All very good. I also like Woodlawn
My all american is good also
I liked American Underdog a lot.
…and it has a Coog in it.
3 Likes
Best - Rudy
Worst - Wildcats
The best Houston cougars movie is Thelma and Louise as the 89 coogs are playing Arkansas and spoon carries the ball on the TV in the background in one scene.
5 Likes
Debbie Does Dallas
2 Likes
Great list and comments. I’ve seen most of them but there are 3 I haven’t seen and based on the recommendations I plan on catching them.
1 Like
I will have to go back and find that scene
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Okay so I loves me some football movies. Here’s my ranking along with my reasons for it…
One… North Dallas 40… really one of the best movies of all time… Nick nolte is one of the best actors of all time… and it was based on wide receiver Peter gent’s experience for the Dallas cowboys when he played there in the 1960s… some of the characters in the movie were based directly on players on the cowboys in the 1960s… one of the two linemen who had big rolls in the movie was based on Bob Lilly… the quarterback in the movie was based on Don Meredith… and of course the receiver in the movie was based on Peter gent… upon watching the movie Don Meredith said that if he had known Peter was that good he would have thrown to him more often… Meredith’s typical dry humor…
Two … Any given Sunday… Al Pacino might be the best actor of all time and he gave a great performance in this movie… the movie was semi-realistic and also somewhat non-realistic but it was a great movie…
Three… Heaven can Wait… just a great overall movie not that much about football but it’s about an NFL quarterback… some great actors… high quality production etc
Four… School Ties… Starring Brendan Fraser… It’s about high school football at a very exclusive prep School in the 1950s. pretty realistic…
Five… Reckless, the 1984 movie starring Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah. It’s not really so much about football but the main character is a running back on the high school team… it’s a pretty realistic movie… football’s kind of a secondary element of the plot… but the football aspect of the plot really helps to define some of the elements of the protagonist character…
Did I ever tell you I played it against that team….kinda
It was the 87-88 season but most of the guys they had on the team the book was written about(88-89)were on that team….I was only a sophomore and was a backup “Mike”.
We played them first game of the season….believe we lost 49-21 or close to it….It was not to bad…Boobie stood out, nobody could tackle the guy…
Thing I remember the most was heading to lunch( open campus) and when we came back 30 minutes later their fans were starting to take over our student parking lot. RV’s, and several trucks….when we came out to leave for a bit (2:30) they had canopies and big BBQ pits, full on tailgating 5-6 hours before game time.
1 Like
No love for Varsity Blues ?
1 Like
I am
Waterboy is not the best, but definitely the funniest
The locker room speech in Friday Night Lights is pretty dang good
I dont know if it was the best football movie but when i think “football movie” the first title that jumps in my head is the feel good comedy ‘Best of Times’ (“and the son of a bi+c# dropped the ball…i was that son of a bi+c#”) Kurt Russell and the late Robin Williams.
1 Like
‘The Express’ about Ernie Davis was entertaing enough, it was a lot of LIES, but it was entertaining as a work of fiction. Sadly though they had a narrative to sell and picked easy targets to falsely malign.
As a work of fiction, the movie is terrific," said Ger Schwedes, captain of the 1959 SU national championship team. “But that’s not the way it was.”
In a letter to this newspaper, published today, Schwedes lists 11 factual shortcomings in the movie, which is based on Davis’ heroic and tragic life.
“Because so many of the '59 members have called, e-mailed and written to me with their objections, I’m compelled to set the record straight,” he writes.
"Schwedes said the letter reflects the consensus of 39 ex-teammates who returned to Syracuse for the movie’s world premiere Sept. 12. About 12 later reviewed the letter before it was submitted.
“You won’t find any dissent over what I’ve written,” he said.
Schwedes said the former teammates bristled over what they view as unfair portrayals of racism at West Virginia and SU.
At one point, during the film’s gala opening last month in Syracuse, some players grew so upset at the emerging story – including its depiction of coach Ben Schwartzwalder – that they nearly left the theater before the closing credits, according to two players.
“The Express” opened nationally last weekend and ranked sixth at the box office. It generated $4.5 million, about a quarter of the revenue of the nation’s top-grossing film, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua.”
But “The Express” – showing powerful images of a racially divided America in 1959 – was always destined to generate far more debate than the usual popcorn movie.
During one seven-minute sequence in the film, SU’s racially mixed team faces an angry white crowd at West Virginia, where fans shout slurs and throw garbage, and even the referees are corrupt. Schwartzwalder, played by actor Dennis Quaid, warns his team to stay helmeted, fearing they will be hit by beer bottles.
“That’s the way they do things down here,” the coach says.
The movie sets the date of the game as Oct. 24, 1959.
Trouble is, it never happened.
The record book shows Davis, a sophomore, had a breakout game in 1959 against the Mountaineers, rushing for 141 yards. But the game took place in Syracuse.
The teams did play in Morgantown, W.Va., on Oct. 22, 1960. Behind Davis, SU won 45-0, delivering the worst home defeat in West Virginia history. Newspaper accounts mention no racial incidents, though such issues rarely made newsprint in that era.
Though racial conflict at the 1960 Cotton Bowl game, in Texas, has been well-documented, West Virginia critics say the filmmakers seem to have picked their school arbitrarily to serve as the film’s composite face of racism.
“The dialogue itself is deplorable, stereotype propagating works of slanderous fiction that both never happened and are nothing but attacks on the state,” the West Virginia campus newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum, recently argued.
Several former SU players from that era – including Schwedes, offensive tackle Bob Yates, tackle John Brown and quarterback Di*k Easterly – have stated publicly that they recall no such racial incidents in Morgantown.
Brown, an African-American, said he never experienced a regular season crowd or game like that during his time at SU.
Nor is there mention of any West Virginia ruckus in Robert C. Gallagher’s 1999 book, “The Express: The Ernie Davis Story,” on which the movie is based.
The book does note one anecdote from the 1960 game: On Davis’ first three runs, a Mountaineer linemen twisted his ankle in the pile-up. Davis smiled at the guy and asked what he was trying to do.
Writes Gallagher: “The tackle, expecting a violent response, became embarrassed and said, ‘Ernie, I’m sorry.’ That was the last time Ernie’s ankle was twisted that day.”