A Reel Opinion: The Top 10 Best Football Movies

This week brings the Super Bowl; pro-football’s championship game that has grown into an un-official national holiday. The annual big game has a lot in common with the Oscars; not only does it serve to crown the best it has to offer, but it is also a celebration of the game, and as the last game of the year in all of football, serves as a grand finale to the overall season. With this being Super Bowl week, and partially inspired by a healthy debate with a loyal reader, the time is right for Reel Speak’s very first Top 10 Best Football Movies. 

The American version of football has not been treated as well as other sports on the big screen. The game has yet to find its own version of FIELD OF DREAMS, THE NATURAL, or even HOOSIERS. The reasons for that are for another debate, and this list looks to rank and celebrate the best of what we have received. As usual, the benchmarks of story and character are in play, but it’s fair to say that football movies, just like any other sports movie, has to do something special with the game itself; to make the game mean something other than a reason to bash helmets together or make a lot of noise. 

Now it’s time for kickoff. 

10. UNDEFEATED (2011)

Our first entry on this very first list is actually a documentary, but what a documentary it is. The winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, this film documents the struggles of a Memphis high school football team trying to overcome years of losing seasons. The film also capitalizes on the theme of football being a rite of passage for young men. Practically a required viewing for all fans of the game. 

9. NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979)

Football is a violent sport, and perhaps no other film centered on violence as much as this 1979 classic which was based on the book of the same name. With characters based on real-life players from the famed Dallas Cowboys, the film may seem over the top by today’s standards, but it worked then, as it does now, as a peek behind the curtain of the lives of pro-football players…and the effects the game has on them after the lights go down. 

8. KNUTE ROCKNE: ALL AMERICAN (1940)

Before Ronald Reagan was President, he was an actor, and his greatest and most-remembered role came in this 1940 biography of the famed coach of Notre Dame University. Reagan played freshman halfback George Gipp, who famously said on his death bed to “win one for the Gipper”; a line which has become eternal in Notre Dame football, film, and in overall sports. A tearjerker of a movie and a nostalgic reminder of when the term “All American” actually meant something. 

7. THE LONGEST YARD (1974)

This sports classic has Burt Reynolds playing an incarcerated pro-football player who recruits fellow inmates to play a game against the prison guards. Sold as a comedy, it has a fair amount of emotional weight, and the game of football exists in the story to give the prisoners their only taste of freedom and life outside the walls. Realistic and brutal and the game means everything to every character. 

6. HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978)

Nominated for 10 Oscars, Warren Beatty directed and starred in this fantasy/comedy in which a pro football player is killed and sent to heaven by accident. It’s a screwball comedy but still has enough weight to make us care, and the ensemble cast of Beatty, Julie Christie, James Mason, Jack Warden, Charles Grodin, and Dyan Cannon make the film one of the best of the 1970’s. The game of football serves as a great passion and love for the main character, which nearly turns it into a love story. 

5. NECESSARY ROUGHNESS (1991)

Scott Bakula takes the field in this comedy about a middle-aged quarterback who goes back to college to play quarterback for a decimated football program. Loaded with zippy one-liners and a laugh-a-minute, NECESSARY ROUGHNESS shows that the game doesn’t always have to be taken so damn seriously. 

4. REMEMBER THE TITANS (2000)

Denzel Washington led the way in this true-story drama about an African-American high school football coach who tried to integrate the school football team in Virginia in 1971. It’s a simple tale told in the most direct manner, but sports and civil rights in America have come clashing together from the early days to the modern-day NFL stories of kneeling players, and REMEMBER THE TITANS stands as one of the most important stories to speak about it. And most of all, it shows the bonding power of the game. 

3. THE BEST OF TIMES (1986)

Current and ex-football players tend to replay games in their heads, for better or for worse, but no one actually gets to replay those games on the field. But for Kurt Russell and the late great Robin Williams, that’s exactly what their characters got to do in this comedy/drama. The two old friends get the teams back together for a rematch to a game that had ended in a tie decades before, not only for themselves but for their dying hometown. It’s a story of redemption, family, smalltown America, and the importance of missed opportunities in life. And on the field, the football is shown as brutal and violent as it can get. 

2. RUDY (1993)

Everyone loves an underdog story, and perhaps football is the toughest sport for any underdog. Based on a true story, RUDY tells the tale of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, who had lifelong dreams of playing Notre Dame football despite his academic and physical limitations. It’s a movie about chasing dreams no matter what, and Sean Astin plays the character with so much heart that one would have to be soulless to not root for him. It’s a film that makes us stand up and cheer, and that is an important, if not rare, accomplishment for any film. Some movie fans may always remember Sean Astin as a Goonie or a Hobbit…but many more will always remember him wearing that blue number 45 jersey with his arms up in victory. 

1. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (2004)

Before it was a TV show, it was a film. Peter Berg’s gritty take on the true story of a Texas high school football team, its coach, families, and players…captures the essence of the game both on and off the field. The love of the game, the pressures, and the joy that tossing the pigskin around is all there, and despite having a tough ending to swallow…still sends us out on a high note. The cast and acting are excellent, and Berg’s talent for dropping us right into the thick of the action makes the film a visceral experience. It’s a statement on the rabid fandom of the game all the way down to the high school level and makes even high school football seem like the most important thing in the world. The film plays with history, but what we see on the screen is all that should matter, and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS hits the hardest. 

REEL SPEAK'S TOP 10 BEST FOOTBALL MOVIES

1. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
2. RUDY
3. THE BEST OF TIMES
4. REMEMBER THE TITANS
5. NECESSARY ROUGHNESS
6. HEAVEN CAN WAIT
7. THE LONGEST YARD
8. KNUTE ROCKNE: ALL AMERICAN
9. NORTH DALLAS FORTY
10. UNDEFEATED