It's a longstanding tradition for football to be played on Thanksgiving day. We gather around our TV's to watch football while we eat or just to give everyone something to do after the feast has taken place. With that being said I'm going top give you my top 10 favorite football movies of all-time. So without further ado...
10. Gridiron Gang
This film is really inspiring and really emotional. Sean Porter (played by The Rock) is a detention camp probation officer who oversees the inmates at Camp Kilpatrick in Los Angeles and isn't willing to simply write off the violent offenders who have been placed in his care. Though their prospects for the future are decidedly bleak, Porter is convinced that if he can just get through to his adolescent inmates they may finally be able to turn their lives around and make amends for the mistakes of their past. When Porter's proposal of forming a high-school-level football team at Camp Kilpatrick meets with skepticism and resistance in the highest ranks, the determined coach puts his career on the line to prove that even convicted criminals can acquire the tools needed to build a brighter future when given the proper motivation and the means of doing so. Gridiron Gang has a rating of 42% on rottentomatoes.com.
9. The Replacements
This film is flat out hilarious and it does give us a look at what could happen if we had an actual strike in a major professional sport. The Washington Sentinels are one of the strongest teams in pro football -- until contract negotiations break down and the Sentinels go on strike. Determined to play the team's schedule, owner Edward O'Neil (played by Jack Warden) recruits a ragtag band of scab players, to be headed up and whipped into shape by the retired veteran coach Jimmy McGinty (played by Gene Hackman). At the top of the recruitment list is quarterback Shane Falco (played by Keanu Reeves), a promising athlete until a catastrophic defeat in the Sugar Bowl dashed his confidence. Joining Falco on the team are Clifford Franklin (played by Orlando Jones), a receiver who can't catch the ball; Nigel Gruff (played by Rhys Ifans), a chain-smoking Welsh soccer player; Bateman (played by Jon Favreau), a former cop with anger management problems; Fumiko (played by Ace Yonamine), a sumo wrestler new to football; and Wilkinson (played by Michael Jace), a convict on parole to the Sentinels. Can McGinty mold his new squad of misfits and no-hopers (who truly love the game) into a winning team? The Replacements has a rating of 40% on rottentomatoes.com.
8. Varsity Blues
This film to me is really a true life story in a way to me and what I went through. In his 35th year as head coach, Bud Kilmer (played by Jon Voight) is trying to lead his West Canaan Coyotes to their 23rd division title. Uncompromising and omnipotent, Kilmer is deified in the small Texas town, as long as the team is winning. But when star quarterback Lance Harbor (played by Paul Walker) suffers a season-ending injury, the Coyotes are forced to regroup under the questionable leadership of second-string quarterback Jonathan Moxon (played by James Van Der Beek). His irreverent attitude and approach to football come into direct conflict with the coach's inflexible game plan. Varsity Blues has a rating of 40% on rottentomatoes.com.
7. The Longest Yard (1974)
This movie is absolutely hilarious and it really has a lot of quotable lines that the remake could never top. Ex-football star Paul Crewe (played by Burt Reynolds) ends up in a prison run by sadistic sports-nut Warden Hazen (played by Eddie Albert). Strong-armed into forming an inmate football team, Crewe manages to instill an esprit de corps previously lacking in the prisoners' lives. Besides, they now have the chance to beat the guards' football team, headed by the hissable Capt. Knauer (played by Ed Lauter). Hazen orders Crewe to throw the match; otherwise, Crewe will never get the pardon he's been promised.
6. Necessary Roughness
This is another hilarious football movie and it really does portray what happened to the SMU football program back in the 1980's when it received the "Death Penalty". A Texas university football team, desperate for a win, takes to unorthodox recruiting and gets in trouble for it. As a result the coach (played by Héctor Elizondo) is forced to look to actual students for potential players. Fortunately, he finds salvation in the form of a thirty-something man (played by Scott Bakula) with a phenomenal throwing arm. Necessary Roughness has a rating of 32% on rottentomatoes.com.
