As the saying goes, Americans love a winner, but they also love a loser. The fellows who played for Caltech men’s basketball team from 1996 to 2007 are anything but “losers” — they have or will have degrees from Caltech, folks — but they did lose a lot of basketball games. In that interval, the Beavers went completely unvictorious, dropping 207 straight games against their Division III opponents before beating Bard College in January 2007. Just this past February, Caltech ended a 26-year/310-game conference winless streak, knocking off Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference foes Occidental College. They even made a movie about the Beavers’ 2005-06 season and their quest to end those streaks; the 2007 documentary film Quantum Hoops isn’t available on Netflix, but it’s readily accessible through Amazon.

The Caltech Story, In Whatever Form, May Be Heading To More And Bigger Screens (Image: Gary Friedman/LA Times)

It looks like Disney and Ben Stiller are hoping you’ll still love these so-called losers enough to part with a little of your hard-earned. [Ed. Note: again, it feels odd to type “losers,” since there are probably dudes on that team who invented one or more of the electronic gadgets I’m reading or listening to music through at this very moment, and any of them could hack and destroy our site in eight seconds with an old Timex Sinclair and a dial-up land line.] If they get their way, you’ll be seeing a fictionalized comedy re-make of Quantum Hoops in theatres soon. Stiller’s production company is evidently preparing the new version, though no details have been released regarding casting or a director. Stiller would have to shave his head to play head coach (at the time) Roy Dow; if they’re going to fictionalize this thing, though, that’s probably a detail they’ll overlook.

By the way, the student body RTC’d after the win in February that broke the conference losing streak, obviously one of the most justified RTCs ever. So, why wait for a fictionalized account of the 2006 team when you can see the real thing from last year’s squad right now?…