Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

In just a few days, you maggots will be slugging yourselves down in front of your fancy television sets for a few hours to watch the NFL Kickoff. After that, your weekends the next few months will no doubt, like mine, be taken up with several hour spells in front of the same television, elbow deep in barbecue flavored potato skins, the frothy head of beer coating our already frazzled mustaches while the ol’ pigskin gets tossed and run around over 100 yards of pure green grass-tro-turf.

With the oncoming season already embedded in your calendars, I’d hope you have some time here and there to remember what makes football so great to watch, whether in reality, or in the fictional world blown big on the silver screen (silver screen would be an awesome name for a crazy good offensive play, wouldn’t it?). Below I give you some of the best of the best in Football Films.

There’s two kinds of football films, really, just as every cinematic genre can play two sides to the same tonal coin: the TEAM stories, (speaking of teams, how about the team of James Ninness and Jed Soriano? You can get to know them and their work better when you purchase Mythoi Book One: Birth here) and the REDEMPTIVE or INDIVIDUAL stories. Sometimes these types overlap, but most of the time you can pinpoint what kind of sports film you’re watching. For me, TEAM stories tend to evoke more participation on my part, as an INDIVIDUAL tale is more often than not a sort of biopic.

RUDY, for instance, is a REDEMPTIVE story — our main character carries the weight of the plot, against all odds as the weakling with a single dream. We’re not following a football tossed to and fro, characters weaving in and out of focus, and because it’s Notre-Freakin’-Dame, we don’t have to worry about the W-L percentage. What we’re more interested in is seeing an underdog simply get on the field, to go against all odds and just play, simply to fulfill his dream. Four out of Five Rifles.

THE EXPRESS is another REDEMPTION football story. The lead character, Ernie Davis, was the first black footballer to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. He also died before he could play in the NFL, and his success and good nature helped pave the way for integrating college football teams in the 1960s. The movie version of his life is labored most of the time, a cliche tale of “we know he’ll succeed and we’re watching what we expect to see.” The “conflicts” are based solely on race and little else — we’re watching Syracuse make a run for a championship, so the TEAM doesn’t matter as much. The story is all about Ernie changing the lives of the people around him, yes, including his teammates. But the success we want is not for the victory, but for the change to happen. Halftime speech here. Three out of Five Rifles.

VARSITY BLUES. Another ME over TEAM film, this time about a high school quarterback who unexpectedly takes the reins of leading his team away from the coach, played by a brilliant Jon Voight. We get a lot of the QB’s life outside of school, outside of the sport, and want him to stand up to his father, want him to take that leadership role that’s so important. Off the field, the other players don’t make too much of a dent. Their personalities don’t shine, and we’re again shown a movie about a dude, not about the team. Four out of Five Rifles.

Now this is not meant to imply that these “individual” football stories don’t work — they do, and usually quite well. But it’s important to know what kind of movie you like, what kind of movie you’re going to be viewing, and then what kind of movies you would recommend. Inspiration comes in all sizes, mostly from “individual” tales, but more often, from the stories about entire teams who learn to care more about each other than the victory that tends to always be out of reach.

THE REPLACEMENTS. A bit corny, and blessed cursed by the presence of Keanu Reeves, this late 90’s entry into the genre focused mainly on the team, the camaraderie of a band of kooky gents taking over during a pro-NFL strike. While we focus mainly on Keanu’s redemption, there is more screen time spent with the team than without. We are also handed plenty of scenes with head coach Gene Hackman, again emphasizing the team, the effects of decisions “on the guys.” Four out of Five Rifles.

NECESSARY ROUGHNESS. Oddly, this TEAM-focused movie also spends most of its’ screen time on its quarterback, an aging Scott Bakula, who has one year of eligibility left in college ball. But, like The Replacements, Roughness gives us a heavy dose of the coaches behind the scenes, and almost every scene plays around the team as a whole rather than just Bakula’s past mistakes. Three out of Five Rifles.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. I’ve shined on this film in prior posts (mainly the TV show), but it’s worth mentioning again and again. It’s a TEAM movie in the largest sense of the word — not a single player becomes the “focus” of the story, and even the coach is more of a presence than a focal point, so that by the end of it all, when the championship game is played and the players move on, we come to realize we’re watching more than a movie about a team, and much more than a movie about any one individual. We’re watching an American past time embodied and infused with life, a cultural moment in the history of sports and people. Five out of Five Rifles.

(You’ll notice that the clips above all contain speeches from the respective films. I’ve heard tell that the speech in Any Given Sunday is one of the best inspirational speeches in recent film history. Judge for yourself:

Got a favorite sports movie? A favorite football film? Give me your own briefing in the comments below.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle