Only A Total Jock Could Name All These Sports Movies
- by Jared_Evan
- – on
- in Movies and TV
There’s just something about an underdog story that makes us root alongside them. Or how about a has-been who suits up for one last time for their last shot at glory. Or maybe there is a never-was who finally gets their one shot to prove the world wrong in that they do have what it takes to succeed. When it comes to sports movies, it’s never just about sports. Sports movies are classic tales of the human spirit triumphing over many hurdles and obstacles in their way. Moreover, sports movies are about the little guy who takes on the bigger guy despite the insurmountable odds they may or may not face.
Sports movies can lift team spirits or it can inspire the individual. Whatever the case, it’s movies like these that make us want to scream and jump for joy when the person or the team overcome it all to come out on top. From golf comedies, to animated cartoon characters battling it out on the basketball court, to the bottom of the ninth baseball showdowns, sports movies are some of the greatest movies of all time. Good luck trying to name all these sports movies. It’s not going to be easy.
What Is This Movie?
This first sports film is a classic in every sense of the word. A failed college basketball coach, played by the great Gene Hackman, gets a chance to redeem himself when he is hired to lead the basketball program at a small-town Indiana high school. When the star player is persuaded to quit basketball and focus on his studies, Hackman struggles to get the team on a winning track in the face of criticism for his temper and his unconventional assistant coach, played by Dennis Hopper.
What Is This Movie?
If you want to answer what this next movie is, all you have to do is one thing. SHOW ME THE MONEY! When a sports agent, played by Tom Cruise, has a crisis of conscience, he writes a memo to the company that immediately gets him fired. Wanting to hold on to the athletes he represents, Cruise starts his own agency, with only one other employee, played by Renee Zellweger. As Cruise puts everything he has into his only client, played by Cuba Gooding Jr, he and Zellweger fall in love while struggling to make their business work.
What Is This Movie?
You know what? I think its time for the “Flying V.” After a lawyer, played by Emilio Estevez, gets arrested for driving under the influence, he ends up coaching a kids’ hockey team to fulfill his order of community service. While Estevez’s character used to play hockey, his isn’t happy about having to coach a peewee hockey team and go up against his former coach. Estevez eventually grows to love his team as they take on his former coach and the defending champs.
What Is This Movie?
“Sweep the leg.” “Wax on, wax off.” Are there any quotes from this next sports movie that aren’t amazing? That was rhetorical because of course there aren’t. In this next film, Daniel LaRusso moves to Southern California and finds himself the target of the school bullies. Thankfully for Daniel, he befriends Mr. Miyagi, a repairmen of his building, who happens to be a martial arts master. Mr. Miyagi trains Daniel in martial arts and prepared him to go up against the brutal Cobra Kai dojo.
What Is This Movie?
When it comes to high school football, no one obsesses over it more than the town of Odessa, Texas. When the star running back of the team, played by Derek Luke, suffers a season ending injury in the first game of the season, any hopes for a championship season are lost. It is up to the new coach, Gary Gaines, played by Billy Bob Thornton, to inspire the team and in turn, inspire the depressed town, into playing for their self-respect and honor.
What Is This Movie?
Wild Thing! You make my heart sing! This next sports movie focuses on the new owner of the Cleveland Indians, Rachel Phelps, who wants to move the team to Miami. The only problem is that in order to break the lease with the city of Cleveland, the ticket sales have to go way down. Therefore, Phelps hires the worst manager and players possible. This includes a pitcher with horrible eyesight, and an aging and injury prone catcher. However, Phelps’s dirty tactics end up working against her as the team forms a lasting bond and become potential winners.
What Is This Movie?
“Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory… lasts forever.” For this next film, it’s late in the football season, there are only few games left before the playoffs, and the Washington Sentinels just went on strike. Without a lot of time left, Sentinels’ owner, Edward O’Neil, hires legendary coach Jimmy McGinty, played by Gene Hackman, to recruit a team of rag tag replacement players in a week. While the fans aren’t happy about the strike, for the players, it’s the second chance they have all been waiting for.
What Is This Movie?
