Sports Movies

Gene Hackman in 1986's Hoosiers
Gene Hackman in 1986’s Hoosiers

Want to know the best Sports Movies?  How about the worst Sports Movies?  Curious about Sports Movies did at the box office or which Sports Movies picked up the most Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins? Need to know which  Sports Movies movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

A few years ago, I got a request from HubPages’s Stevennix2001 to figure out the Top 100 Sports Movies according to our Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score formula.  Well I had to research over 1,200 sports movies….but I was able to come up with a Top 100.  Along the way I actually wrote 14 sports movie pages.  Many of those pages look at each individual sport….for example Ranking Baseball Movies.   The final  page I did was this one….which lists over 400 movies that received a Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  To be eligible a movie had to play in movie theaters in North America.

Since 1976 it is almost impossible to think about boxing and not think of one of the Rocky movies.
Since 1976 it is almost impossible to think about Top 400 Sports Moviesand not think of one of the Rocky movies.

Sports Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Movies by the type of sport
  • Sort Movies by the star of the movie
  • Sort Movies by adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort by how Movies were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Sports Movies received.
  • Sort Sports Movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • This table is freaking huge.  You need to use the sort and search buttons to find information.  For example if you want to see Kevin Costner sports movies…type his name in the search box and his 7 sports movies will pop up.  You can do the same thing with sports….if you want to see cricket movies….type in cricket in the search box and the two cricket movies will pop up. Sylvester Stallone leads the way with 11 movies in the table.
(Visited 75,765 times)

68 thoughts on “Sports Movies”

  1. It still amazes me how far you’ve gotten with these movie rankins. Not that I’m surprised by it or anything, as I knew eventually you’d leave hubpages to run your own site with these movie rankings. I already told quite a few people about your site, so hopefully that’ll drive more traffic to you here. anyways, take care of yourself Bruce, and have a nice day.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steven….glad to see a Hub Page alumni….lol. Thanks for the nice words…I miss the people at Hub Pages….I don’t miss them constantly changing things and making my “tables” almost impossible to do over there. I appreciated the referrals…..my website provider recently shared some stats with me that were staggering….then again….it was to get us to get a more expensive agreement with them….lol. Thanks again for the shout outs and the visit.

      Reply

  2. I appreciate your rankings which, of course, are subjective. But I have to quibble with some of your top selections. Heaven Can Wait was a good movie, but I wouldn’t consider it to be a football movie. Ditto your selection of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, of which Heaven Can Wait was a remake. The Great Race a car-racing movie? Really? C’mon. And saying The Big Lebowski (a great movie!) is a bowling flick is like saying The Godfather is about weddings.

    But I’m glad you got The Natural, Tin Cup, and North Dallas Forty – all under-appreciated, in my view – up there relatively high, though I would have put NDF at the top of the heap of football films.

    Keep up the good work. Will be following you on Twitter.

    Reply

    1. Hey John….I understand your point. When I started trying to find all of these sports movies I used box office mojo and IMDb and their categories. Both of those sites list movies like The Great Race, Heaven Can Wait, and Here Comes Mr. Jordan as sports movies. Having watched Heaven Can Wait recently I was paying attention to how much football is in the movie….I would say it is a huge part of the movie…pretty much Beatty’s entire character storyline is about getting back on the field. As for The Great Race….a comedy car race….pretty much falls into the same category like Sandler’s Waterboy….both take a comic look at a sport. I have no defense for the Big Lebowski…….that came from a reader’s request….and since I did not have many bowling movies I included it (sitting at 125th it is pretty far down the list)…it was not originally in the table. I did reject a request to include Goldfinger….their logic was the golf scene in that movie is the most famous golf scene ever.

      Glad you checked out sports page….I have had fun keeping it updated when a new sports movie gets released in theaters….I thought McFarland USA was going to do better…at least crack the Top 100…..I guess we will have to wait for the next Costner sports movie…lol.
      I appreciate the follow on Twitter.

      Reply

  3. Wow this is an epic page Bruce, 400 films listed and ranked! Must have taken ages to do. As you know I’m not big on sports movies but I have managed to see 68 of the films you’ve listed. Good to see Rocky at no.1. I am surprised Raging Bull barely made the top 20 on the moviescore. But it did reach no.1 on the critics table. Good to see a few Elvis movies on there and a thumbs up for including Shaolin Soccer, a crazy Hong Kong comedy which I recently bought again on steelbook blu-ray. Excellent job putting all this together.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….thanks for visiting the page….even if it is not one of your favorite type of movies. 68 is pretty good tally count. My tally count is….counting…199….wow that took a little bit of time. I think Rocky is clearly the number one movie….it is one of the biggest box office hits of all-time….it is a Best Picture Oscar winner, and is forever associated with the sport. Stallone has Rocky 7 (I think….I have lost track of all the Rocky movies)….coming soon. Shaolin Soccer is a fun movie to watch. So you have the steelbook blu-ray…very cool. Thanks as always for your thoughts on my pages.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.