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Ken Carter made national news in 1999 when, as the boys basketball coach at Richmond (CA) High School, he benched his entire team for not meeting his academic standards.

Carter decided the school's 2.0 minimum grade point average wasn't demanding enough, so he raised the bar to a 2.3, insisting that every player meet that goal, or no one would play. Halfway through the season with an undefeated team, several players missed the 2.3 mark-and Carter locked the gym and called off all practices and games. The move was unpopular with the players, their parents, the community and, surprisingly, even Carter's fellow teachers. He received harsh criticism in the Richmond community, but high praise throughout the nation for sticking to his principles.

The true story is coming to the big screen this week in Coach Carter, a Paramount Pictures film starring Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role. Jackson has said, "This is definitely not your typical story, and Ken Carter is not your typical guy. Both the story and Ken are about teaching young people to expect more from themselves and to see beyond their present."

We wanted to know more about the man behind the story, so we talked with Carter, who says Jackson was the only name on his "very short list of actors" he wanted to portray himself in the film. Carter, who insisted that his players call him "Sir," brought that same manner to our interview, using "Sir" frequently in our conversation.

How accurately do you think the film and Samuel L. Jackson portrayed you?

Ken Carter: Ninety-eight point five percent. I was there every step of the way with the production, with the writers, with Thomas Carter, the director. And Mr. Sam Jackson and I spent four months together going to basketball games and dinners. I talk with my hands, and you can see how he expressed himself, he used his hands a lot.

So he captured you pretty well.

Carter: Yes, sir.

You're obviously a man of principles. Where did your principles come from?

Carter: Sir, my family. When you hear that statement it takes a whole village to raise a child, I'm that child. The community raised me. My family is extremely close. I have seven sisters. I have one brother.

You grew up in a community with a lot of broken homes. Was your home intact?

Carter: Yes, sir. But only seven of the 45 kids I had in my [basketball] program had dads in the home.

What were you like as a teenager?

Carter: I just looked at life a little different. We used to go play ball and the other boys would come to the store and try to steal a soda. But I would get the broom and start sweeping up, and I would ask the storeowner, "Sir, I would like to earn a soda." And he always said, "Okay. Just finish that up." Sometimes I worked myself right into a job.

What was your time like as a student at Richmond High?

Carter: I had a wonderful experience there. I used to leave class thinking I was one of the smartest individuals in the world. That's the way our teachers were. So I wanted our kids to have the same experience that I had when I was there.

When you were a student there, what were kids getting into?

Samuel L. Jackson plays the role of Ken Carter in the film

Carter: The same problems that we have now. It's just that people are so lax on the kids now, so the kids just feel, "This is my right. I can do anything I want. I can say anything I want." Well, no, you can't. It's kind of funny. I was in the grocery store recently, and I saw two parents negotiating with a ten-year-old. Something's wrong with that picture.

When you were a student at Richmond, was it the academic mess that's portrayed in the movie, with only a small percentage of kids graduating and going to college?

Carter: More of us graduated, but it was still the same problems in the neighborhood. The neighborhood hasn't changed. Our goal is to change the neighborhood. When people are hurting, what do they do? They medicate themselves. That's what our community is doing, medicating themselves with alcohol and drugs. So I'm saying, "Look, fellows, only one in every 500,000 of you guys will get a chance to play professional sports. There's less than 5,000 jobs in all of professional sports that you can make a living. But one company, Microsoft, has over 10,000 millionaires in that one company."

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