Five men have gathered to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their athletic triumph — the night they won the Pennsylvania State High School Basketball Championship. George (Bruce Dern) is the mayor of Scranton, but his only achievement in four years has been to provide the local zoo with an elephant, which promptly died. James (Stacy Keach) is his campaign manager, a junior high school principal who is tired of serving others. His brother Tom (Martin Sheen) hasn't shown up for the reunion in three years; he's a West Coast writer who is an alcoholic. Phil (Paul Sorvino) is the town's chief businessman, a strip-miner with a love of fast cars and women.
The coach (Robert Mitchum), now retired, suffers from an ulcerated stomach. Still, he is their mentor, a man who believes in the "lean and mean" ethic and counsels his boys "never take less than success." His hero is Teddy Roosevelt.
At first, spirits are high at the reunion. But as the party moves from the gym to the coach's house, it turns into a truth-telling session. These former team players learn more about each other and themselves than they want to.
Jason Miller's drama won the New York Drama Critics Award as the Best Play of the 1971-1972 season and a year later received a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize for drama. It hits hard at the pervasive American myth of competition and success.
The coach valiantly tries to cheer up his boys but, spurred on by drinking, each reveals his sense of emptiness. The mayor says, "I don't think I'm the man I wanted to be." James feels betrayed by his ideals of responsibility and sacrifice. Phil is bored with success. Tom has lost himself in booze. In the end, they can only control the waywardness and meaninglessness of their present lives by retreating to the past and nourishing themselves with a lie.
That Championship Season, directed by Jason Miller, is an intense, brooding film that is carried off successfully by the ensemble acting of the five stars. If Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf led you to introspection, you will find this drama to be equally edifying.