Often inspired by books and true stories, football films have given great characters and a bunch of outstanding film moments.
Michael has been in foster care with different families in Oslo, Tennessee, due to his mother’s drug addiction. Every time he is placed in a new home, he runs away. His friend’s father, on whose couch Mike had been sleeping, asks Burt Cotton, the coach of Wingate Christian School, to help enroll his son and Mike.
The Miami Sharks, a once-great American football team, are struggling to make the 2001 Associated Football Franchises of America (AFFA) playoffs. They are coached by thirty-year veteran Tony D’Amato, who has fallen out of favor with young team owner Christina Pagniacci and offensive coordinator and D’Amato’s expected successor Nick Crozier.
As preseason practice begins for the Permian High School football team in August 1988, the town of Odessa, Texas has high expectations for the players and their coach Gary Gaines to win a state championship with their star running back James Boobie Miles. In the next game during the start of district play, Permian gets blown out as Winchell struggles with consistency in his increased role and the second-string running back gets hurt.
Based on the incredible true story, “The Express” follows the inspirational life of college football player Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. Following his draft by the NFL, tragedy struck the star athlete and he was never able to take the professional field. But his tale would forever change the face of professional sports.
De La Salle High School in Concord, California, is home to perhaps the greatest dynasty in sports history. At age 23, Coach Bob Ladouceur launched a legend, “The Streak,” with no teaching or head-coaching experience, and with his teams amassed the highest winning percentage in all of football history with 138 consecutive victories.
The true story of a special relationship between two professional football players, Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo. Both star players for the Chicago Bears, Sayers and Piccolo soon became roommates and best friends. When Sayers suffers a knee injury in mid-season, it is Piccolo who prods and inspires him to work toward a complete recovery. Then fate deals a cruel blow: Piccolo is stricken with malignant cancer.
Miami Dolphins superstar running back Tony Nathan attended Woodlawn High School in Birmingham AL during the early 1970s. There was a lot of racial tension and riots. Nathan became a model student and the first black football superstar in history. He and other black students played on the mainly white team under coach Tandy Gerelds at a time when racial tensions were very high.
Freddie Steinmark just wants to play football. Although he is deemed too small by the usual athletic standards, his father trains him hard. Freddie brings a fight to the game that ultimately gets him noticed. Awarded a scholarship and a chance to play for the Longhorns, Freddie sets off to Austin with his loving high school sweetheart, Linda, determined to make the team.
Wide receiver Phil Elliott plays for a late 1970s professional football team based in Dallas, Texas, named the North Dallas Bulls. Elliott and popular quarterback Seth Maxwell are outstanding players, but they also characterize the drug-, sex-, and alcohol-fueled party atmosphere of that era. A satire of American professional football.
Wide receiver Marvin “Shake” Tiller and running back Billy Clyde Puckett are football buddies who play for a Miami pro team owned by Big Ed Bookman. Bookman’s daughter Barbara Jane is roommates with both men, and the film depicts a subtle love triangle relationship between Barbara Jane and her two friends.
The movie chronicles the true story of Kurt Warner, who went from stocking shelves at a supermarket to become a two-time NFL MVP, Super Bowl MVP, and Hall of Fame quarterback. The story focuses on Warner’s unique story and years of challenges and setbacks that could have derailed his aspirations to become an NFL player.
Burt Lancaster stars as the legendary athlete who rises from poverty on a Native American reservation to graduate from college and win more gold medals than any other athlete in the 1912 Olympics. Thorpe’s life is a constant struggle against racial prejudice: Despite his talent and his desire to coach, no one will hire an American Indian; and his Olympic medals are taken from him because he had accepted money to play basketball to help pay for college.