The U Reloaded: The Rise For Five has gone from concept to reality, with a bonafide premier taking place in Miami tomorrow night and a DVD release set for next week.
We did an in-depth piece on the documentary here at allCanesBlog.com when the crowdsourcing efforts were underway, being close with former running back Najeh Davenport and proCanes founder Platon Alexandrakis, who has been a staple on allCanes Radio the past few years.
The red carpet premier will take place 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday August 27th at O Cinema in Wynwood. There are only 100 total seats available, so RSVPs are a must and tickets are available here. There will also be another viewing on Labor Day at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ in South Miami at 5:00 p.m. ET, prior to the primetime showdown between Miami and Louisville on ESPN.
For those who can’t make either event, the DVD will be released on Tuesday September 2nd, available here. Preorders are underway at allCanes and the DVDs will ship next Tuesday.
If it seems like Hurricanes overload right now, that’s because is some ways, it is.
Outside of this Davenport / Alexandrakis behind-the-scenes look at the 2001 national champions and the teams a few years prior that helped make up that once-in-a-lifetime squad, Billy Corben and Rakontur are also working on the tentatively-titled, “The U: Part II”—the follow-up to their successful 30 For 30 documentary that first ran on ESPN in December 2009.
Corben’s piece will also touch on the 2001 national champions, but will also focus on the probation that took place prior to the rebuild.
“It’s not a dissimilar arc to the first movie—the rise and fall [of the program],” Corben recently told Barry Jackson at the Miami Herald. “The bulk of the story is coming out of the Pell Grant scandal, the NCAA sanctions of 1995, the SI cover story of 1995 and what Butch Davis did.
“You have this down-on-its-luck team experiencing a lot of issues, and in comes Butch Davis and he builds it even better than years before. Those 2000, 2001 and 2002, what should have been three consecutive national championships, that’s the primary focus.
“They had 17 first-round picks and nearly 40 players from a single roster that ended up in the NFL; 2001 is not only greatest college team of all time but probably the greatest NFL team ever assembled. The idea that after the devastating sanctions of the early-to-mid 90s, the idea you could not only rebuild the program to former glory, but surpass that, is a measure of hope for the future.”
Due to the narrative and nature of both pieces, each will offer a different vantage point of the same story—Corben’s more slick, graphics-heavy and playing like a feature, as “The U” did five years ago, while “Reloaded” features a lot of home videos, player interviews and a straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth vibe to it—unfiltered and uncensored.
Between two new documentaries, new-look uniforms, hype surrounding a freshman quarterback and a new season getting underway in primetime on Labor Day, safe to say Hurricane season is officially underway.
“The U Reloaded: The Rise For Five TRAILER”