The 12 Best Football Movies Ever Made
Close BannerClose00Days:00Hours:00Minutes:00SecondsWatch LiveGQ Bowl in NOLACultureEleven hard-hitting draft picks—and one spare—for the underdiscussed “Best Football Movies” canon.By Jesse HassengerFebruary 7, 202520th Century Fox/Everett CollectionSave this storySaveSave this storySaveThe baseball-movie canon is ample and largely agreed-upon, but the best football movies have less consensus behind them. That’s not to say there aren’t some well-acknowledged sports-movie classics that focus on American football, which has long since eclipsed baseball as the national pastime; it's just that this particular subgenre arguably lacks one instantly-beloved all-timer. There is no football equivalent to Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, or Bull Durham. (As goes Costner, so goes the cinema?) That doesn’t mean there’s a lack of football pictures to choose from, however, especially if you’re willing to look beyond the sports-movie-saturated ‘90s—or outside the world of pro sports. College-football-themed movies became a huge genre in the 1930s; there are multiple feature films centering on the annual Army/Navy game. But it’s true that the best football movies don’t always stick to the biggest games, the winningest teams, or even the best players. Here are eleven draft picks, plus one spare, that span the past century of cinema—a history that reaches back four decades before the first Super Bowl.The Freshman (1925)(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) *20.04.1893-08.03.1971+ Actor, Comedian, USA - in the movie 'The Freshman' - 1925Vintage property of ullstein bild (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images) Getty ImagesHarold Lloyd’s silent campus football comedy is so formative that his estate sued another movie on this list for its obvious (if squarely within the realm of allowable-ripoff) resemblances to this one. Granted, it’s not wall-to-wall football action; Lloyd, who was 32 here and looks not a day younger, plays a college-obsessed nerdy outcast who arrives on campus desperate for popularity. He tries to join the football team, and is instead relegated to a bench-warming position as the team’s waterboy. (Have you guessed this movie’s contemporary antecedent yet?) When the movie does reach the football field for its unlikely climax, though, it’s a tour-de-force of slapstick action, both funny and exciting. And even if the football content before that is mostly relegated to practice antics, Lloyd is a likable and relatable delight for anyone who’s ever yearned for big-game glory without a speck of athletic ability.Hold That Co-Ed (1938)20th Century Fox/Everett CollectionPart of a spate of college-football-themed comedies (and dramas, and comedy-dramas) of the 1930s, Hold That Co-Ed is notable for gathering so many comic ideas that would be other movies’ entire premise. Rather than watching individual movies about rough-necked ringers (here, a pair of wrestlers) bribed into college-team service, or a girl unexpectedly recruited as kicker on a men’s team, or a former football player who finds himself coaching a woefully underfunded and underskilled squad, why not knock them all out in a single 80-minute go? John Barrymore is first-billed as a governor with his eye on the U.S. Senate who pours a bunch of money into the state college and winds up staking his election on the outcome of the big game; the real leads are coach Rusty (George Murphy) and the governor’s secretary Marjorie (Marjorie Weaver). The big attraction isn’t any of the actors, but a terrific silent-film-worthy game sequence that includes the players (including that female kicker, played by Joan Davis) struggling mightily against gale-force winds. Few contemporary sports comedies are this crisply unsentimental.Knute Rockne, All American (1940)Everett CollectionOf course, not every early football movie was a zany comedy. Knute Rockne, All American is straight up American mythology, characterizing Notre Dame coach Rockne (Pat O’Brien) as a fabled embodiment of the American dream itself. It’s pretty cornball stuff—and, like its partner in Notre Dame Cinema Rudy, really hits the spot if you’re in the right rah-rah mood. Though Rudy might have the edge in speeches—Charles S. Dutton’s “five foot nothin’, a hundred and nothin’” versus the much-parodied “win just one for the Gipper”—Knute Rockne ultimately triumphs for its no-nonsense briskness, and for spotlighting a man who made his legend on coaching other players, rather than showing off his brawn (or, in the case of Rudy, being kind of a monomanical pest).North Dallas Forty (1979)Everett CollectionBased on a novel by actual Dallas Cowboys player Peter Gent, North Dallas Forty is ostensibly a comedy, with Nick Nolte as Gent’s stand-in Phil Elliott, an aging football player with mounting injuries, an irreverent attitude, and an omnipresent cigarette hanging from his lips. But it’s less laugh-o
The baseball-movie canon is ample and largely agreed-upon, but the best football movies have less consensus behind them. That’s not to say there aren’t some well-acknowledged sports-movie classics that focus on American football, which has long since eclipsed baseball as the national pastime; it's just that this particular subgenre arguably lacks one instantly-beloved all-timer. There is no football equivalent to Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, or Bull Durham. (As goes Costner, so goes the cinema?) That doesn’t mean there’s a lack of football pictures to choose from, however, especially if you’re willing to look beyond the sports-movie-saturated ‘90s—or outside the world of pro sports. College-football-themed movies became a huge genre in the 1930s; there are multiple feature films centering on the annual Army/Navy game. But it’s true that the best football movies don’t always stick to the biggest games, the winningest teams, or even the best players. Here are eleven draft picks, plus one spare, that span the past century of cinema—a history that reaches back four decades before the first Super Bowl.