5. We Are Marshall
I love sports movies (especially football movies) and this one is just simply amazing, heartfelt and inspiring. A true story of tragedy, hope, and resilience comes to the screen in this sports drama. Huntington, WV, is home to Marshall University, a school where college football is a way of life. Huntington is also a town that learned to deal with tragedy in the fall of 1970 when Marshall's "Thundering Herd" boarded an airliner to return home after a football game in North Carolina. The jet crashed into a hill due to bad weather, and 75 members of Marshall's football squad and athletic staff died that night. The accident dealt a crippling blow to the city of Huntington, as well as Marshall's faculty and student body, and university president Donald Dedmon (played by David Strathairn) considered abandoning the school's football program. But instead Coach Jack Lengyel (played by Matthew McConaughey) was recruited from Ohio's College of Wooster to rebuild Marshall's football program. Lengyel was not naïve about the task ahead of him, and working beside Red Dawson (played by Matthew Fox), an assistant coach who narrowly missed the doomed flight and was one of the program's only survivors, he came to understand his job was not just to put a team on the field, but help a college and a community heal their wounds from the tragic accident. Together Lengyel and Dawson turned a handful of rookies and second-string players into a competitive team who in 1971 showed the world what they could do in a legendary game against Marshall's rivals, Xavier University. We Are Marshall has a rating of 49% on rottentomatoes.com.
4. The Program
This film does an amazing job of showing how dirty college football can be behind the scenes. Eastern State University isn't particularly notable for anything except its football program. Lately, even that hasn't been doing too well, and the athletic staff led by Coach Winters (played by James Caan) are under considerable pressure by the administration and alumni to bring in a winning season. To do that, he has to recruit some able, promising young players out of high school. It's not too surprising to learn that he will do almost anything to get these kids, and its even less surprising that, as long as they keep producing on the field, he and the college will overlook almost any obnoxious behavior the boys can perpetrate to the limit of their ability. The Program has a rating of 42% on rottentomatoes.com.
3. Friday Night Lights
I am a huge fan of high school football (as I did play football in high school) and This movie epitomizes what high school football is really like. A drama that chronicles the entire 1988 season of the Permian High Panthers of Odessa, Texas, with football players, coaches, mothers, fathers, pastors, boosters, fans and families struggling with ongoing personal conflicts while the team fights for a state championship. A town for sale, Odessa, Texas has seen better days--the financial bust evident in its boarded-up shops and broken lives. Yet one hope sustains the community where, once a week during the fall, the town and its dreams come alive beneath the dazzling and disorienting Friday night-lights. When the Permian High Panthers take to the field. In a city where economic uncertainty has eroded the spirit of its inhabitants, nearly everyone seeks comfort in the religion of the Friday night ritual, where the unfulfilled dreams of an entire community are shifted onto the shoulder pads of a team of high-school athletes. Friday Night Lights has a rating of 81% on rottentomatoes.com.
2. Remember the Titans
This film is very emotional and its a movie that I think we should all watch due to everything going on around us. Based on actual events that took place in 1971, a white southern high school is integrated with black students from a nearby school. Both schools are recognized for their football programs which are now unified. The black coach is chosen to be the head coach of the integrated team, leaving the previous white head coach with feelings of animosity at having to be an assistant under a black man. Remember the Titans has a rating of 73% on rottentomatoes.com.
1. Any Given Sunday
This movie at one point was my favorite movie of all-time but thanks to other movies it slipped a little down my list and it really does give an in-depth look at professional football. Although professional football provides the action-packed backdrop of Any Given Sunday, the film takes a simultaneously epic and intimate look at the men and women who comprise the milieu of the film, from the modern-day gladiators of the gridiron, their coaches and often beleaguered families, to the moneyed team owners and business concerns who attempt to control the game as big business, to the hungry sports media, and hangers-on trying to get a taste of the glamour. Any Given Sunday has a rating of 50% on rottentomatoes.com.
