10 of the Best Football Movies Inspired by Real Events
Reading Time: 5 minutesTrue stories of triumph and tragedy as Super Bowl prep.
Baseball might be the American pastime, but our version of football is a distinct cultural phenomenon. As much as the sport itself reflects our values, football movies go a step further, allowing filmmakers to craft and coax a straightforward story out of a game that can be chaotic and unpredictable.
Baseball and boxing movies were the preference of early Hollywood, but the former sport doesn’t hit nearly as violently or viscerally as football, and the latter doesn’t exactly allow for a team narrative. So football movies have taken the ball and run with it, providing the triumphs and tragedies and victories and defeats that are the stuff of great cinema. The ones that focus their energy on telling true(-ish) stories might not be able to get quite as wild, but there’s a genuine appeal in real-life sports stories massaged into a narrative—what would already be appealing as pure fiction becomes downright inspiring.
Based on: The life of Ernie Davis (1939 – 1963), Heisman Trophy winner and the award’s first Black recipient.
Rob Brown leads the cast as Ernie Davis, the ‘Elmira Express‘ who lead Syracuse University to a national championship in just his sophomore year. In the movie, as in real life, Davis faces ugly examples of racism, playing in an era when Black players were only starting to become a more familiar sight. The film goes hard on ‘inspirational sports movie’ tropes, but tastefully, and without creeping into full-on tearjerker mode, even when Davis’ leukemia diagnosis brings a premature end to his career. Brown is great, but The Express also marked the film debut of Chadwick Boseman, who plays Davis’ successor at Syracuse U., Floyd Little.
Where to stream: Peacock, Fubo, Sling
Based on: Coach Herman Boone (1935 – 2019) and his efforts to integrate the T. C. Williams High School football team in the early 1970s.
High school football was a way of life in Alexandria, Virginia in the 1970s. We’ve seen that before, but 1971 was the year in which the all-white and all-Black schools were integrated, to the outrage of white parents. Adding to the tensions was the potential disruption to local athletics, providing a cover story for those who preferred not to be seen as overtly racist but still opposed the merging of the two schools. Denzel Washington plays Herman Boone, the coach who winds up getting the job leading the team, picked over the already legendary coach of the former white school’s team. There’s a formula at work here, but the depiction of a moment in history makes the story both more fraught and more interesting. It’s a legit crowd-pleaser.
Where to stream: Disney+
Based on: The movie is (very) loosely based on the championship run of the 1988 Permian High School Panthers from Odessa, Texas.
Though ‘based on a true story,’ Friday Night Lights uses H. G. Bissinger’s non-fiction book of the same name (and the season it depicts) as only a loose framework, finding its primary inspiration in the idea a small Texas town for which high school football is the only significant industry. As with the later TV series adaptation, it’s both an inspiring tale of impressive athletics and a slightly pathetic portrait of a community with not much else going for it. It features a particularly good performance from Billy Bob Thornton as the controversial Coach Gaines.
Where to stream: Hulu
Based on: The life of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne (1888 – 1931), as well as that of his star player, George Gipp (1895 – 1920).
Probably most famous for providing future President Ronald Reagan with a life-long catchphrase (one that makes absolutely zero sense if you’re not actually George Gipp), Knute Rockne, All American is still an enjoyable early football movie that sets in place many of the tropes that would come to dominate the genre: hard-nosed but big-hearted coach, climactic big game, and a tragedy that inspired everyone to fight that much harder.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Based on: The 1970 plane crash that killed members of the Marshall University football team, and the attempts to rebuild the program in the aftermath.
After the tragedy, the plan was to suspend football indefinitely for the school, but the few surviving members of the team convinced the University President to rebuild the team. The movie focuses on Matthew McConaughey’s rookie coach, Jack Lengyel, who is joined by one of the only surviving members of the previous coaching staff (Red Dawson, played by Matthew Fox) in creating a new team from scratch. Initially, they’re not very good, but the team’s determination is where the inspirational aspect really kick into gear.
Where to stream: HBO Max
Based on: Rudy Ruettiger who, at a wee 5 ft 6, pursued his dream of playing football for Notre Dame.
All but guaranteed to melt the hardest of hearts, Rudy pushes every emotional button and still, improbably, creates a believable world in which we can’t help but root for the literal little guy. Broke, undersized, dyslexic, and without any particular skills (at least in the movie), Rudy commits himself to his highly improbable dream of both attending Notre Dame, and of playing for its football team. Sean Astin is an absolutely iconic as the underdog hero.
Where to stream: Starz
Based on: The friendship between Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo (1943 – 1970) and teammate Gale Sayers (1943 – 2020)
There’s probably no schmaltzier sports movie (which is saying quite a bit), but that’s a big part of why this ‘ABC Tuesday Movie of the Week’ has developed its cult appeal. It has a reputation as the sports movie that will reduce even the butchest football bro to tears (let it out, bros). The great Billy Dee Williams (just before he hit it big in Lady Sings the Blues) plays halfback gale Sayers (on whose memoir the movie is based), while James Can plays his teammate and best friend Brian Piccolo. A cancer diagnosis changes things for both of them.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Based on: The early career of Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher.
Perhaps signing Sandra Bullock to The Blind Side was the filmmakers’ biggest mistake. It’s hard to deny her charm, and she gives an excellent performance, but her star power only exacerbates the fundamental problem with this story. While very much based on facts, the emphasis is placed not on star-in-the-making Oher, who spent years shuttling between foster care and his substance-dependent birth mother, but instead on the wealthy white family who adopted him. It’s all very watchable, and the details seem to be more-or-less accurate, but the movie can’t entirely overcome the problems of its white savior narrative.
Where to stream: Max Go
Based on: The career of Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Vince Papale who became, at the age of 30, the oldest rookie in NFL history.
While exaggerating some of the details (Papale wasn’t quite the football noob the film portrays), Invincible is the rare rise-to-glory sports movie that doesn’t start in high school, but instead with a desperate, out-of-work Mark Wahlberg signing up for pro tryouts. Greg Kinnear plays the coach who gave him a chance, and the film hits all the expected inspirational beats as it shows us how even an extremely elderly person of 30 can make it in sports.
Where to stream: Disney+
Based on: The work of Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist whose work linking concussions in football with long-term neurological effects is still being fought over.
Traumatic brain injury, specifically chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is still a subject of debate for doctors and the NFL, thought conversation now is less about whether or not repeated concussions in sports can have long term consequences, but about the extent of the potential damage. Following Will Smith’s Dr. Bennet Omalu, Concussion isn’t a sports movie per se, in that it doesn’t focus on athletics or big-game set pieces so much as it does the real-life battle between a forensic pathologist and football industry types who weren’t terribly interested in hearing what he had to say.
Where to stream: Fubo, The Roku Channel, Sling