Speaking of excellence in movies, I did my civic duty and tracked down three of the four O'Doyles for @VICE: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78a89/odoyle-rules-where-are-the-billy-madison-bullies-now

and before anyone asks, yes, St. Vincent did try to have this story killed as well

The thing about Billy Madison is that Sandler was just an SNL dude at this point, and had never led a movie. (In his review, Ebert said he thought Sandler's only future in movies was as a villain.) The production was cheap, and the O'Doyles were basically picked up off the street

The characters of the O'Doyles weren't the creation of Sandler or co-writer Tim Herlihy—they were added in by Rich Wilkes, who was hired as a script doctor to make things more coherent. Rich was also the one to suggest the Academic Decathlon

One added benefit of this story was getting to find out once and for all if Sandler was telling the truth about throwing the dodgeballs so hard that he made little kids cry. [Beyond Belief voice] that one is true

Director Tamra Davis told me that she remembered this kid in particular, who just got annihilated:

But the most incredible thing I learned while making this important piece of journalism is that Sean Lett, the oldest O'Doyle, later became good friends with @MeiDayTWN, who was one of the guys in the penguin costume: