If you’re a sports fan, chances are if you’ve ever heard of Sul Ross State University, it’s because they let a 59 year-old walk-on play football for them back in the mid 2000s.

That true story of Mike Flynt, who’d been kicked off the team and out of school for being a two-fisted hothead back in 1971, becomes a sentimental faith-based drama for Angel Studios in “The Senior,” a well-cast if utterly formulaic sports drama where the “faith-based” piece of the puzzle is very much an afterthought.

Where this Rod Lurie (“The Contender,” “Resurrecting the Champ”) film goes right starts with the casting. If ever a guy seemed born to play a short-tempered fireplug who never stopped playing linebacker, it’s Michael Chiklis. Hell, he’s even got a linebacker’s name.

We encounter Chiklis as Flynt 37 years after the film’s prologue, which saw young Mike (Shawn Patrick Clifford) loose the captaincy of the college football team, his place on that team and his enrollment in that school for never failing to take offense and “never walking away” from a possible fight, because that’s the way his bullying old man (James Badge Dale) taught him.

Grown-up Mike may have married his college sweetheart (Mary Stuart Masterson) and become a successful home builder, raising two kids — one of whom has a grandchild. But when we see him leave the worksite, pushing-60 Mike gets into a fistfight with an irate a-hole in a pickup.

In Texas? What’re the odds?

Wife Eileen may see the bruised knuckles and know the full story. Mike’s college professor son (Brandon Flynn) doesn’t need to see the knuckles. He’s the bullied kid that the former bullied kid Mike raised, just the way his old man did. Mika Flynt never forgave that.

But when wife Eileen talks Mike into joining classmates who graduated when he did not for a 35th reunion (held in a Texas roadhouse), he takes time to make amends with a former rival. And when his classmates note that A) he’s still in good shape and that B) he has another “year of eligibility” at NCAA Division III Sul Ross, that’s all the encouragement Mike needs.

Next thing we know, Mike’s glad-handing the coach (Rob Corddry), “sticking around” Alpine, Texas for a try out. Eileen isn’t consulted, so naturally she tells her bullheaded husband that he’s finishing up his degree or else she isn’t signing on to the possible concussions, head, knee and spinal injuries that this risks.

All its takes is a would-be teammate declaring that Mike’s “like a 59 year-old ‘Rudy,'” referencing the famed kid-who-dreamed-of-Notre-Dame movie, for “The Senior” to settle into its formula and never deviate from it that point on.

Making the team means he becomes their “geezer” mascot, and an inspiration to the others. No, the coach doesn’t want to play him. And sure, some of the kids respect and adore him, but there’s always one who doesn’t.

Robert Eisele’s script deviates a LOT from the “true story.” He spends his alotted screen time setting us up for “The Big Game,” and “the big speech” in that game. Lurie kind of blows that moment, which plays like an anti-climax punctuated by a rapped second anti-climax.

The son Mika is the one providing voice-over narration to the story of his father’s redemption, and that, like the “faith-based” hook attached to the movie, is pretty much forgotten about and plays like an afterthought.

But for an hour or so, director Lurie tackles the tropes lightly as we see lots of football practices, and a few games, and not a lot of anything else. And it plays, helped by the fact that the formidable Masterson doesn’t need a lot of script to get across a flinty “West Texas Gal.”

It’s just that the finale and the final act leading into it stale, uninspired and manipulative. The “learning” curve in the character arc isn’t believable, even if Chiklis, a pretty decent “Thing” in an earlier “Fantastic Four,” is damned convincing as a walking muscle who tackles like a Mack truck.

Rating: PG, gridiron violence, mild profanity

Cast: Michael Chiklis, Mary Stuart Masterson, Corey Knight, Brandon Flynn, James Badge Dale, Chris Becerra, Terayle Hill, Chris Setticase and Rob Corddry.

Credits: Directed by Rod Lurie, scripted by Robert Eisele. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:40