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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > April
April 2008
My Top Ten Football Movies
Leatherheads, the screwball comedy about a 1925 football team that was directed by and stars George Clooney, opens today.
I’m planning to see it for several reasons. I love that era of football. I’m a big Clooney fan and I like that he brought the movie back home to Maysville, Kentucky for its debut. He hasn’t forgotten his roots and that strikes a chord with me because my paternal grandparents were from Maysville and Mays Lick, just 12 miles down the road.
I’m hearing mixed reviews on the movie, but that won’t deter me. Then again I’m not sure it can crack my Top 10 list of football movies, which has it’s own personal quirks and will surely P.O. all those fans of Rudy.
Nothing against Notre Dame. I’ve got Knute Rockne - All American on my list. And I grew up a big fan of the Fighting Irish. My dad, being Irish-Catholic, wanted me to go there, I got accepted, hung around one day — “okay there’s the Golden Dome, hey, no girls” — and split. Went to Dayton instead.
Later on, one thing did tick me off about Notre Dame though. When I worked in Florida and regularly covered the Miami Hurricanes — a team I really liked and still do — I didn’t care for the holier-than-though “Catholics versus Convicts” attitude of the Irish. On the flip side, I liked Gerry Faust a lot.
The one sports movie I really wanted to embrace was We Are Marshall, but ever since Ohio State’s game at Texas a couple of years ago, I can only see Matthew McConaughey in one light. He was on the Longhorns sideline the whole game and his over-the-top, hey-look-at-me antics soured me on the guy. Now when I try to watch him in a movie and think only of that.
Here’s my Top 10 favorite football movies:
— North Dallas Forty (1979) — A wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys during the 1960s, Peter Gent wrote the novel “North Dallas Forty,” football’s version of Ball Four. Nick Nolte and singer Mac Davis — playing Gent and Don Meredith — give you a behind-closed-doors look at the game, showing the callousness of the front office and the players love-hate embrace of their game.
— Longest Yard (the 1974 original) — Ex Florida State football player and movie stud Burt Reynolds plays a former pro quarterback who lands in a prison run by a brutal warden. Facing a moral dilemma of his own, he has to decide if he wants to lead a ragtag group of inmates in a much-hyped game against the guards.
— Brian’s Song (1971) — The sad story of the relationship between Chicago Bears teammates Brian Piccolo (James Caan) and Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams). Sayers is black, Piccolo, white, and though competing for playing time, they became close friends, especially when Piccolo is diagnosed with cancer.
— Horse Feathers (1932) — The wise-cracking Marx Brothers help Huxley U. upset Darwin in the big game over Darwin. I love this one if for nothing more than to hear Chico call the signals — “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, this time I think-a we go up the middle!”
— Friday Night Lights (2004) — This stars Billy Bob Thornton as a high school football coach and he’s one of my favorites. In this film version of an even-better book, Thornton is the high school coach in a West Texas town that loves — maybe obsesses over is a better description — its team, the Permian High Panthers . Tim McGraw is great playing a has-been player who now takes his frustrations out on his running-back son.
— Remember the Titans (2000) — This is the true life story of football coach Herman Boone, who is a good friend of Middletown (and former CJ) coach Jim Place and even visited Dayton and worked the sidelines for the Eagles. In the movie, Denzel Washington plays Boone, a black coach put in charge of the football teamat a newly integrated Virginia high school in 1971. Will Patton plays the the white coach who must step aside and become Boone’s assistant.
— Knute Rockne — All American (1940) — It’s the story of the man who put the Irish program on the national map. Pat O’Brien plays the legendary Notre Dame football coach and Ronald Reagan plays George “The Gipper” Gipp, who utters the famous line “Win just one for the Gipper,” before he dies in a real tear-jerker scene.
— Black Sunday (1977) — Terror organization plans to blow up the Super Bowl. Bruce Dern plays an unhinged former Vietnam POW who has been lured into piloting the remote control blimp that will do the deed.
— Heaven Can Wait (1970) — Warren Beatty is a Rams quarterback who dies prematurely, but returns from heaven in the body of a tycoon, then promptly buys his old team and leads the unsuspecting and skeptical players to the Super Bowl.
— The Replacements (2000) — A a heart-warming, romantic comedy based loosely on the 1987 NFL strike. Keanu Reeves plays a quarterback who leads a often bumbling bunch of has beens and losers— coached by Gene Hackman — to victory
Honorable Mention: The Freshman, All the Right Moves, Wildcats, Radio, Invincible, Any Given Sunday, Rudy, We Are Marshall and, though I don’t know if you categorize it as a football movie, Jerry Maguire .
TweetBrownell: Front Runner at Marquette?
A source close to the Marquette University basketball program has said Wright State’s Brad Brownell is on the short list of Golden Eagles athletics director Steve Cottingham as a replacement for departed coach Tom Crean.
Crean was introduced Wednesday as the new head coach at Indiana University.
According to ESPN.com and at least two other national sports web sites late Wednesday night, Brownell is considered one of the front-runners to replace Crean. Earlier in the day, ESPN”S Andy Katz reported that IU had been set to go after Brownell had it not been able to lure Crean.
One basketball insider at WSU said he expects Brownell to take a higher profile job as soon as he finds one that fits. Although Brownell has admitted he’s been contacted by a couple of schools since the Raiders season ended, he hasn’t named them publicly and has reiterated that he is happy with his job at WSU.
Brownell remains one of the hotter prospects in college coaching right now. He is the winningest NCAA Division I coach under the age of 40. In two seasons at Wright State, he’s led the Raiders to a 44-20 record, took the team to the NCAA Tournament last year and was named co-Coach of the Year in the Horizon League this season.
Prior to Wright State — in his four seasons as head coach at UNC-Wilimington — he led the team to two NCAA Tournaments and twice was named Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year. He’s never has a losing record in six years as a head coach.
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