Great Movies for Football Fans

Here are some great movies for football fans. They are listed, in no particular order. All of them are enjoyable and well worth your time.

The Replacements

Inspired by the NFL strike season of 1987, The Replacements stars Keanu Reeves as a has-been college football star given a second chance at glory. Reeves plays Shane Falco, recruited by Washington Sentinels Head Coach Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) to lead a rag-tag group of misfits and wash-outs to complete the team's pro schedule when the regulars go on strike.

Reeves is perfect for the role of quarterback, as he is absolutely convincing as a football jock. Hackman is good in everything he does.

Remember the Titans

One of the most inspiring sports movies ever made, Remember the Titans tells the true story of the 1971 T.C. Williams High School football team in racially polarized Northern Virginia. The movie focuses on football coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington), an African American, who displaces popular (and white) Bill Yoast (Will Patton) to become head coach of the Titans.

Yoast at first declines to become assistant coach to Boone, but later agrees. Over the course, the two become close friends and lead the team to racial reconciliation in the locker room and stunning success on the football field. Remember the Titans is a moving film that every American should see.

We Are Marshall

Just released on DVD, We Are Marshall brings to the screen the most tragic story in sports history and one town's struggle to come to terms with that catastrophe. In November of 1970, the charter jet carrying the Marshall University football team home from their defeat in East Carolina crashed into an Appalachian hillside near Huntington, West Virginia, killing all on board. Marshall University and the town of Huntington, West Virginia would never be the same.
The movie, starring Matthew McConaughey as Coach Jack Lengyel, brought into rebuild Marshall's football program. The film is more about the aftermath and the conflicted, tormented feelings of Marshall's student body and faculty, not all of whom believe the football team should be re-birthed. The film stars McConaughey along with David Strathairn and Matthew Fox.

Facing the Giants

Facing the Giants, a low-budget faith-based film made by Sherwood Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, is unambiguously and shamelessly committed to Christianity. If this is an automatic turn-off, skip to the next movie. If you do skip, however, you're liable to miss out on one of the finest low-budget indies of this decade.

This fictional story follows Christian high school football coach Grant Taylor, a perennial victim of Murphy's Law. Unable to turn his football program around and in danger of losing his job, the beleaguered Taylor rededicates his life to God and good old-fashioned grit. What follows is a tear-jerker turnaround that may be a little over the top in its believability (or lack thereof), but will nevertheless leave you feeling inspired like no other movie has - at least not in a long while.

Rudy

If you prefer true stories to fiction, run, don't walk to your nearest Blockbuster and pick up Rudy. When it comes to grit and determination, no one has a thing on Dan "Rudy" Ruettiger, a five-foot, six-inch football player who gave everything he had to ride the bench for the famed "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame - until an unforgettable moment when he finally took the field in the last game of his collegiate career.

This is probably the best football movie ever made, and not because of its football action. Rudy is perhaps the best football movie ever made, because of the incredible true story that powers this film. Rudy Ruettiger grew up watching Notre Dame football, and his one dream was to play for Notre Dame. He refused to let anything or anyone stand in his way of achieving that dream, and achieve it, he did. Don't let anyone or anything stop you from seeing this film!