Breaking down the X’s and O’s of the top 10 football movies of all time. At number three: It’s a prison movie! It’s a football movie! It’s a prison football movie! (But not an Adam Sandler movie.)
I had two doubts about this movie before re-watching it: 1) How would it age? I remember seeing it as a kid and loving it, then re-watching it again years ago, and still loving it. But it had been a while, and it is almost 50 years old. Would it hold up? 2) Could it be considered a football movie? I remember a lot of prison scenes in the film, and there is only one game at the end. Did it have enough football to make the list?
Those concerns were answered quickly. While the opening of the movie couldn’t get green-lit in today’s politically correct climate (more on that shortly), it fits the main character’s arc. And the rest of the film, while dated, is more charmingly old-fashioned than distractingly so.
As for football, there isn’t much in the first half of the movie, but the second half is almost all football. The entire last hour of the film is one extended sequence — the long-awaited game.
It might also be the best story of any movie. Certainly, it’s the best concept among all the fictional stories. Keep in mind, about half the movies on this list are based on real life — four are based on true stories, another
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