Randy “The Ram” Robinson, played by Mickey Rourke, is an aging wrestler who is long past his prime. The only problem is that “The Ram” is itching to get back out on the wrestling circuit. However, after a pretty brutal match, Randy finally decides to hang it up and pursue a relationship with Cassidy, played by Marissa Tomei, while also trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood. However, try as he might, he just can’t resist getting back in the ring and prepares himself for a comeback.
What Is This Movie?
When an evil alien theme park owner, played by Danny DeVito, needs a new attraction at Moron Mountain, there’s only one thing to do. Send his gang to earth to take Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes. However, Bugs Bunny challenges them to a game of basketball to determine their fate. When the aliens agree, they steal the powers of some of the NBA’s best players. So what does Bugs do? He decides to get some help from Michael Jordan.
What Is This Movie?
The Miami Sharks were once one of the best teams in football. Now, the team is struggling with losses, lower attendance, and aging players, particularly their 39-year-old quarterback Jack Rooney, played by Dennis Quaid. Off the field, the Sharks’ head coach, Jack D’Amato, played by Al Pacino, struggles with his failing marriage and estranged children and has to deal with the new younger owner of the team, Christina Pagniacci, played by Cameron Diaz. This film gives a behind the scenes look of the struggles that a football organization and its players face.
What Is This Movie?
“Heroes get remembered but legends never die.” This next sports movie is just so amazing and so quotable. When Scottie Smalls, played by Thomas Guiry, moves into a new neighborhood, he decides he wants to learn to play baseball and soon manages to make friends with a group of kids who play baseball at the sandlot. These kids fall into many misadventures involving baseball, treehouse sleepovers, the local pool and a rival baseball team. However, their biggest trouble comes when they must retrieve a special baseball that gets hit over the sandlot fence.
What Is This Movie?
In this next sports movie, Billy Hoyle, played by Woody Harrelson, is a white basketball player who makes a living hustling other players into underestimating his basketball skills. When Billy hustles Sidney Deane, played by Wesley Snipes, Sidney sees an opportunity for the two to become partners and take their con game to all the courts in Los Angeles. Additionally, Billy has to do all of this while staying one step ahead of mobsters, to whom he owes a lot of money to, while trying to say on his wife’s good side.
What Is This Movie?
When college coach Herb Brooks, played by Kurt Russell, is hired to coach the 1980 U.S. Olympic Men’s Hockey Team, he brings his own unique style to the position. Brooks assembles his team of head strong college all-stars but are quickly humiliated in an early match. After this crushing loss, Brooks decides to unite his team against a common foe, the favored Soviet hockey team. As the U.S. hockey team tries to overcome all the odds to win the gold medal, the team becomes a symbol of patriotism during the Cold War.
What Is This Movie?
Brad Pitt stars in this next film, that was based on the book by Michael Lewis, as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s. Billy Beane comes the realization one day that baseball’s conventional thinking is all wrong. In order to make up for his teams’ tight salary, Beane decides to reinvent this team by outthinking and outsmarting the richer teams. Alongside Ivy League graduate Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, Beane recruits bargain-bin players that have been labeled as flawed by most baseball scouts, but still have winning potential.
What Is This Movie?
When disgraced former quarterback Paul Crewe, played by Adam Sandler, ends up in jail, he meets the manipulative Warden, played by James Cromwell, who tries to recruit him to advise the jail's football team. However, this soon leads to Paul Crewe becoming the quarterback for the inmate’s football team that will soon face off against the guards’ team. With the help of incarcerated ex-NFL coach Nate Scarborough, played by Burt Reynolds, Crewe and the rest of the inmates have to overcome the odds and the corrupt referees that are trying to fix the game against them.
What Is This Movie?
“If you’re not first, you’re last.” Will Ferrell stars as a NASCAR superstar in this next sports movie. In this film, Ferrell’s character has it all. He has the fans, the money, the gorgeous wife, and his best friend, Cal Naughton Jr., played by John C. Reilly. However, Ferrell loses it all when French Formula One champion, Jean Girard, comes storming onto the NASCAR scene. With the help of his absentee father, Ferrell has to pull himself together to make it back to the top.
What Is This Movie?
