It’s 15 days from kickoff and I can’t get Scott Bakula out of my mind.

More specifically, it’s almost 15 days from kickoff and I can’t get Paul Blake, the fictitious quarterback portrayed by Bakula, out of my mind. For those that don’t remember, Bakula’s Blake played for the Texas State Fightin’ Armadillos in the 1991 film Necessary Roughness. In the movie, the NCAA stuck Texas State with sanctions and stripped all of the program’s scholarships so the only way to field a football team was with walk-ons from the actual student body.

Long story short: Texas State is down on its luck when it comes to football.

So in need of a quarterback, assistant coach Wally Riggendorf recruits 34-year old Paul Blake off of his family farm to enroll in school and play for the team. Bakula’s Blake is everything you’d expect out of a movie quarterback from Texas or somewhere in the south. Tall, broad shoulders, short haircut. Equal parts swagger and aw shucks. “I never saw anyone fire that football the way you did,” Riggendorf says with that classic Robert Loggia growl. Blake arrives on campus and leads some student body misfits to an improbable win in the finale against the rival Texas Colts.

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