Eventually, Porter gets the coach of a Christian high school team to agree to play a few games with Porter's misunderstood Mustangs. The fact that these preppie high school kids are made out to be such trash-talkin', villainous poor sports is unintentionally hilarious. In typical sports movie fashion, the Mustangs lose the first game horribly, setting up the stakes for the painfully predictable final game.
The film shows us the team playing football, and it shows us the lives and attitudes of the teammates improving, but it never believably links the two as cause and effect. We get a scene where a kid's white-trash mother shows up for visiting hours, then leaves abruptly. "I just want her to love me," the kid confides in Porter. Porter suggests more football practice. Later, the mother shows up at the big game, and she and her son exchange smiles. It seems the cure-all power of football put an end to the complex (and unexplored) issues that divided the two.
The flick ends with a "Where Are They Now?" segment, which illustrates that a good chunk of the former Mustangs teammates still wound up in prison or the grave. The Rock's narration chimes in to remind us that that's still better than the usual statistics. So I guess football really did save most of them after all. Just don't ask how.