I have a confession to make, I hate football, but I love football movies. Maybe hate seems a strong word, but it works best for what I’m about to convey. I hate football in the sense that I dedicate no time to it during the season, and I could care less about how any team is doing. It is just not a sport I was ever interested in. I do, however, keep up on the important hubbub of what’s going on in the National Football League (NFL) because social media gives me constant access, and it’s good for social conversations with people who do like football. I do appreciate certain conversations that are had as a collective society about the league’s past transgressions involving racial bias and silent protest, but I’ll leave that there. I don’t want to distract from my current thoughts.

I’m involved in football to the point that most people who hate football in America, but like movies are involved. The NFL throws a hell of a concert every year with some football thrown in and that’s as much football as I watch all year, and this year is no different. It’s Super Bowl Weekend and this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show is provided by the talents of Usher. I have been a fan since high school! But I hate football remember? This brings me back to my original thought, I hate football, but I love FOOTBALL movies.

It’s something of a phenomenon in the film world, to have an absolute love fest with great football movies while caring less as to who was playing in the game while you were watching that football movie. Because if you were a real football fan, you’d be watching the game instead.

But since I’m not. I’m safe in the end zone, that’s how you say it right? So why exactly is it that a good portion of film fans have no interest in the gridiron game, but football in a movie, no matter the subject of the movie, requires your time, attention, and admiration? I’m going to attempt to answer this to the best of my ability based on my own experience with it.

Quite simply, football movies make us feel good. Even the ones that have tragedy, like the 2006 film, We Are Marshall starring Matthew McConaughey, this horrible thing happens to this college football team, but it’s the adversity of the team members left behind against their grief that rises them to greatness and college history books. I believe the spirit of these films is why we’re so invested in them as film viewers. They give us good film memories. You’re often left feeling affected by what you watched positively, and as a result, you always return to watch another one remembering that good feeling. Think about how you felt the first time you watched the 1993 film, Rudy starring Sean Astin, yeah, that’s the feeling I am talking about.

The difference between the films and the actual sport, to someone who doesn’t like the actual game is we’re seeing the behind-the-scenes action of how those gridiron moments come to be, making it more interesting, football movies also include stories about how those gridiron moments can affect the players later in life, like in the 2015 film Concussion starring Will Smith, as Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist who fights against the National Football League trying to suppress his research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) brain degeneration suffered by professional football players. And it’s not just football movies, it’s like this with most sports movies. If there’s a sport you don’t like, but you love the film, you are not alone. The most recent example of this took place with Ted Lasso, while it’s a television series, the same phenomenon occurred. People love this Apple TV+ series about an American football coach, played by Jason Sudeikis, who travels across the pond to coach Soccer in the United Kingdom. Most people who love this show, hate football, and hate soccer. But they know the difference between a field and a pitch all the same.

It’s a conflicting feeling, you hate sports, but you love sports movies. I’ve narrowed my discussion to the sport of football, this being Super Bowl Weekend and all. And there are so many football movies to choose from, I even love some more than others, and some even have iconic film moments never to be forgotten. When you think about why you love a football movie it often has a scene that remains unforgettable and sends those shivers through you as you connect with the characters’ journey on film.

Some of these football movies are not just written for the screen, but real moments and memories in people’s lives that were lived and then adapted for film. They were moments that became historical, or people that became legendary and it’s appreciation for their journey that allows for a director and screenwriter to adapt it into a story we all love as film viewers. It’s incredibly hard to write this and try to narrow down my favorite football movie, I don’t simply have one film above them all. I love them all for sentimental reasons as the song says. I have the top ten football movies you can check out in another blog post and see if your favorite film made the team.

