Step 2 continued: Hoops Edition

Basketball

High School

Hoosiers
Basketball Diaries
Finding Forrester

Love & Basketball: This is a great love story not only about the love between the main characters, but also a love story about their love of the game. It's worth watching, but didn't make the cut.
Teen Wolf: One of the campiest films of all time, I almost left it in the top 3 for the memorable cisual of Michael J. Fox in a cheap werewolf costume flying through the air with a basketball. Then I woke up.
Coach Carter*: Too formulaic and straight Hollywood-true-story to really get consideration - it's really a thinly veiled remake of Lean On Me. It's still worht watching, and I can't help but enjoy Samuel L. Jackson, one of the great actors of our day.

College / Amateur

Glory Road
He Got Game
Blue Chips

Semi-Pro*: I hate Will Ferrell with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. I refuse to include any of his useless sports films in my list.
White Men Can't Jump: The last one out, in tourney lingo, white men can't jump was a very good film, but didn't quite measure up to it's closest rival - He Got Game.
The Air Up There*: A ridiculous premise prevented this film from ever getting off the ground.
The Sixth Man*: Disney didn't capture any magic with this one, falling well short of the bar it set with Remember the Titans. Plus, it got negative points for depicting the school that currently employs the former Notre Dame head football coach that shall not be named.

Pro

Eddie
Celtic Pride
Space Jam

A disappointing list of films for the professional category, I'm not sure I'd include any of them on a great sports movie list. But all three make the cut by default. (I previously had Blue Chips mistakenly categorized as pro, when it is a college b-ball movie)

Step 2: Separating the wheat from the chaff

Now that I have a fairly exhaustive list of films, it's time to start eliminating some movies so I have a more manageable list to work with. I'm limiting each category or subcategory to 3 films (except college football, as this is a college football blog - they get an extra film), so some worthy films aren't going to make the cut.

Below are my eliminations for football and their justifications. The other categories will follow, as there are several films I still need to watch. Now is the time for you to step up to the plate and start defending your favorites - this list is still fluid and up for debate.

Football

High School
Varsity Blues
Friday Night Lights
Remember the Titans
Little Giants: A little too campy, and lacking a real emotional pull or enough legendary comic moments to make the cut. Plus, Rick Moranis always gave me the creeps
Gridiron Gang: I liked this film, but it doesn't get to that next level that the remaining films do.
Radio: This was the toughest of these films for me to cut, and it had some basketball along with the football, giving it a multiple sport bonus. But it was fairly close to Remember the Titans in type of film, and I felt (completely subjectively) that Remember the Titans was a little more impactful.

College / Amateur
Rudy
The Program
Knute Rockne: All-American
We Are Marshall
The Waterboy: Great comedy, but simply doesn't stack up to the other films - heck, the one-liners from The Program are more memorable.
The Longest Yard: I expect to get some flack for this one, as it is a cult classic, but I just didn't feel attached to this film or it's remake when I watched them.
Necessary Roughness: Much like the Waterboy, there was too much camp and not enough substance here...

Pro
Any Given Sunday
Brian's Song
Jerry Maguire
The Last Boy Scout: Football isn't central enough to this great film for it to make the cut.
Invincible*: I still haven't watched this film, but it never seemed to generate the buzz of the films left on the list.
The Replacements: I liked the Replacements, which I watched the evening after my previous post, and enjoyed it. But in the larger scheme of things, it felt like a cheap knock-off hybrid of Any Given Sunday and Necessary Roughness.

The calm before the storm - Movie edition

I've been a little remiss in my posting lately, trying to get my new practice up and running. I've got a tiny little office in the back of a scuba shop, and a couple of clients, but a long way to go.

Plus, there isn't much news to be had until spring ball gets underway. That said, I've had a little bit of time on my hands this weekend, and while we wait for spring ball to start, I was watching a little TV this morning. There were a bunch of sports movies on the tube, so I watched The Legend of Bagger Vance, and am currently watching Varsity Blues as I write this post.

All these sports movies got me wondering what the greatest sports movies of all time were.

Certainly, that title is far too subjective to come up with a definitive answer, but I thought I'd take it on anyways. Obviously, a person's rooting interests and hometown can have a significant impact on this discussion as well, but I'm going to take a couple of weeks and several posts to take it on.

To do this right, I'm going to need some help from you, the readers.

To start this off right, I want to get a list of the best movies for each sport to review. So, if you have a couple of minutes, I'd like you to help me round out the following list of films. Feel free to nominate your favorite movies in each category that I might have missed, and I'll try to get caught up on the films I haven't seen yet.

The list of all sports movies is far too long, so I'm only looking for movies that have enjoyed a significant amount of popular and critical praise, or have at least developed a strong cult following. The list is going to trend towards more dramatic films, but particularly good comedies are included as well.

This list is only the movies I've seen, so if a great film is left off, that's why - please leave it in the comments so I can get up to speed on the great films. Movies in the list below with an asterisk are films I haven't seen yet, but need to...

Football

High School
Varsity Blues
Friday Night Lights
Radio
Remember the Titans
Little Giants
Gridiron Gang

College / Amateur
Rudy
The Program
The Waterboy
The Longest Yard
Knute Rockne: All-American
We Are Marshall
Necessary Roughness

Pro
Any Given Sunday
Brian's Song
Jerry Maguire
The Last Boy Scout
Invincible*

Basketball

High School
Hoosiers
Basketball Diaries
Finding Forrester
Love & Basketball
Teen Wolf
Coach Carter*

College / Amateur
It occurred to me the other day that I've never seen a college basketball movie, despite my annual March Madness obsession and love of the Hoosiers. Help me figure out what to watch to fill this category out!
Glory Road*
Semi-Pro*
White Men Can't Jump*

Pro
Blue Chips
Eddie
Celtic Pride

Baseball

High School / Sandlot
The Sandlot
Field of Dreams
Bad News Bears

College / Minor Leagues
For The Love of The Game*
A League of Their Own
Bull Durham

Pro
Major League
Angels in the Outfield
The Babe
The Natural*
Eight Men Out*

Hockey
The Mighty Ducks
Miracle*
Mystery, Alaska*
Slap Shot*

Golf
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Happy Gilmore
Tin Cup*
Caddyshack
The Greatest Game Ever Played*

Boxing/Fighting/Wrestling
Rocky (this subsumes all 27 Rocky movies...)
Cinderella Man
Million Dollar Baby
Ali
Raging Bull
The Hurricane*
Honorable Mention: On the Waterfront* ("I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody.")

Racing
Speed Racer* (Coming soon...)
Cars
Talladega Nights
The Fast and the Furious
Herbie movies
Days of Thunder
National Velvet
Seabiscuit
Hidalgo

Olympic Sports and Other
This category includes track and field, cycling, swimming and diving, and is a general catch-all for anything that might not have been included above.
Breaking Away
Cool Runnings
The Big Lebowski
Kingpin*
Dodgeball*
Swimfan*
Pride*
Chariots of Fire
Ready to Rumble
Karate Kid

Soccer
I hate soccer. They are automatically disqualified from consideration. So are surfing movies.

So that's my list. Let me know what I've missed, and the next posts will start separating the contenders from the pretenders.