Mike Flynt
The town of Alpine, Texas, is less than 100 miles from the Mexican border. Even in the winter, the heat is oppressive. But in summer, it is stultifying — even for healthy young athletes. So in June 2007, when 59-year-old Mike Flynt showed up at coach Steve Wright’s office asking to try out for the Sul Ross State University football team, Wright was … less than enthused.
“I knew I had to show up in person, because I know if I were a college coach and a 59-year-old called me asking me to try out,” Flynt says, “I’d have hung up on him so hard his ears would be ringing.”
Flynt explained to Wright that he’d gotten kicked off the team in 1970 for fighting. It was his biggest regret in life, and he wanted a chance to play his final semester. As fate would have it, some players were waiting outside to do drills. Flynt asked if he could come along and participate. “Well, you can run with ’em,” Wright told him. “I’ll give you that. I might let you try out.”
Mike Flynt grew up in Odessa, Texas, where he played for the famed Permian High School Panthers — the team portrayed in Friday Night Lights. Flynt’s father, thinking he needed to teach his son to protect himself, was pretty rough on him. One time he told him, “You’re just a runt, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”
But that only motivated Flynt.
“He put adversity into my life that shaped the rest of my life,” Flynt says. “I’m 77 now, and some of the things I went through as a boy served me well, and taught me how to overcome.”
Flynt began weight training and excelled at football, enrolling at Sul Ross and being named team captain his senior year. But his hot head still got him in trouble. When the head coach heard that Flynt had been fighting with two freshman players, he was kicked out of school.
Mike Flynt
“They told me the assistant coaches were packing up my stuff, and they wanted me off the campus within the hour,” Flynt says.
Over the next 37 years, Flynt worked as a strength and training coach at three major universities and later completed his bachelor’s degree. He also owned a fitness equipment company, eventually settling in Franklin, Tenn. When Flynt returned to a reunion with several former players in the spring of 2007, he said, “The crazy thing is, I feel like I can still play.” When one of his teammates mentioned that Sul Ross, now a Division III school, had no age limitations as far as eligibility, the wheels began turning in Flynt’s head.
He and his wife Eileen then planned on a short-term relocation to Texas. Flynt enrolled in nine hours of classes and made the team. Flynt notes that while most of the players encouraged him, a few were jealous of the media attention he garnered. One, he says, decided to target Flynt in a drill — resulting in severe damage to Flynt’s C5 and C6 vertebrae. At this point, everyone from the team physician to his family members told him it was over. “You don’t want to end up paralyzed,” he recalls them saying.
But Flynt was undeterred. He underwent extensive physical therapy for several weeks and was released to play the final five games of the season. He saw action as blocking back on special teams and on defense.
Flynt’s book, The Senior: My Amazing Year as a 59-Year-Old College Football Linebacker, was published by Thomas Nelson in 2008, and this week, a film based on Flynt’s story hits theaters. Directed by Rod Lurie with a screenplay written by Robert Eisele, The Senior stars Michael Chiklis (The Shield, Hotel Cocaine, Don’t Look Up) in the title role.
“I have to admit I’m a bit awestruck by Mike,” Chiklis tells the Scene by email. “I was 59 when I made this movie, which is the same age Mike was when he made his return to his old school. … I love the humble nature of his story. It’s authentic because it’s real. Mike doesn’t become a superstar player. He struggles mightily to overcome adversity. That’s heroic, and we could use some of those in films today.”
