58 Best Football Movies

So you want to do what JaMarcus Russell and Johnny Manziel never did: study football film. You’ve got the drive to learn from the decisive plays, watch those game-clinching throws, and witness them beastly runs that can get a roaring stadium crowd up on their feet and register on the Richter scale.

It’s a good thing we got the best football movies right here that’ll make you a pro, and you won’t even need a sports agent or that distracting multi-million dollar contract.

First, throw away your scout reports, QB ratings, and ELOs (we’re not talking about Jeff Lynne LPs). To create our list of the best football movies, we use just one metric: the Tomatometer. We start with Certified Fresh films like Friday Night Lights, Jerry Maguire, and ultimate underdog story Rudy, all majorly approved by the critics.

Then we follow those up with Fresh movies, which include enduring favorites like crowd-pleasing Remember the Titans, tearjerker Brian’s Song, and Academy Award-winning The Blind Side.

Then come the Rotten movies, which plenty of RT users have given the go-ahead with positive Audience Scores. (Alright, we’ll come out and say it: A majority of critics may not have played ball at the collegiate level.) The include popular picks like Any Given Sunday, We Are Marshall, The Waterboy, and Varsity Blues.

So if you want to know from your Xs and Os and Y.A. Tittles, open up the playbook to the best football movies of all time, ranked by Tomatometer. And soon you’ll get to the Hall of Fame without ever having to step foot in Canton. —Alex Vo