A half‑century after his death, the film investigates the life of Patterson Cannamela—known as “Pat” or “Uncle Busty”, the filmmaker’s great‑great‑uncle—who rose from the son of impoverished Italian immigrants to college football stardom at University of Southern California (USC) and was drafted into the Dallas Texans in 1952. After the national acclaim, his career and reputation were irreparably harmed by a defamatory article in LIFE magazine accusing him of maiming an opponent, and later he was murdered in a robbery in Los Angeles in 1973. The film reflects on themes of family, poverty, sports culture, mass media, and the mythos and fallacies of the American Dream.