So ladies and gentlemen what are some of your favorite football movies and what did you think of my list? Let me know in the comments section below and let your voice be heard.
Jonah Sparks
10. Gridiron Gang
This film is really inspiring and really emotional. Sean Porter (played by The Rock) is a detention camp probation officer who oversees the inmates at Camp Kilpatrick in Los Angeles and isn't willing to simply write off the violent offenders who have been placed in his care. Though their prospects for the future are decidedly bleak, Porter is convinced that if he can just get through to his adolescent inmates they may finally be able to turn their lives around and make amends for the mistakes of their past. When Porter's proposal of forming a high-school-level football team at Camp Kilpatrick meets with skepticism and resistance in the highest ranks, the determined coach puts his career on the line to prove that even convicted criminals can acquire the tools needed to build a brighter future when given the proper motivation and the means of doing so. Gridiron Gang has a rating of 42% on rottentomatoes.com.
9. The Replacements
This film is flat out hilarious and it does give us a look at what could happen if we had an actual strike in a major professional sport. The Washington Sentinels are one of the strongest teams in pro football -- until contract negotiations break down and the Sentinels go on strike. Determined to play the team's schedule, owner Edward O'Neil (played by Jack Warden) recruits a ragtag band of scab players, to be headed up and whipped into shape by the retired veteran coach Jimmy McGinty (played by Gene Hackman). At the top of the recruitment list is quarterback Shane Falco (played by Keanu Reeves), a promising athlete until a catastrophic defeat in the Sugar Bowl dashed his confidence. Joining Falco on the team are Clifford Franklin (played by Orlando Jones), a receiver who can't catch the ball; Nigel Gruff (played by Rhys Ifans), a chain-smoking Welsh soccer player; Bateman (played by Jon Favreau), a former cop with anger management problems; Fumiko (played by Ace Yonamine), a sumo wrestler new to football; and Wilkinson (played by Michael Jace), a convict on parole to the Sentinels. Can McGinty mold his new squad of misfits and no-hopers (who truly love the game) into a winning team? The Replacements has a rating of 40% on rottentomatoes.com.
8. Varsity Blues
This film to me is really a true life story in a way to me and what I went through. In his 35th year as head coach, Bud Kilmer (played by Jon Voight) is trying to lead his West Canaan Coyotes to their 23rd division title. Uncompromising and omnipotent, Kilmer is deified in the small Texas town, as long as the team is winning. But when star quarterback Lance Harbor (played by Paul Walker) suffers a season-ending injury, the Coyotes are forced to regroup under the questionable leadership of second-string quarterback Jonathan Moxon (played by James Van Der Beek). His irreverent attitude and approach to football come into direct conflict with the coach's inflexible game plan. Varsity Blues has a rating of 40% on rottentomatoes.com.
7. The Longest Yard (1974)
This movie is absolutely hilarious and it really has a lot of quotable lines that the remake could never top. Ex-football star Paul Crewe (played by Burt Reynolds) ends up in a prison run by sadistic sports-nut Warden Hazen (played by Eddie Albert). Strong-armed into forming an inmate football team, Crewe manages to instill an esprit de corps previously lacking in the prisoners' lives. Besides, they now have the chance to beat the guards' football team, headed by the hissable Capt. Knauer (played by Ed Lauter). Hazen orders Crewe to throw the match; otherwise, Crewe will never get the pardon he's been promised.
6. Necessary Roughness
This is another hilarious football movie and it really does portray what happened to the SMU football program back in the 1980's when it received the "Death Penalty". A Texas university football team, desperate for a win, takes to unorthodox recruiting and gets in trouble for it. As a result the coach (played by Héctor Elizondo) is forced to look to actual students for potential players. Fortunately, he finds salvation in the form of a thirty-something man (played by Scott Bakula) with a phenomenal throwing arm. Necessary Roughness has a rating of 32% on rottentomatoes.com.
