Grab your beer, set your lineups and welcome the new football season! Yes, thats right! The 2017-2018 NFL season is here and to help kickoff this season I’ve decided to do a top five dedicated to films about the sport. I have always loved the sport since I was a kid. From playing “Tecmo Bowl”, “Madden” just about every year and NFL Blitz to playing the real thing for a number of years. I love the sport almost as much as I love movies. When you put the two together you can get some really memorable films. Here’s my picks for top five football films.
Little Giants
It seems like each sport has at least one film made for children. Baseball has Sandlot, hockey has Mighty Ducks, basketball has Space Jam and so on. Well when it comes to football that film is Little Giants. The Little Giants was a starred Rick Moranis and Ed O’Neill as brothers who coach rivalry peewee football teams, and I could just stop there as to why it’s on the list but if that isn’t enough to convince you, I’ll keep going. Rick Moranis coached a team full of football misfits while O’Neill who like his Married with Children character, was a star football player and coached a team of talented kids. The third act came down to a winner takes all game and reputations on the line. At the time there wasn’t really a football film that was geared towards children. Even though it was a children/family film, the humor in the film which was made in 1994 is something that still holds up today. Not only that but the movie had cameos by football legends like Emmitt Smith, Tim Brown, Kevin Greene and even John Madden.
School Ties
School Ties was centered around a star quarterback David Greene (Brendan Fraser) who decided to go to a Catholic school to stay out of trouble and make something of himself. The conflict with that was that he happened to be Jewish, which made it much more than just any football movie. Nobody at the school could find out he was Jewish due to the fact that he was attending a religious school and it was the 1950’s when prejudice was still fresh. What also made this film as good as it was was its cast. Surrounding Fraser was Chris O’Donnell, Cole Hauser, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, three of which went on to star in Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon was so good at playing the jealous jerk that it almost made you want to hate him in real life.
Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans was a film made by Disney based on a true story of two Virginia schools, one made of white students and the other made of black students, who were forced to attend one school together. Unlike most football films this isn’t really an underdog story as much as it is a team unified to overcome adversity during a tough time in America’s history. With such a serious and touchy topic, writer Gregory Allen Howard found a way to make the film comedic. Once again the cast helped the film. The cast included Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst, Donald Faison, Ethan Suplee and even a young Ryan Gosling and Haydeen Panettiere.
Varsity Blues
Back when MTV actually played music videos, the company started to get into the filmmaking business. One of their first films was Varsity Blues. A film about a group of friends that played for a continuously winning championship high school football team. The film starred James Van Der Beek as a backup qb forced to take over the riegns, Jon Voight a strict coach that only cared about winning at all cost, Paul Walker the star qb that found himself injured for the season, and Scott Cann and Ron Lester who were both stereotypical high school kids that just wanted to party all the time. This was another football movie that had its share of drama, suspense, comedy and triumph. Since the film was made by MTV, it also had a pretty good soundtrack. In one of the greatest football movie scenes Mox (Van Der Beek) is leading the team down the field in attempt to make a game-winning drive and Foo Fighters “My Hero” is providing the background music. How can you not get pumped up while watching that?!
Rudy
And finally, my pick for all time greatest football film, Rudy. The film was based on the true story of Daniel E. Rudy Ruettiger (played by Sean Astin), a walk on who always had the dream of playing for Notre Dame. Rudy was always told he was too small, he would be lucky if he just gets into Notre Dame let alone make the team. This was the ultimate underdog story that not only inspires aspiring football players but anybody who has a dream and gets told that they could never do it. Even though Astin had admitted that some of what happens in the film didn’t really happen in real life (just like any Hollywood biopic), It’s a film that is easily in my top 3 films of all-time.
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