I’ve been watching a lot of football lately. College football just crowned a new National Champion and the NFL playoffs have taken over the weekends.
Sometimes the best football stories aren’t found on the field though. They’re found in locker rooms, the small towns and the moments where a single decision matters more than the final score.
The greatest football movies understand this. The game is important but it’s not the point. These films are about standing up to authority, choosing who you’re going to be when no one’s cheering and discovering that character is forged long before the kickoff.
I’ve curated four football movies to watch when when the NFL games are over. Stories that remind us that victory doesn’t always come with a draft pick.
Necessary Roughness (1991)
Texas State Armadillos was a once proud football program but years of scandal and NCAA violations the football team has hit rock bottom. The entire coching staff and team, except for one player is banned
New coach Ed “Straight Arrow” Gennero is given the impossible task of rebuilding the team and the program. Straight Arrow has no prospects, no scholarship money and no support from the administration.
The Armadillos are forced to hold tryouts Coach Gennero puts together a team of misfits and long-shots including the one remaining player, Charlies Banks. With limited players the Armadillos are forced to play each game Ironman style. All players play both offense and defense, no breaks.
The biggest gamble on this team of misfits is quarterback Paul Blake, a 34-year-old construction worker who peaked in high school. Blake is brought in to give the team leadership and discipline. With age comes experience and Blake is able to lead the team and more importantly hold them together.
As the season unfolds, the Armadillos embrace their underdog status, relying on their grit and unconventional tactics. Slowly the team transforms from a joke into something of a real football team.
Necessary Roughness is about perseverance, friendship and finding success even through failure. Now, it’s not a deep thinking art piece. It’s a fun, early 90s comedy that will keep you entertained.
Scott Bakula plays the old, veteran quarterback and leader of the team. He is probably best known for playing Sam Becket in Quantum Leap or for the trekkies out there he was Capt. Jonathan Archer on Star Trek: Enterprise and most recently he played Special Agent King on NCIS: New Orleans.
Necessary Roughness was filmed during Quantum Leap’s run and Bakula was at his peak. His character knows playing for the Armadillos is his last shot at glory. Back in the 90s his age at 34 seemed like a grandpa on a College team, not so much anymore with 8 year seniors and constant eligibility extensions.
When my daughter was a college freshman in 2024 the football team had a 32 year old player… married… with four kids.
Hector Elizondo plays Coach Straight Arrow Gennaro. Elizondo is a familair face in tons of 80s and 90s movies. American Gigalo, The Flamingo kid, he was the caoncierge in Pretty Woman, Beverly Hill Cops III his been in over 160 movies and TV shows.
Sinbad plays the hyperactive wide receiver Andre Krimm in perfect Sinbad style. In 19991 Sinbad was a huge name in comedy. He was on the Cosby Show spin-off A Different World, hosting Showtime at the Apollo and doing standup shows. He brings his comedic energy into every scene and carries the comedy throughout the movie.
One last cast member I have to talk about is Supermodel Kathy Ireland who plays the team’s kicker, Lucy Draper. It was a good role in a couple of ways, it added some comedy and tension to the team and added to the misfit, underdog dynamic but it was also ground breaking having a female athlete on the team.
Necessary Roughness is director Stan Dragoti’s last movie. He directed a total of 7 movies, including The Man with One Red Shoe and Mr. Mom with Micheal Keaton. After Necessary Roughness he seemed to drop out of Hollywood. He died in 2018 at the age of 85.
The great Bill Conti wrote the score to Necessary Roughness. You might not know his name but you know his music. He wrote the score for all the Rocky movies, all the Karate Kid movies, For your Eyes only, The Right Stuff, over 117 movies and TV shows.
The scandal that brought down the fictional Texas State Armadillos was based on a real life scandal when the Southern Methodist University, SMU Mustangs were banned from playing the 1987 football season for repeatedly violating NCAA rules.
We Are Marshall (2006)
We Are Marshall tells the true story of one of the most devastating tragedies in college sports history and the effort to rebuild afterward.
In 1970, a plane carry the Marshall University football team crashed one mile short of the runway in West Virginia killing all 75 people on board, including 37 players, Head Coach Rick Tolley and five assistant coaches.
The small college town of Huntington, West Virginia was left in shock and grief and unsure how to move forward.
As the college and town continues to mourn, Marshall University grapples with the decision to cancel the football program permanently. The University president is persuaded to rebuild the program even though the odds and NCAA rules are stacked against them.
The movie follows the arrival of a new coaching staff and a group of players willing to take on the impossible task of representing a program defined by loss.
