Warden Hazen is the primary antagonist of the film The Longest Yard (1974) and the 2005 remake. He is the one most directly responsible for putting together a football game between his guards (who are also a football team) and the cons they guard.Eddie Albert portrayed Hazen in the original and James Cromwell portrayed him in the remake. However, the warden's role in both film, as well as his general character, are mostly the same. Hazen was ruthless, vindictive, vain, and very power-hungry, but not one to get his own hands dirty. Instead, he preferred to let others (such as Guard Captain Knauer) do his dirty work for him. Hazen firmly believed in ruling the prison by fear and brutality.The warden was also obsessed with football, as evidenced by the trophy case he kept in his office and his drive to improve his team of football-playing guards. However, its unlikely he ever played a game himself. As someone once said to him: You never had to guts to begin with. Prior to being the warden, he was a guard who got hit by one of the prisoners. Hazen got his revenge by making sure that particular inmate never got paroled and remained in his prison.Hazen saw an opportunity to improve his team's skills when former all-star quarterback Paul Crewe got arrested and sent to his prison. The warden asked Crewe to assist as a consultant. When Crewe refused, Hazen had Knauer and his men harass Crewe. When Crewe tried to fight back, Hazen had him locked in solitary and then threatened to add more time to his sentence, unless he agreed to put together and train a team made up of the prison's convicts. The idea was to give the guards an easy victory. But Crewe had other ideas.Warden Hazen got a very unpleasant surprise on game day when Crewe and his team not only performed better than expected, but actually threatened to defeat the guards team. Furious, Hazen confronted Crewe. The warden forced the former quarterback to make a choice: Throw the game or face charges in connection with the murder of a fellow inmate and be stuck in prison for a very long time. (The inmate in question was killed by a snitch who mistook him for Crewe.)Crewe agreed, but only after he made Hazen promise not to let his men hurt the inmates. This promise was a lie. The vicious warden secretly ordered Knauer to dish out as much pain as he could to put the inmates back in their place as demoralized men. Once they got the lead, the guards carried out Hazen's orders and injured several of the prisoners.After watching Hazen's men hurt his teammates, Crewe came back into the game and managed to just barely win it. Bitter and humiliated, Hazen tried to bully Knauer into killing Crewe. The convicted quarterback was seen walking off in a direction towards a crowd and Hazen claimed it was an escape attempt. Knauer did not pull the trigger and Crewe picked up the game ball. He gave it to Hazen, advising him to Stick this in your trophy case. Show less «