Sylvester Stallone wrote and starred in this next sports movie about a small time boxer from Philadelphia who is chosen at random to take on the current world heavyweight boxing champion, Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers, when the champ’s scheduled opponent pulls out due to injury. While training under the tutelage of Mickey Goldmill, played by Burgess Meredith, Stalling begins a relationship with Adrian, played by Talia Shire, the sister of this meat-packing friend Paulie, played by Burt Young.
What Is This Movie?
This next sports movie takes place during the great depression where a businessman, played by Jeff Bridges, is currently coping with the passing of his son, a jockey with a history of injuries, played by Tobey Maguire, and horse trainer, team up to work with Seabiscuit, an undersized racehorse. Seabiscuit struggles to win at first, but soon becomes one of the most successful racehorses in history, while at the same time, is able to inspire a nation when it needs it the most.
What Is This Movie?
Adam Sandler stars in this next sports movie about a wannabe professional hockey player. The only obstacle Sandler faces is that his character really isn’t any good at playing hockey. However, he soon discovers that he is actually amazing at another sport: golf. When Sandler’s grandmother discovers that she is going to lose her home, Sandler joins the golf circuit in an attempt to make enough money to buy back her home. As a foul-mouthed and powerful driving golfer, Sandler turns the golf world upside down.
What Is This Movie?
This next sports movie is based on the true story of four Jamaican bobsledders who dream of competing in the Winter Olympics in the four man bobsled, despite never even seeing snow before. With the help of their coach, a disgraced former champion who is desperate to redeem himself on the world stage, played by John Candy, the Jamaicans set out to prove all doubters wrong and show the world that they are worthy of being selected for the Olympics.
What Is This Movie?
Mark Wahlberg stars in this next sports movie about a lifelong football fan who sees his dreams come true when he becomes a member of the Philadelphia Eagles football team. After losing his job as a substitute teacher, and working as a bartender, 30-year-old Vince Papale gets a chance to try out for the Eagles when head coach Dick Vermeil announces they will hold open tryouts for the team. Vince becomes the oldest rookie in NFL history who never played football in college.
What Is This Movie?
In this next sports movie, Peter La Fleur, played by Vince Vaughn, is the owner of a run-down gym called Average Joe’s Gym. A larger, better gym, called Globo-Gym, that sits across the street run by fitness nut White Goodman, played by Ben Stiller, is about to put Average Joe’s out of business unless Peter can raise the $50,000 he needs to pay the mortgage. In order to raise the money, Peter and his Average Joe’s members enter a dodgeball contest with a cash prize.
What Is This Movie?
Ken Carter, played by Samuel L. Jackson, returns to his old High School in Richmond, California, to coach the school’s basketball team into shape. With his no-nonsense style of coaching, his strict rules, and academic discipline, Carter succeeds in getting his team on a winning streak. However, when the player’s grades start to slip, Carter quickly shuts down their championship season. When he is criticized by the players and parents, he sticks to his resolve that the players succeed in the class and as well as on the court.
What Is This Movie?
When it comes to the town of West Canaan, Texas, high school football comes first. When the star quarterback Lance Harbor, played by Paul Walker, gets injured, the teams’ intense coach Bud Kilmer, played by Jon Voight, promotes Jonathon “Mox” Moxon, played by James Van Der Beek, to starter to lead the team to a divisional title. Now in the spotlight, Mox must deal with the pressures of carrying not only his team, but the whole town on his shoulders as he struggles to pursue his own different dreams.
What Is This Movie?
Rudy Ruettiger, played by Sean Astin, wants to play college football at the University of Notre Dame more than anything. The only problem is, he has neither the money for the tuition nor the grades for a scholarship. Rudy works overtime at the steel mill where his father works when his best friend dies in an accident there. With the help of his friend and tutor, Rudy is able to overcome his dyslexia and gain admission to Notre Dame. Once there, Rudy begins to fight for a spot on the school’s football team.
What Is This Movie?
Nick Nolte plays college basketball coach Pete Bell who has to make his team better, by any means necessary. Bell puts all of his hopes on three hugely talented players: Neon Boudeaux, played by Shaquille O'Neal, Butch McRae, played by Penny Hardaway, and Ricky Roe, played by Matt Nover. However, in order to sign these top prospects, Bell will have to pay these players, which is not allowed in college. If Bell is caught, his coaching career could be over. Is Bell willing to risk it all?