For the rebuilt team, victor wasn’t defined by wins and losses, it was something bigger, honoring those who died in the crash and helping the grieving community reclaim a sense of purpose.
We Are Marshall isn’t just a sports movie, it’s a story about resilience and remembrance and the unbreakable spirit of a community.
Matthew ‘Alright, alright, alright’ McConaughey plays Jack Lengyel, the coach tasked with rebuilding Marshall’s football program.
He does a great job as the energetic new coach. He balances the need for strict leadership with empathy towards the survivors.
At the time of this movie McConaughey was mostly known for his roles in romantic-comedy’s like Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
He wanted to break out of the Rom-Com typecast and We Are Marshall was his first step. It showcased his ability to carry a drama and deliver great locker-room speeches. He’d make one or two more rom-coms after We are Marshall and then starred in some great movies like The Lincoln Lawyer, Dallas Buyers Club, which he won a Best Actor Oscar, and many more.
One more thing on McConaughey, if you like reading biographies, check out his biograhpy “Greenlights.” It’s a good read and not just filled with Hollywood actor fluff and ego.
Matthew Fox plays Red Dawson, an assistant coach who missed the fatal flight. In the 90s Fox was best known for the drama Party of Five. During We Are Marshall filming in 2006 he was on the hit TV show Lost.
Fox does a good job portraying Dawson as a reluctant coach suffering from survivor’s guilt. His arc of struggling with grief, responsibility and the fear of repeating tragedy, adds depth and realism to the story’s emotional core.
Ian McShane plays Paul Griffen, a newspaper editor who becomes the voice for the town. He helps humanize the tragedy beyond the football field, reminding us the story is more about the community and less about fielding a winning football team.
McShane’s been in over 150 movies and shows, you’ve seen him in Pillars of the Earth, Deadwood, he played Blackbeard in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, American Gods, if you are a John Wick fan…which you should be, you’ll know him as Winston Scott, the owner of the Continental Hotel.
Johnny Be Good (1988)
Johnny Be Good is a late 80s comedy filled with goofy humor, teenage romance and a crazy friend played by Robert Downy Jr.
Star quarterback Johnny Walker is the best high school quarterback in the country and college recruiters want to sign him. As the recruiters come calling with scholarships, luxury cars and envelopes of cash Johnny is suddenly immersed in a world he never imagined.
As Johnny tries to decide where to play college football, he’s coerced by coaches and recruiters all promising fame, glory, and greatness.
Johnny is torn between staying true to himself or losing himself to the future glory everyone is promising. It’s a movie about identity, growing up and discovering what truly matter. It’s about integrity and what “doing the right thing” actually costs when the stakes are high.
The movie plays the recruiting tactics for comedy, exaggerating them to look ridiculous. But it’s those same tactics that caused the SMU Mustangs to get banned from football, paying players, offering them cars and houses.
Ironically it’s the same tactics that are now legal in today’s college sports with the transfer portal, NIL money and advertising campaigns.
Johnny Be Good does a great job of highlighting what, at the time was illegal. Showing just how far colleges would go to get star players. And while it was illegal it was still carried out.
Anthony Michael Hall plays Johnny Walker. By 1988, Hall was trying to shed his “kid-next-door” image and Johnny Be Good was part of that transition.
Instead of the nerdy characters he played in John Hughes movies, he was an elite quarterback. Hall bulked up for the role and proved he could carry a leading role outside of teen angst and sarcasm.
I first saw Hall in National Lampoon’s Vacation where he played Rusty Griswald, I saw him in all the John Hughes movies, he starred in the Dead Zone TV series in the early 2000s and most recently he was on Season 3 of Reacher.
Playing the wacky best friend, Leo Wiggins is Robert Downey Jr. Downey is great as the erratic friend who is looking to ride on Johnny’s coat tails. Downey was coming off one of his best performances in Less Than Zero.
This isn’t the first movie Downy and Hall starred in together. They were both in 1985’s Weird Science, only not as friends.
Uma Thurman plays Georgia Elkans, Johnny’s girlfriend. Her credit says “introducing Uma Thruman,” but it wasn’t her first movie role. She made her debut a year earlier in Kiss Daddy Goodnight.
She is a prolific actress. She played maid Marian in Robin Hood…not that Robin Hood, but they were both released the same year. Her breakout role was as Mia Wallace in 1994’s Pulp Fiction. She played Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, Gattaca, The Avengers, The Bride in Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2, one of her best roles if you ask me.
Here’s a little bit of trivia for you, especially if you’re a Stranger Things fan. Uma Thurman married Ethan Hawk in 1998 and have a daughter named Maya Hawk. Maya Hawk plays Robin Buckley in Stranger Things.
