played with the L.A. Rams and the Oakland Raiders. But it’s less well-known that Reynolds himself was a star running back at Florida State University, and retained a passion for the game throughout his life. In fact, according to a 2018 ESPN article, young Reynolds dreamed of playing for the NFL, before a knee injury sidelined his career. He was known to wear his FSU ring until his death in 2018.

Though he had to settle for Hollywood over the gridiron, Reynolds remained dedicated to football, and to FSU football in particular, for the rest of his life. He often flew in to observe team practices, and donated frequently to the school’s sports program. His reach extended beyond college football, too — in 1982, he not only funded but actually helped with the design of the iconic Dallas Cowboys uniform.

2It May Have Been Based on a Real “Guards Vs. Prisoners” Game

Though The Longest Yard‘s writers claimed the film was based on an original idea, many viewers have noted similarities between the film and a 1961 Hungarian film called Two Half Times in Hell. But that film — and possibly The Longest Yard, as well — was based on a real soccer game that occurred in 1942, between Nazi soldiers and Ukrainian amateurs living under Nazi occupation. Known as the “Death Match,” the real circumstances of the game share a plot point with The Longest Yard — the Nazi guards supposedly told the Ukrainians that they had to lose the game, a demand that the Ukrainians ignored, winning 5-3. However, the outcome was unlike what happened in the film: rather than winning the guards’ grudging respect for being true to themselves, several members of the Ukrainian team were executed.

Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

3Burt Reynolds Befriended the Real-Life Prisoners On Set

The Longest Yard was shot in a real, working prison — Georgia State Prison, in Reidsville, Georgia. Filming was sometimes delayed due to conflicts among prisoners, though a guard interviewed on-set in 1973 said that both guards and inmates took the filming seriously and “really love it.”

Reynolds was discouraged from fraternizing with the prison’s convict population — so, being Burt Reynolds, he made sure to fraternize with the convicts, taking lunch with them and learning about life inside the prison. Over the course of filming, he developed a connection with one prisoner in particular. “I always make it a point to find out who is the toughest guy in the prison. And they tell me. And then I give him Baby Ruths and things like that. Anything he wants. And we got along swell. His name was Ringo. I’ll never forget,” Reynolds said in a 2018 interview.

Years later, a man showed up outside the set of one of Reynolds’ films — Ringo himself. “And so he came in. I said, ‘Ringo what happened? Did you have good behavior or something?’ ‘Actually I escaped.’ And I said, ‘Are they chasing you now?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah! I was wondering if I can get a couple of bucks from you.’ ”

4The Actors Played for Real — And Got Hurt for Real

Everett Collection

In a 1973 set interview, Reynolds noted that the only way to “make it look right is to just go out and hit.” When the reporter asked if Reynolds had been hit, he replied that he had been hit “a lot.” Richard Kiel was injured on set, and though his character is supposed to be healthy, in a few shots, he can be seen wearing his arm in a sling.

5The Film Production Left Football Equipment Behind, And Actual Prisoners Used It

After filming wrapped, the crew left everything from balls to “Mean Machine” uniforms to the bleachers behind. The prison’s inmates, inspired by the filming experience, donned the left-behind jerseys and played a game against the Georgia State Troopers. But according to a 1988 article in Sports Illustrated, “the real game quickly got out of hand, with inmates pummeling the out-of-shape troopers for their alleged arrogance. ‘Here are these guys who couldn’t play a lick, cussing us and saying what they were going to do to us,’ recalls Morris, who coached the inmate team. ‘So we said, Screw ’em. Let’s kill ’em!’ The game was called at the half, with the inmates ahead, 66-0. End of prison football in Georgia.”

6Burt Reynolds Refused to See the Remake — Even Though He Was In It

THE LONGEST YARD, Burt Reynolds, Adam Sandler, 2005,

Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

In 2005, Adam Sandler remade The Longest Yard, with himself in the role of Paul “Wrecking” Crewe and Reynolds as Nate Scarborough. But Reynolds was not impressed with the production from the beginning, especially Sandler and company’s claims that they would make the best version of the film. In 2018, Reynolds said that he told the Sandler crew at the time, “’Well, good luck. And how many days am I working? Three days?’ I said, ‘OK. And how much money is it? OK, this is good.’” Though Reynolds suspected that the remake wouldn’t surpass his original, he never actually confirmed it, because as he told USA Today in 2018, “I didn’t see. I didn’t want to see it.”

That wasn’t unusual for Reynolds, however. In another 2018 interview, when his shocked conversation partner exclaimed “You’ve never seen Boogie Nights?”, Reynolds cooly replied “Why?” Reynolds claimed he never watched any of his own movies, and added, “I don’t look at the 100 yard dash I won, either.”

Reynolds might have been on to something with skipping the remake in particular, though. While the movie was a hit, and had the largest opening weekend of any film Sandler ever made, in a 2019 interview with podcaster Bill Simmons, Sandler called his 2005 version “not even close” to the original and said that the film “made no sense.”