Harold Lloyd’s silent campus football comedy is so formative that his estate sued another movie on this list for its obvious (if squarely within the realm of allowable-ripoff) resemblances to this one. Granted, it’s not wall-to-wall football action; Lloyd, who was 32 here and looks not a day younger, plays a college-obsessed nerdy outcast who arrives on campus desperate for popularity. He tries to join the football team, and is instead relegated to a bench-warming position as the team’s waterboy. (Have you guessed this movie’s contemporary antecedent yet?) When the movie does reach the football field for its unlikely climax, though, it’s a tour-de-force of slapstick action, both funny and exciting. And even if the football content before that is mostly relegated to practice antics, Lloyd is a likable and relatable delight for anyone who’s ever yearned for big-game glory without a speck of athletic ability.
Part of a spate of college-football-themed comedies (and dramas, and comedy-dramas) of the 1930s, Hold That Co-Ed is notable for gathering so many comic ideas that would be other movies’ entire premise. Rather than watching individual movies about rough-necked ringers (here, a pair of wrestlers) bribed into college-team service, or a girl unexpectedly recruited as kicker on a men’s team, or a former football player who finds himself coaching a woefully underfunded and underskilled squad, why not knock them all out in a single 80-minute go? John Barrymore is first-billed as a governor with his eye on the U.S. Senate who pours a bunch of money into the state college and winds up staking his election on the outcome of the big game; the real leads are coach Rusty (George Murphy) and the governor’s secretary Marjorie (Marjorie Weaver). The big attraction isn’t any of the actors, but a terrific silent-film-worthy game sequence that includes the players (including that female kicker, played by Joan Davis) struggling mightily against gale-force winds. Few contemporary sports comedies are this crisply unsentimental.
Of course, not every early football movie was a zany comedy. Knute Rockne, All American is straight up American mythology, characterizing Notre Dame coach Rockne (Pat O’Brien) as a fabled embodiment of the American dream itself. It’s pretty cornball stuff—and, like its partner in Notre Dame Cinema Rudy, really hits the spot if you’re in the right rah-rah mood. Though Rudy might have the edge in speeches—Charles S. Dutton’s “five foot nothin’, a hundred and nothin’” versus the much-parodied “win just one for the Gipper”—Knute Rockne ultimately triumphs for its no-nonsense briskness, and for spotlighting a man who made his legend on coaching other players, rather than showing off his brawn (or, in the case of Rudy, being kind of a monomanical pest).