Paul Gleason plays Coach Hisler and does a great job. You might remember him as Principal Vernon in The Breakfast Club. The two character are similar. Gleason did a lot of work in TV on shows like Riptide, Magnum PI, Miami Vice, Remington Steel, before settling into movies like Trading Places and Die Hard. He’ll probably always be remembered as Principal Vernon though.
Playing his wife in a minor role is Jennifer Tilly and she is great. A little ditzy but full of love for her man. She is probably best known for her role as Tiffany Valentine in the Chucky movies. But she’s been in over 130 movies and TV shows, been nominated for an Oscar and she’s even won The World Series of Poker.
Johnny Be Good has some great cameos too. The NCAA investigator is played by Robert Downy Sr, yep, father and son are both in this movie. Howard Cosell makes an appearance early in the movie. Maybe the biggest football star at the time, Super Bowl Champion Jim McMahon from the Super Bowl Shuffle Chicago Bears also makes an appearance.
Johnny Be Good is a fun movie packed with future stars and a great soundtrack. I can’t forget the soundtrack. Judas Priest does an amazing cover of Chuck Berry’s Johnny Be Good!
When Johnny Be Good was released in theaters it had a PG-13 rating. Oddly when they re-cut it for VHS they added some scenes and gave it an R rating. They never released a PG-13 version on VHS.
All The Right Moves (1983)
My last movie recommendation is also my favorite movie on the list, All the Right Moves.
It’s a coming-of-age movie set in a Pennsylvania steel mill town and follows high school football player Stefan Djordjevic, who dreams of getting a football scholarship to college. His goal isn’t to play in the NFL, it’s to get an education and escape the limited opportunities in his home town.
Stefen quickly realizes talent alone isn’t enough and his future is jeopardized by clashes with his controlling coach, Coach Nickerson.
Coach Nickerson abuses his authority and holds a grudge against Stefan, threatening his chances of getting a scholarship.
As the season winds down Stefen’s frustrations spill over into his personal life, straining relationships with his friends and his girlfriend. The pressure to succeed and get out of the struggling town is growing and becoming unreachable.
Tom Cruise plays Stefen in one of his early roles. In 1983 Cruise was in three movies, this one, Risky Business and The Outsiders. Risky Business was released first and is considered his breakout role.
I think his role as Stefan has more substance but both are great early roles. As Stefan he portrays the desperation of getting out of town with realism. You can feel his frustration as he realizes he might be stuck working at the steel mill.
Even in this early role you can see the talent in Cruise that will propel him to the heights of Hollywood. He is one of the last great movie stars in Hollywood.
Cruise is a controversial person but regardless of what you think of his personal life he is a fantastic actor, dedicated to the craft and delivers blockbuster after blockbuster.
He’s been nominated for four Oscars, but hasn’t won yet. He did receive an Honorary Oscar in 2025 for his dedication and probably for earning over $2 billion on his last three movies, Top Gun; Maverick, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
Coach Nickerson is played by Craig T. Nelson, who does a great job as the coach who wants to win but also wants to get out of town, with a bigger and better coaching job.
Nelson was in Poltergeist the year before and would go on to star in Action Jackson, Turner and Hooch, The Devil’s Advocate, the voice of Mr. Incredible and many more.
Nelson would also play another Coach, Coach Hayden Fox on 9 seasons of the hit sitcom simple named Coach.
Lea Thompson plays Stefen’s girlfriend, Lisa, in her first starring role. She would star in Red Dawn the following year and then gain national attention in 1985 in a little movie called Back to the Furture.
Thompson was in Space Camp, Howard the Duck, Some Kind of Wonderful and many more. In the 90s she starred in all four seasons of Caroline in the City, playing the leaad role, Caroline.
There are also a couple of big names behind the camera. The Cinematographer is Jon de Bont. He is primarily a cinematographer working on movies like The Hunt for Red October, Black Rain, Lethal Weapon 3, Flesh+Blood and he would also go on to direct a couple of small movies called Speed in 1994 with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock and and Twister in 1996 with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.
The director of All the Right Moves is Michael Chapman. He is mainly a cinematographer as well. He directed a few movies, this one, Clan of the Cave Bear and The Viking Sagas. But as a cinematographer he has worked on some of the biggest movies in hollywood. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Fugitive, Space Jam, The Lost Boys, Ghostbuster II, the list goes on and on.
All the Right Moves is a look at football and how coaches hold the players future in their hands for better or worse. Cruise and Nelson work great together and Lea Thompson adds charm and realism.
I love this movie!