I do have certain football movies that I’ve watched more than others and I still enjoy them the same as the first time I saw them. One that comes to mind is the 1999 film, Any Given Sunday with Al Pacino. The ensemble cast is unbelievable, so many people. Besides Pacino, you have Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, Jamie Foxx, James Woods, LL Cool J, Ann-Margret, Lauren Holly, Matthew Modine, John C. McGinley, Charlton Heston, Bill Bellamy,Lela Rochon, Aaron Eckhart, Elizabeth Berkley, and NFL players Jim Brown and Lawrence Taylor. If you blink, you’ll miss someone in this film. But it’s also an Oliver Stone film, and he’s been known to direct a good film or two. There’s this iconic inspirational speech by Tony D’Amato (Pacino) towards the end of the film when the team is at their lowest, and as a coach, he’s at his lowest, and he just embraces that moment and gives the players this iconic inspirational speech that you would be stupid not to apply in real life that’s how good it is. It just gives you all those film feels when Pacino is doing what he does on screen in any film. That’s when I fell in love with that particular film. It’s still to this day one of my favorite monologues in film.

You can watch Al Pacino’s iconic inspirational speech from Any Given Sunday below:

My senior quote for my yearbook in 2001 was a film quote, so I have always had a thing for a great film quote. What was the quote you ask? It was from the 1999 film, The Matrix. Morpheus’ question to Neo before he enters the Matrix, when he’s readying his mind to understand what waking up will be like to his mental reality.

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable t wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”

Morpheus – The Matrix (1999)

Football movies are full of great quotes and great moments that rival the spirit and push us and affect us to succeed on our own journey, no matter how difficult. There are football movies that tell stories of struggle, and resilience, and also of tragedy and celebration. There is no doubt a football movie for everyone. Your children, if you have them, probably would love the 1994 film, Little Giants starring Rick Moranis, and Ed O’Neill coaching youth football and one of the teams, the Little Giants, who don’t have a track record of winning team, but find their way through the adversity through the struggle of youth. Even kids can find a football movie they love! There is a football movie for kids of all ages! While the sport may not be liked by everyone, most people know what you’re talking about if you scream at them to “Show Me the Money” like Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) on that phone call to Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) in the 1996 football film.

Cuba Gooding Jr. winning for his football movie in 1997 is one of my top ten Oscar moments. When he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, his acceptance speech became Academy history, and everyone watching, including myself was so happy for him in that moment. Rod Tidwell remains, to me, one of his best performances in his acting career. There have been other football movies that have made their way to the Oscars, Heaven Can Wait from 1978 made it to the Oscars, the film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, with Warren Beatty becoming the second person (after Orson Welles for Citizen Kane) to be nominated for producing (Best Picture), directing (Best Director with Buck Henry), writing (Best Adapted Screenplay with Elaine May) and acting (Best Actor) for the same film, and the film won for Best Art Direction. The cast includes Beatty, Julie Christie, and Jack Warden. This further proves my point even more that football movies are worth falling in love with because some of them are pretty good.

It’s the stories around the game of football that we love, even if some of those films involve a game, it’s different watching a football game in film versus an actual broadcast game. It’s weird almost, but gratifying, nonetheless. Some football movies have great stories of sports history to tell, while others just seek to make us feel good through those stories on screen. America is due for a feel-good football movie; we have had a rough few years.

Film viewing is an emotional journey, you often connect what you’re watching to how you’re feeling. We often say when choosing a film to watch that “we’re not in the mood or we are in the mood,” your film desire is directly correlated to your feelings in the moments you’re choosing a film to watch or see in a theater. It makes sense then that if football movies are often associated with feeling good, we would embrace them and have a love affair with them. The game itself is a complicated relationship with the American collective, everyone has their reason if they don’t like football, be it political, social, or racial discrimination in team ownership and coaching, or the sport itself.  But ask a film viewer if they hate football movies and I’m inclined to believe the result would be more positive than negative.

So, if you have nothing invested in the big game on Sunday, and if you’re only in it for the Usher concert that’s interrupted by a football game, maybe you might want to instead watch a football movie to get in the mood for the game, even after the halftime show keeping with your good feelings from all that great music you can end your night with a great gridiron film to make you feel triumphant in your ability to hate football, but love football movies. I know I will.