Based on a novel by actual Dallas Cowboys player Peter Gent, North Dallas Forty is ostensibly a comedy, with Nick Nolte as Gent’s stand-in Phil Elliott, an aging football player with mounting injuries, an irreverent attitude, and an omnipresent cigarette hanging from his lips. But it’s less laugh-out-loud funny than a fascinating time capsule of an earlier-years NFL where the corruption, cynicism, and overall bad vibes don’t feel quite so slickly corporate but still manage to bust up players’ lives pretty good. “They’re the team,” Elliott says later in the film, gesturing at the suits as he rejects an entreaty toward team togetherness. “We’re the equipment!” Twenty years later, another movie on this list would provide a wider-ranging look at similar issues—players downing painkillers, greedy owners, massive pressure to succeed at any cost—but there’s a lived-in sweatiness to North Dallas Forty (seriously, you’ve never seen so many beers and cigarettes in a weight room), thanks especially to Nolte in early movie-star mode, plus some great character-actor support from the likes of Charles Durning and Dabney Coleman.
If there’s any question about why Varsity Blues isn’t on this list (and really, there shouldn’t be), it’s in part because it’s essentially the same movie as this one—except this one has a young Tom Cruise. He plays a greater-Pittsburgh high school quarterback who’s desperate to get out of his dying steel-mill town but also knows that football can do a lot more for his college prospects than a B average. His coach (Craig T. Nelson) has similar designs on escape, which winds up setting them on a collision course. Directed by longtime cinematographer Michael Chapman (who shot Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Detail, and The Lost Boys, among others; his cinematographer here, Jan De Bont, went on to direct Speed), All the Right Moves is a great-looking movie, on and off the football field. So many contemporary movies are digitally muted to look like they’ve been shot in overcast weather; Chapman and De Bont make Pennsylvanian dreariness feel more lived-in and melancholically beautiful, and the one pivotal game portrayed at length is suspenseful and tactile. The film is also upfront about the sadness and transactional nature of high school football in a small town—it’s gratifyingly clear that these jocks are both human beings and dipshit teenage boys—and only really falters at the end, where it can’t quite figure out a satisfyingly realistic ending that wouldn’t be pure misery. What it lands on instead feels a little too easy, but until that point, the title fits.
Fast forward thirteen years, and here's Cruise again, cast perhaps more convincingly as a superstar sports agent who experiences a crisis of conscience and tries to make it on his own by devoting all his time and sweat to his one remaining client (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a talented wide receiver who feels undervalued. Admittedly, this is not a football movie with a lot of on-screen gameplay—but is that really what you want from Cameron Crowe, anyway? Tonally, Jerry Maguire feels more like a basketball movie in its attention to the ins and outs of how a demonstration of athletic ability becomes commodified, a form of business transaction. Jerry Maguire is ultimately non-cynical about this process, positioning Cruise’s Jerry and Gooding’s Rod Tidwell as an agent and client who come to genuinely care for each other. But after any number of big-game fantasies ending in triumph, it’s gratifying to see a happy ending so focused on its characters’ personal and professional happiness, rather than the scoreboard.
This isn’t the best Adam Sandler comedy. It’s not even the best Adam Sandler comedy of 1998, or the best comedy where a nerdy waterboy becomes an unlikely football hero (see above.) But in merging Sandler’s Saturday Night Live characters Canteen Boy and Cajun Man into the legendary Bobby Boucher, Sandler took the football comedy into the late ‘90s while also injecting a sentimentality into his work that, for better or worse, would become a more-or-less permanent fixture. What The Waterboy comes down to is the sight of meek, put-upon Sandler unleashing his inner rage with an animalistic cry as he sacks various quarterbacks; these moments are funny, but they’re almost poetically expressive of the catharsis so many seek from sports, whether as players or fans.
The NFL meets the bombastic jackass it deserves with Oliver Stone, who capped off an extraordinary 1990s run with this all-star treatise on football in America. The operatic posturing comes early and often; the movie opens with a Vince Lombardi quote about the field of battle, what sounds like a tribal chant on the soundtrack (oh, Oliver!), a lightning strike, and a roving series of slow-mo close-ups, followed by a flurry of adjusted-shutter-speed action. Stone himself then cameos as a sports broadcaster, and cues up Fatboy Slim and Moby just in case you were wondering if it was really 1999. Also, though: Don’t we love this stuff? This is the only movie on this list that really gets at the multi-ring circus of modern professional sports, and it’s still sincere enough to include Al Pacino, the actor perhaps most destined to play a seasoned football coach, delivering an all-timer locker-room speech. His “inches” speech, presumably the contribution of co-screenwriter and playwright John Logan, would be enough to put this movie here just on its own; add in a typically underrated Cameron Diaz performance (she plays a hard-charging team owner), a young Jamie Foxx, and a sprawling cast of great character actors, real-life sports figures, and a few genuine legends, and it’s an easy must-see. As a fictionalized NFL chronicle, it’s both evocative of corporatized mass-media frenzy (a familiar Stone topic), and indicative of why so many filmmakers opt to make their football movies about college or high school ball instead.