What Is This Movie?
In Durham, N.C., the Bulls minor league baseball team has something the other teams don’t: a poetry loving groupie named Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon. When the Bulls season begins, Annie selects the new, young pitching recruit named Ebby Calvin Laloosh, played by Tim Robbins, whom she gives the nickname “Nuke,” to inspire with the religion of baseball. Nuke also receives mentorship from the veteran player Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, who helps Nuke with his erratic pitching and maturity problems.
What Is This Movie?
Walter Matthau stars as Morris Buttermaker, the hard drinking, ex-minor league baseball player who reluctantly agrees to coach a little league baseball team at the request of lawyer-councilman Bob Whitewood, who is upset with the league for excluding his not so talented son from playing. After failing with his new team, Buttermaker enlists the aid of gifted pitcher Amanda Whurlitzer, played by Tatum O’Neal, to lead the team. Can Buttermaker find the luck and patience to turn this team of misfits into winners?
What Is This Movie?
This next sports movie is directed by Martin Scorsese and tells the story of a middleweight boxer, Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro, as he rises through the ranks to earn his first ever shot as the middleweight title. LaMotta’s inability to express his feelings enters into the ring and soon takes over his entire life. This film chronicles two decades of the boxers’ life and how the violence in the ring was only an extension of his violence and temper out of it.
What Is This Movie?
In a small New England town, the local mill is about to lay off 10,000 workers. The town’s minor league hockey team, the Charleston Chiefs, isn’t doing that much better. In fact, after so many bad seasons, the next one will be the team’s last. Exasperated player and head coach Reggie Dunlop, played by Paul Newman, allows the team’s newest acquisitions, the Hanson Brothers, play. However, the Hanson Brothers’ extremely violent and aggressive style of play begins the excite the fans which causes Dunlop to reboot the team and use the violence to draw huge crowds.
What Is This Movie?
Jake Shuttlesworth, played by Denzel Washington, has spent the last six years of his life in jail after accidentally causing his wife’s passing in a domestic dispute. This left Jake’s son, top basketball prospect Jesus Shuttlesworth, played by Ray Allen, to fend for himself. One day, the jail ward approaches Jake and makes him a special offer. He will give Jake a week of parole in order to convince his son Jesus to attend the governor’s alma mater, with the promise of a shorter sentence if he succeeds.
What Is This Movie?
This next sports movie centers on Danny Noonan, a down on his luck teen who has to work as a caddy at the snobby Bushwood Country Club in order to raise money to pay for his tuition at college. In order to get the votes for a college scholarship that is reserved for caddies, Noonan decides to volunteer to caddy for a very important club member. Noonan struggles to get ready for the Caddy Day golf tournament, while at the same time, absorbs new age advice from a wealthy golf guru named Ty Webb.
What Is This Movie?
“Fast” Eddie Felson, played by Paul Newman, is a small-time pool hustler with talent and a self-destructive nature. He challenges the legendary “Minnesota Fats” to a high stakes match, but loses in heartbreaking fashion. Now broke, Felson faces an uphill climb to regain his confidence and game. New cutthroat manager, Bert Gordon, agrees to take Eddie on the road and show him the ropes, but Eddie soon realizes that making it to the top could cost him his soul and his girlfriend.
What Is This Movie?
A young baseball phenom, Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, is shot by the unstable Harriet Bird on the way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs. 16 years later, Hobbs returns to professional baseball as a rookie for the last place New York Knights. Despite bickering with the manager, Hobbs soon becomes one of the top players in the league, and the knights start winning. Unfortunately, this upsets the owner of the team, who wants Hobbs to lose games, not win.
What Is This Movie?
I hope you keep a box of tissues close to you when you watch this next sports movie. Brian Piccolo, played by James Caan, and Gale Sayers, played by Billy Dee Williams, are teammates on the 1960s Chicago Bears. During a time when sports still had a certain amount of segregation, the friendship between Brian and Gayle, as well as their wives, became a symbol of harmony during the civil rights era. This bond grows even stronger when Piccolo receives some devastating news.