The 10 All-Time Sports Movies… About Losing
When FOX Sports released its list of the top 20 sports movies of all time it forced us to think about how movies can move us to be better people, to inspire, but it also elevated the debate on what is truly a great sports flick, and what isn’t.
FOX’s list came out on the heels of Kevin Costner’s film about the NFL draft. Despite some flaws, it is a great list overall because it forces us to think of our top films and where we were when we first watched them, or who we watched them with. They are movies we still reference to this day on the playing field or in the huddle with our kids; heck, I’ve probably quoted the Remember the Titans coach a couple dozen times in huddles: “I don’t want them scoring another point” I’ll say, my oldest knowing full well I’m paraphrasing a line from the film.
At least 15 of the 20 films on Fox’s list deal with losing in meaningful ways, some more than others, like Rudy’s Notre Dame rejection letters, Rocky’s 14th round split-card loss to Apollo Creed and Jim Braddock’s Cinderella Man bout with life in the 1929 Depression.
At least four movies don’t belong, including “White Men Can’t Jump,” “Major League, “Karate Kid” and “Jerry McGuire.” We love the Karate Kid but come on, not as a sports film – it’s more of an 80s pop culture film about fitting in by playing hackysack at the beach with BananaRama playing on the transistor. Tom Cruise’s “McGuire” is not about sports either as much as taking chances and having faith, which are clearly important elements of sport, but not enough to warrant an 11th ranking over films like “The Natural” which is an all-time classic because it showed us the game through so many eyes — the angry manager, the kid, the girl, the icon — and let’s face it, when Roy Hobbs asks Bobby to “go pick me out a winner” you sort of automatically become a classic. It’s a line that stands in time because you know Bobby will pick out the bat they made together, because Hobbs is bleeding and because we know the ending, we hope for it.
Few comedies made the list but, among them, only one stands out: Caddyshack. I grew up caddying at a country club so it reminds me of those days trying to get a loop and carrying bags for gramma who’s blind and grampa who’s deaf and farts up and down the fairway. Caddyshack features the single best line in sports movie history, when Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler character tells a young caddy that the Dali Lama told him he’d receive total consciousness on his death bed. “So I got that going for me…which is nice,” Spackler says, pushing a pitchfork into the caddy’s neck. Caddyshack is funny, but real, quotable and a bit naughty at times when watching it years later, though it’s more about middle age men and their weekends, less about sport to be fair and so as golf films go it’s still probably fourth, behind Tin Cup, Bagger Vance and the Greatest Game Ever Played.
More than half of the top 20 are either baseball or boxing films, sports engrained in our national pastime, based on characters who had national followings, who my dad and his dad Henry before him listened to on the radio, but sports now losing popularity to emerging favorites like football and basketball, both with three on the list. Hoosiers, ranked number one, probably belongs in the top 20 but is not in my top 10 because no one guarded Jimmy Chipwood in the entire movie and because they used slow motion on the last play of Hickory’s championship game. The Natural used slow motion, too, but it worked because when Hobbs hit the ball you knew the result right at the crack of the bat, plus it’s really hard to film a home run compared to a 14-foot jumper, particularly one shot by Jimmy Chipwood. Hoosiers should have run regular motion on Chipwood’s last shot.
Only the Jerry McGuire selection is completely wrong. I mean Andy DuFrane’s prison escape in Shawshank Redemption (arguably a top 5 film ever) is more sport than Cuba Gooding Junior’s miracle flip catch in the McGuire film. Speaking of miracles, the 1980s US Hockey team gold medal run earned it a spot, but it is by no means the best hockey movie. Slapshot better reflects hockey.
The true measure of a sports film’s greatness probably lies in the number of times we are willing to watch it over a 48-hour period, or how excited we get watching it with our kids who’ve never seen it. You can’t tell me you’d get excited to show your son or daughter Million Dollar Baby (6th on the list) or White Men Can’t Jump. For all those who love Field of Dreams, the more you see it the more you realize it doesn’t belong in the top 20, much less #9 where Fox ranked it. I’d argue that Secretariat is far more a sports classic because it shows a generation what happened in the spring of 1973, because we know the ending but we don’t know the beginning or the middle. Sure, Field of Dreams gave us Moonlight Graham and that line we all cry at when Costner asks his dad to have a catch, but the music carries those scenes more than the scenes themselves.
Some films may not be Top 20 list-worthy but they do have moments that I’d argue capture more of what youth sports looks like better than some of the epic sports films. Take Zombies, a recent teen film my kids love, which features this classic scene that may be the greatest ever, with the head coach illustrating what so many coaches struggle with - how to help teams “lose better.” How To Lose Better
I’m not a movie critic and not a pro athlete but if I were to rank sports movies I’d argue that to be a top film they must meet at least some baseline criteria:
Involve an actual ball or rolling object (as much as Cinderella Man is a great movie, there’s no ball I’m aware of)
Ball cannot have holes in it (sorry Kingpin) and must hurt a lot if it strikes you in the lower region
Be muddy or bloody or painful at some point, because that’s how we look or should look after playing
Acknowledge gamesmanship or cheating
Tap into an athlete’s emotions: dreams of who we were or who we hope to be
Feature Kevin Costner (optional)
Not end with some sort of made-for-Hollywood championship celebration, unless a true story involving an upset
Focus on losing or failure in a significant way
Only The Natural to me is sort of the exception to some of these rules because like others on my list it is about the game–sports movies ought to at least show us that, the intricacies of the game and the athletes’ emotions, not the post game party. They have to surprise me in some way, even if I know the ending before I buy the popcorn. There must be moments of loss and doubt along the way, scenes depicting failure and resurgence and show us characters we can relate to, if not athletically at least in other ways–those who we root for, who we see in ourselves. As someone who does more coaching than playing these days, I’d say my list today is probably more coach oriented but then again most sports movies have a teacher figure. These movies can be funny, but not comedies for the sake of being comedies, only because very little about sports is funny – not in my experience anyway, not coaching and certainly not playing. You win, you lose, you get mad, you comeback. You laugh in dugouts and locker rooms and on bus trips home but you don’t laugh on the field of play, not when the game matters.
Here’s my top 10:
Tin Cup
Bad News Bears
The Rookie
The Natural
Leatherheads
ESPN’s 30 for 30 on Jimmy Connors
We Are Marshall
Coach Carter
The Greatest Game Ever Played
Slapshot
No Rocky or 42? No Hoosiers? No Raging Bull or Bull Durham? All classics, no doubt, but to each his own. -BC