Toward the end of Furious 7, the second-best part of the Fast franchise (Fast Five is No. 1, everyone agrees), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character, former federal agent Luke Hobbs, has been laid up in the hospital for most of the movie. He functions in this movie kind of like The Hulk in a Marvel movie: always nearby, but never unleashed until he’s needed most.
Never forget The Rock watched The Rock sack FSU’s QB in ‘Furious 7’
Dwayne Johnson played college football at Miami.
Right before he realizes the rest of his team is in trouble and the whole city is blowing up, he’s watching football.
The football he’s watching is Miami’s 1993 loss at rival Florida State.
That play The Rock is watching shows a younger The Rock sacking Charlie Ward, that season’s Heisman Trophy winner. Johnson was a defensive lineman for Miami, recording four career sacks and eventually being replaced by future Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Sapp.
(This is one of several “wait, if he did that in the movie’s universe, then who did the real-life thing that the movie uses?” moments in the Fast series. In the Fast reality, who sacked Charlie Ward? Who performed Ja Rule’s and Ludacris’ soundtrack songs, considering Ja Rule and Ludacris play characters in the movies? Luda’s character is good at every line of work, but is not a musician, so who’s that on the radio who sounds just like him? Are Luda, Ja Rule, and The Rock secretly playing Luda, Ja Rule, and The Rock, but without any other characters realizing it? Is Fast a multiverse? Fast is a multiverse.)
Johnson’s other most memorable moment as a college athlete was that time he helped chase San Diego State’s mascot into the stands during a 1990 brawl. No. 94 here, in a scene that must go in Fast 9:
Years later, Sapp summed up The Rock’s college career:
”When you have a partner in crime and you can go balls-to-the-wall in a ball game and come out it knowing it’s not going to fall off, that bodes well for you. I knew I had somebody that was more than capable of playing if I was taken out. He was our do-everything guy. He could play inside and out, he could play all four positions. He was the Swiss Army knife. He was our utility guy. It was, ‘Dewey, go left end. Go nose. Go right end.’ He could do it all. He was a jack-of-all-trades, but only a master at wrasslin’.
And now here we are, with the world’s biggest movie star and potential future president still repping The U.
See More:
