How Vermeil helped script Papale's Hollywood story

	Vince Papale remains a Philadelphia icon, 30 years after making the Eagles' roster. Al Tielemans/SI

Vince Papale could never happen in today's NFL. A 30-year-old rookie who also happens to be a part-time bartender? Making a team's roster after showing up for an open tryout? In this age of almost year-round scouting, with such a highly scrutinized and endlessly hyped four-month buildup to the NFL draft?

Talk about fantasy football.

"No way. It just wouldn't happen,'' said Dick Vermeil, the rookie NFL head coach who gave Papale his shot with the 1976 Philadelphia Eagles, 30 years ago this summer. "He'd never get the opportunity. It's sad. It really is. Because how many people turned down Kurt Warner? Stories like Vince, and Kurt, and London Fletcher, and Herman Edwards [all of whom were undrafted collegiate free agents], all those kind of young people who excelled beyond expectations, are what makes the NFL great.

"There are always going to be a guy or two who jumps out and makes a team unexpectedly. But guys with stories like Vince, they're special.''

Which is why Disney has made a movie out of Papale's story, titled Invincible, which stars Mark Wahlberg and opens nationally next week (Aug. 25). Wahlberg does a pretty convincing job of portraying the former Eagles receiver/special teams standout, a South Philly native who in that bicentennial summer of 1976 turned into a real-life Rocky Balboa. (Full-disclosure time: Some NFL reporter type named Banks also has the briefest of non-speaking cameos in the film -- we hope -- playing, of all things, a sportswriter. But don't blink, or you'll miss his no-doubt-scintillating major motion picture debut.)

Vermeil, reached Thursday morning at his farm house outside Philadelphia, has spent the last week or so telling and retelling his role in Papale's Cinderella tale, which seems to be taking a little of the sting out of his most recent retirement from coaching after five up-and-down seasons in Kansas City.

In the movie, which will premiere in glitzy fashion next Wednesday night at midtown Manhattan's Ziegfeld Theatre, Vermeil is played by the accomplished actor Greg Kinnear, a bit of dead-on casting that impressed even Vermeil and members of his family.