ESPN will air its second original made-for-television movie -- The
Junction Boys: How 10 Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship
Team -- Dec. 14.
Announced at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, the ESPN
Original Entertainment production, based on the best-selling book by Jim Dent,
is the true story of 35 boys who survived Paul 'Bear' Bryant's harrowing Texas
A&M college-football training camp in drought-ridden Junction, Texas, in
1954.
That summer, more than 100 Aggie hopefuls arrived for the first practice of
the infamous training camp, where players were subjected to 120-degree
temperatures and given no food or water eight hours per day for 10 consecutive
days.
Those 35 players who survived made up the 1954 team that won only one game,
but they formed the nucleus of a club that went undefeated just two years later
to become Southwest Conference champions.