This Jerry Bruckheimer production for the Walt Disney Company—a bellwether of the producer’s mid-2000s from slick, music-video-y action thrillers to family films—is unabashedly corny, a PG treatment of racism in the 1970s American South, where you can tell that the football games are close when there’s dramatic music, and then tell that it’s turning around for the integrated Titans whenever an extremely familiar pop oldie kicks in on the soundtrack. (Seriously, it happens almost every time.) But as long as you’re able to understand a very turn-of-the-millennium, aren’t-we-glad-that’s-over treatment of racism, Remember the Titans is one of those cornball crowd-pleasers that really just works, in part because Denzel Washington was probably the actor second-most-destined to play a football coach—in this case, a Black coach whose presence at a newly integrated high school rankles plenty of the white locals (and whose approach is more rigorous than what some of the players are accustomed to). Will Patton plays the beloved coach semi-displaced by Washington’s promotion—he stays on to coach defense as a gesture of unity—and it’s a nicely understated co-leading turn from a character actor who was previously more likely to populate a big Bruckheimer ensemble than turn up front and center. The eventual interracial friendships among the players are also genuinely touching, and for all of its easy predictability, the movie does get at the question of what truly makes a team.
Though it was a hit during its 2004 theatrical run, the movie version of Friday Night Lights has arguably fallen through the cracks in the 20 years since then, overshadowed by both the original source material (the H.G. Bissinger book) and the much-loved TV show that followed. It happens to be the best movie ever made by professional Michael Bay imitator Peter Berg (and, for that matter, better than most of Bay’s movies, too), with a terrific central performance from Billy Bob Thornton as a coach dealing with the high-stakes tribalism of high school football. I’d even argue that the fleeting nature of high school sports is best depicted by a movie, rather than a multi-season TV show that ultimately backs itself into various plot-based corners.
What’s a sports-movie list without Kevin Costner? Granted, Draft Day isn’t as good as Costner’s best baseball movies, or the one he made about golf… but it is a lot more fun than For Love of the Game, so that’s something! Moreover, as the NFL becomes a bigger and more powerful business entity, it’s become harder to tell traditionally framed football stories about big games and athletic prowess. Maybe this augurs a return to more college-football based stories, as when football movies were first popularized some 90 years ago. In the meantime, it’s worth exploring how the NFL apparatus works, even if it means resorting to an Ivan Reitman movie. And actually, Reitman’s last film is one of his better latter-day efforts, following a tense day where Sonny Weaver (Costner), the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, must decide how to handle his team’s number-one draft pick. It’s not an indictment of pro sports by any means—Costner comes part and parcel with flinty sentimentality—but it’s probably the most purely entertaining fictional football movie of the 2010s.
And one bonus track: a movie that’s not primarily about football or football players, but takes place during the halftime show of a Thanksgiving 2004 NFL game, where Billy Lynn (Joe Alywn) is being paraded as a hero of the Iraq War. Flashbacks give us extended looks at Billy’s home life and battlefield traumas. While this is much more a war movie than a sports movie, director Ang Lee draws pointed connections between the chaos of war and the noisy pageantry of jingoism in general and professional sporting events in particular. In theaters, Lee’s experiment with high-frame-rate 3D made both the battle scenes and the behind-the-scenes halftime material particularly vivid and harrowing and also downright strange, which contributed to the movie’s generally bad reputation. But it’s worth seeking out, even on streaming, especially for adventurous viewers interested in new angles on an old game.
