Sports movie legend Dennis Quaid settles 'player vs. coach' debate we didn't know we needed

"Of course, they did [deserve their win]," Dennis Quaid quickly interjected as I, a humble reporter, tried to trip him up regarding the validity of the Duke Blue Devils' March Madness victory over his University of Houston Cougars without a healthy Jamaal Shead a few weeks back. "They won it!"

"That's the way it goes," continued the Hollywood legend and sports movie veteran, who'd certainly accepted the loss and moved on before I attempted to poke the former Miami Sharks quarterback. "March Madness is so crazy, and Houston was right there for a while, but ... that's the way it goes."

Quaid, currently starring in "The Long Game," a true story of a ragtag group of Mexican-American caddies in segregated Texas in the late 1950s rising to a championship level, knows the thrill of sports victory and the agony of defeat better than most actors. After all, he's played nearly every sports film role possible over the course of his storied career.

Battered athlete trying to beat the odds? Jim Morris, the real-life Devil Rays comeback story, in "The Rookie". Aging athlete trying to hang on for one last ride? "Any Given Sunday". Coach who delivers the type of message that, say, a Jim Morris type might absorb? He led Syracuse and a young Chadwick Boseman in "The Express," then mentored Kurt Warner as Dick Vermeil in "American Underdog".

After a career's worth of reflection, which role did he embrace more? The mentor or the mentee?

"That's a good question, actually," Quaid began (as this reporter exhaled internally for 35 full seconds). "Because I always want to play. I guess it's the athlete, but in this case, I'm a little too old for that."

"Sports movies have to be about something in order for them to be successful, other than the sport itself," he continued. "'The Rookie' was not about baseball, it was about second chances in life, and that's what people relate to. That's why that movie has such great emotion and relates to people."

Notably, though, Quaid has done so much fantastic sports movie work that Quaid-as-Athlete and Quaid-as-Coach and Quaid-as-Mentor came full circle in "The Long Game."

"And it was really interesting and fantastic because Jay Hernandez was one of my student-athletes in 'The Rookie,' and now he's playing the coach in 'The Long Game,' so it was great to have a reunion with him in that way," Quaid helpfully dot-connected.

Dennis Quaid would always rather be the athlete than the coach in a sports movie, but he's happy now to contribute to the message.

In "The Long Game," Hernandez is the leader of the pack, an old friend of Quaid's golf pro Frank Mitchell who initially encounters a rambunctious group of caddies with a burst of frustration (they've struck his car with a golf ball) before realizing he can help fight prejudice with the help of top-notch links instruction.

While Quaid admits a bit of "movie magic" went into helping his modern golf skills translate to the primitive equipment of the 1950s, he and Hernandez collaborate to provide much-needed mentorship over the course of the film -- which, of course, is about a lot more than just the technicalities of a great drive.

It's about overcoming obstacles -- even the remarkably unfair ones that shouldn't have existed in the first place. And it's certainly got the message necessary to fit in as another full-circle addition to the Quaid catalogue.