Six Must-See Football Movies

The long wait is over, and the new NFL season is now well underway. It is America’s favorite sport, and fans all over the country will be eagerly following the games over the next few months as we hurtle towards the extravaganza that is Super Bowl LXI. 

Weeks of grueling football are in store before that world-class event comes around, and all the best NFL betting sites will be doing brisk business as we watch our heroes battle to be a part of the action. There are games taking place almost every day of the week these days, but there is still some down time from watching football – so how do you spend those precious hours?

The obvious answer is to watch movies about football – and there are countless films to choose from. Not all of them have been good, however, so you need to know your Super Bowl champions from your regular season losers. Here are six must-see movies with football as the main star. They should keep you occupied until the next game comes around.

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Oliver Stone could do no wrong in the 1990s, and his box office Midas touch certainly worked for this drama starring Al Pacino as a head coach dealing with an owner who wants to meddle with the team, as well as the ego of his star quarterback. Some of the actual football on show is a little questionable, but Pacino is excellent as a veteran dealing with the modern era.

Pacino heads a cast full of stars, with Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, and Jamie Foxx all putting in top-level performances as we follow a team with a new owner struggling to make the playoffs. A pulsating drama, Any Given Sunday is probably best known for the stirring speech Pacino gives his players to inspire them to go all the way.

Friday Night Lights (2004)

More people may have watched the TV series that followed the release of this different kind of football movie in 2004. Unlike Any Given Sunday, which is about football at a professional level, Friday Night Lights explores how high school football is everything in small towns all across Texas.  

Adapted from a book about a real-life high school football team, the movie stars Billy Bob Thornton as the coach who deals with getting the best out of his student athletes, while also interacting with the people of the town who use football as the binding element of the community – for good and bad.

The Longest Yard (1974)

Released as “The Mean Machine” in some countries, this comedy drama stars Burt Reynolds at the height of his powers as a football star who has been sent to prison and is ordered by the warden to put together a team to take on his own semi-professional team of prison guards.

Reynolds is excellent as the likable rogue who is initially disliked by his fellow prisoners due to his history of illegal betting but brings them around when he refuses to go along with the warden’s demands. This movie was so good that it has been remade on a number of occasions, with Adam Sandler and Vinnie Jones taking the Reynolds role.

Invincible (2006)

When it comes to sports films, many of the best are based on true stories, proving that real life is just as full of drama and emotion as anything the best screenwriters could come up with. In Invincible, Mark Wahlberg is Vince Papale, a bartender who incredibly becomes a quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Papale loses his job as a teacher and is berated by his ex-wife as being a failure. While working part-time as a bartender, he sees a TV report about how the Eagles will be holding public tryouts for a new quarterback as they are playing so badly. We won’t give any more away, but the fact that this movie is, at the very least, based on a true story, makes it even more incredible and inspiring.

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Tony Scott’s early 1990s action drama is everything that Invincible isn’t. There is no heart-warming rags-to-riches story here. The Last Boy Scout begins with a pro athlete taking a call from a gangster and then proceeding to take drugs and shoot three opponents with a gun on the way to scoring a touchdown. He then shoots himself.

The action doesn’t really slow down from that high-octane beginning, as we follow the excellent Bruce Willis as a washed-up private detective who teams up with a failed quarterback (Damon Wayans) to solve a murder case that increasingly looks like it is wound up with sports corruption. 

Wildcats (1986)

Goldie Hawn shines in this high school comedy as a teacher who switches jobs to take on a dream job. The daughter of a famous football coach, Hawn leaves an affluent school to take charge of the football team of a high school in the vastly different surroundings of inner-city Chicago.

A fish out of water, Hawn’s initial idealism and optimism are almost eclipsed by prejudice about her race and gender from many of her new players. Her spirit is contagious, however, and the team come around to get behind her methods and play for their own pride. It will not come as a surprise to discover that Hawn’s new team end up facing her old school’s football team in the city championship game. Want to take a guess who wins that one?