THE great Jim Thorpe stands tall and first in the line of football legends.  But Thorpe knew someone who was better!   His Arapaho name meant Charging Buffalo, but to those on the campus of Haskell Indian Institute, John Levi was known simply as "Skee."  To everyone else, he is remembered as BIG JOHN

THE YEAR: 1923, when jazz was king, gambling was rife, and the nation was in the grips of Prohibition.

THE SETTING: an obscure campus in the shadow of Kansas City's glitzy "Roaring Twenties" nightlife, where political boss Tom Pendergast ruled with an iron fist.

THE STORY: voted first team All-American fullback his junior year, Olympic hopeful John Levi looked poised to surpass Thorpe's amazing athletic accomplishments.   But not everyone was happy with Levi's success.  By defeating nearly every team they played, Haskell - a tiny remedial Indian school in the mud flats of eastern Kansas - had become a threat to the nation's prestigious university athletic system.  They had to be stopped.  And Levi was the key.

What follows is Levi's heart-rending triumph over incredible odds,   including one of the most extraordinary actual football games never recorded.

"I love this story!  We need more contemporary Native American films of triumph."

Rene Haynes, casting

The New World, Black Cloud, Dances with Wolves