5. We Are Marshall
I love sports movies (especially football movies) and this one is just simply amazing, heartfelt and inspiring. A true story of tragedy, hope, and resilience comes to the screen in this sports drama. Huntington, WV, is home to Marshall University, a school where college football is a way of life. Huntington is also a town that learned to deal with tragedy in the fall of 1970 when Marshall's "Thundering Herd" boarded an airliner to return home after a football game in North Carolina. The jet crashed into a hill due to bad weather, and 75 members of Marshall's football squad and athletic staff died that night. The accident dealt a crippling blow to the city of Huntington, as well as Marshall's faculty and student body, and university president Donald Dedmon (played by David Strathairn) considered abandoning the school's football program. But instead Coach Jack Lengyel (played by Matthew McConaughey) was recruited from Ohio's College of Wooster to rebuild Marshall's football program. Lengyel was not naïve about the task ahead of him, and working beside Red Dawson (played by Matthew Fox), an assistant coach who narrowly missed the doomed flight and was one of the program's only survivors, he came to understand his job was not just to put a team on the field, but help a college and a community heal their wounds from the tragic accident. Together Lengyel and Dawson turned a handful of rookies and second-string players into a competitive team who in 1971 showed the world what they could do in a legendary game against Marshall's rivals, Xavier University. We Are Marshall has a rating of 49% on rottentomatoes.com.
4. The Program
This film does an amazing job of showing how dirty college football can be behind the scenes. Eastern State University isn't particularly notable for anything except its football program. Lately, even that hasn't been doing too well, and the athletic staff led by Coach Winters (played by James Caan) are under considerable pressure by the administration and alumni to bring in a winning season. To do that, he has to recruit some able, promising young players out of high school. It's not too surprising to learn that he will do almost anything to get these kids, and its even less surprising that, as long as they keep producing on the field, he and the college will overlook almost any obnoxious behavior the boys can perpetrate to the limit of their ability. The Program has a rating of 42% on rottentomatoes.com.
I am a huge fan of high school football (as I did play football in high school) and This movie epitomizes what high school football is really like. A drama that chronicles the entire 1988 season of the Permian High Panthers of Odessa, Texas, with football players, coaches, mothers, fathers, pastors, boosters, fans and families struggling with ongoing personal conflicts while the team fights for a state championship. A town for sale, Odessa, Texas has seen better days--the financial bust evident in its boarded-up shops and broken lives. Yet one hope sustains the community where, once a week during the fall, the town and its dreams come alive beneath the dazzling and disorienting Friday night-lights. When the Permian High Panthers take to the field. In a city where economic uncertainty has eroded the spirit of its inhabitants, nearly everyone seeks comfort in the religion of the Friday night ritual, where the unfulfilled dreams of an entire community are shifted onto the shoulder pads of a team of high-school athletes. Friday Night Lights has a rating of 81% on rottentomatoes.com.
2. Remember the Titans
This film is very emotional and its a movie that I think we should all watch due to everything going on around us. Based on actual events that took place in 1971, a white southern high school is integrated with black students from a nearby school. Both schools are recognized for their football programs which are now unified. The black coach is chosen to be the head coach of the integrated team, leaving the previous white head coach with feelings of animosity at having to be an assistant under a black man. Remember the Titans has a rating of 73% on rottentomatoes.com.
1. Any Given Sunday
This movie at one point was my favorite movie of all-time but thanks to other movies it slipped a little down my list and it really does give an in-depth look at professional football. Although professional football provides the action-packed backdrop of Any Given Sunday, the film takes a simultaneously epic and intimate look at the men and women who comprise the milieu of the film, from the modern-day gladiators of the gridiron, their coaches and often beleaguered families, to the moneyed team owners and business concerns who attempt to control the game as big business, to the hungry sports media, and hangers-on trying to get a taste of the glamour. Any Given Sunday has a rating of 50% on rottentomatoes.com.
So ladies and gentlemen what are some of your favorite football movies and what did you think of my list? Let me know in the comments section below and let your voice be heard.
Jonah Sparks
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