Paper Lion

Desperate to fulfill a magazine contract and to shut up his nagging editor, prominent sports writer George Plimpton (Alan Alda) needs an idea for a story. An expert at participatory sports journalism -- he's already pitched poorly in a baseball game and been flattened in a boxing match -- the Harvard-educated, high-society New Yorker decides to give professional football a try. So he laces up his cleats and becomes the most unlikely member of the NFL's Detroit Lions.