If America ever sculpted a football coach out of barbecue smoke, Marine grit, and Texas charm, it’d look a whole lot like Bum Phillips. Luv Ya Bum knows it. Hell, Luv Ya Bum celebrates it. This documentary isn’t just a stroll through NFL history; it’s a rodeo ride through 1970’s Houston, the booming oil capital where skyscrapers shot up like linebackers at the snap, and where the Houston Oilers punched their timecards inside the futuristic wonderland they called the Astrodome.
What director Taylor Morgan does here is whip together old-school VHS fuzz, archival NFL Films glory shots, and a chorus of talking heads—Terry Bradshaw, J.J. Watt, Jerry Jones, Billy “Whiteshoes” Johnson into something that feels less like a documentary and more like sitting in a smoky Texas bar while the old heads tell stories so good they make your beer taste colder.
The Bum Factor
Bum Phillips was a good-old-boy philosopher-king in a ten-gallon hat. The kind of man who could walk into a locker room and raise morale just by tipping his cowboy hat at you. Every interview subject speaks about him like you talk about that one teacher who changed your life: reverent, nostalgic, a little misty-eyed.
Playing for Bum, they say, was like playing for a kind father figure—the anti–drill sergeant. And that’s not poetic exaggeration: Bum literally learned in the Marines how not to scream at players. “Yelling don’t make a man listen,” he once quipped, and the film shows it. The man led with fairness, humor, and a calm confidence that makes modern sideline meltdowns look like toddler tantrums.
Oh—and he quietly revolutionized NFL defense while he was at it. 1-tech, 2-tech, 3-tech? That’s Bum. The blueprint every team uses today? Bum’s fingerprints are all over it.
Narration
And let me tell you something, brother: having Dennis Quaid narrate this whole shibang is like pouring aged Texas bourbon over a reel of NFL Films and lighting a victory cigar with the flame. The man’s voice rumbles through the documentary like a V8 engine idling outside a honky-tonk at midnight.
Houston In The ’70s – A City In Heat
The film paints Houston as a boomtown fever dream. Money. Growth. Skyline rising. Oil burning bright. And in the center of it all: the Oilers, playing in the then state-of-the-art Astrodome, which the documentary treats with almost religious reverence. It’s a cathedral of sports optimism. A place where Houston believed it could take on the world. And with Bum at the helm, they damn near did.
But the road to the Super Bowl ran through Pittsburgh, and the Steelers of the late ’70s were less a team and more a steel-plated mythological beast. Houston had to climb that mountain again and again.
The film hits its electric moment with Earl Campbell’s debut first play, 77-yard touchdown. The way the documentary cuts this moment? Chef’s kiss. The NFL’s equivalent of hearing thunder before you realize it’s footsteps.
The Family Business
At its core, Luv Ya Bum isn’t just football, or history, or civic nostalgia. It’s a family chronicle. Wade Phillips speaks with the soft, dignified heartbreak of a man built in the shadow of a father who did things the right way. This thing’s got more roots than a Texas oak.
The Betrayal In Houston
Bum was a class act, a gentleman’s gentleman. So when the documentary hits the moment he was fired, blindsided, expecting a contract renegotiation. You feel it. It’s a gut punch. Texas tragedy. Shakespeare with shoulder pads.
He went on to New Orleans, gave the Saints a brief flicker of hope, then stepped away from the NFL entirely after one season. The film doesn’t treat it as defeat; it treats it as a man keeping his dignity intact.
The Final Whistle
Bum Phillips passed away on a night when two high school teams he once coached were tied at halftime. If that doesn’t sound like the universe tipping its cowboy hat, I don’t know what does.
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The documentary ends with Bum’s own words, a philosophy that feels like it ought to be stitched onto every varsity jacket in America:
“Winning is only half of it. Having fun is the other half.”
And that’s what Luv Ya Bum is. It’s fun, it’s heart, it’s respect. It’s Texas-sized love for a man who led with kindness in a sport built on collision.
Love Ya Bum is streaming now. it enjoyed a limited theatrical run back in October.
