Film
- Actor Allusion: The Armadillos' announcer is played by Rob Schneider. At one point he calls a fumble, and gives the player responsible nicknames relating to the word "fumble", like his famous nicknamer character from Saturday Night Live.
- Defictionalization : When the film was made, no school was named just 'Texas State'. From the Banner Society blog: 'Texas State is now a real FBS school, after Southwest Texas State was renamed in the 2000s. The actual Texas State is like the movie Texas State without the past glory.' However, the mascots differ: Fictional Texas State are the Armadillos, real life Texas State is the Bobcats.
- Reality Subtext: An allegory to the troubles that befell Southern Methodist University
in 1987, having their football program shut down for illegal recruiting. As of 2020 SMU is still the only college football program to have received the "death penalty" and it would take over 30 years for the school to recovernote . The impact of that shutdown - it had a hand in the collapse of the Southwest Conference - was such that the NCAA hasn't resited such a penalty for other scandalized football programs since. - Sleeper Hit: A little promoted low budget sports film with a B-list cast released in September. Yet it managed to double its budget at the box office, did well with video rentals, and was easily found in syndication for many more years.
TV Series
- California Doubling: While set in Long Island, New York, the show was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, with the Georgia Dome, the Atlanta Falcons' then-home stadium, serving as the home field of the New York Hawks.
- The Cast Showoff: Scenes of Matt playing basketball are due to Marc Blucas's college and semi-pro basketball career.
- Corpsing: The client of the week in "Anchor Management" turns to Dani after doing this on live television while discussing a war.
