“You get to hang out with all your buddies. “Oh, it was a blast,” Cassel told The Athletic. He lived that exact life of a football star without the pressure. Cassel backed up Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC during its glory days, never starting a single game, but still went on to a 14-year NFL career. Brooks also struggles with its validity, saying “Anybody with that talent, they’d want to go and be the best they can for the team.”īut nobody would understand this better than Matt Cassel, maybe the best-known backup quarterback in the modern era. He says this part was more a creative comedic touch. ( Courtesy of “Blue Mountain State”)įalconer laughs that this concept of the backup quarterback isn’t based on research. Running back Craig Shilo, left, and backup QB Alex Moran commiserate on the bench during freshman hazing. Then he defends his antics with a mission statement on the life of a college backup. At practice, he shows his passing talent one day and, after the coach compliments him, purposely screws up.
In the pilot episode, Moran, played by Darin Brooks, has two girls arrive at his dorm room - courtesy of boosters - for a threesome. Meet Alex Moran, a sarcastic, lazy, debaucherous freshman quarterback from Wyoming who would do anything to live the life of a college quarterback but without all the burdens of starting. “What if this guy doesn’t want to play? What if he doesn’t want to ever start?” they asked themselves. They agreed they wanted a backup quarterback, a guy entering the program as a freshman who has to work his way up. They loved shows like “Friday Night Lights,” and in those kinds of shows or movies, the trope is the backup quarterback steps in to play the hero. “We had a lot of people pitching us stuff that we were like, ‘Wow, we could never put that on TV.’”Īnd when it came time to come up with the main character, they decided on an unseen aspect of the sports world.
“Honestly, most of the stories we got from other college football players were too wild for the show,” Falconer said. There were stories of partying, pranks and encounters with women. They often tried to get Marinaro liquored up to spill some of his tales, and later when players such as Bill Romanowski and Brian Bosworth made appearances, Falconer and Romano would listen to their unbelievable stories and take notes. They got on the phone with former players. Some of the show’s inspiration came from Falconer’s high school football days, but they also started talking to college football players to hear their stories.
BLUE MOUNTAIN STATE PROFESSIONAL
Suddenly, these two New Englanders from Emerson College who were primarily Boston professional sports fans not too ingrained in college sports had to build a world. Producer Brian Robbins pushed them to make it a powerhouse, which, Falconer said, “took the show to kind of another level.” The next question was whether the mythical Blue Mountain State should be a powerhouse program or a “Bad News Bears”-style disaster. Falconer and Romano (who also starred in the show as Sammy, the Mountain Goats’ mascot) helped them figure it out.
BLUE MOUNTAIN STATE TV
Spike TV wanted a college football comedy, but network execs didn’t quite know what that would look like. “The show is meant to be watched on a very surface level,” Falconer said. No matter what you think of “Blue Mountain State,” it has over the past decade evolved into a kind of success. “We were like a caricature of a big-time, corrupt football factory,” Marinaro said, “but I know there were coaches around the country who watched the show and were cringing. The man who played Blue Mountain State head coach Marty Daniels, Ed Marinaro, was a Heisman runner-up and NFL running back who contends not all of it is far off. They constantly hear that every program has a Thad Castle, the jerk linebacker who’s become the most famous character.
Much as presidential aides often say the absurd comedy “Veep” is closer to reality than dramas such as “The West Wing” or “House of Cards,” people involved with “Blue Mountain State” keep hearing their nonsensical look at college football culture hits some of the nuances dead on. “Blue Mountain State” - a show originally pitched as “‘Animal House’ set in Division I college football” - somehow lives on after being canceled in 2012, and its stars and creators can’t help but think of the potential opportunities left on the table in its dormancy. Studio executives in their late 20s and 30s sought out co-creators Falconer and Chris Romano to say they loved the show in college. Its stars became pseudo-celebrities on college campuses. But then it became a hit, a cult classic redeemed by the rejuvenator that is Netflix.
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