Check out la times 11 Best football movies.

Check out la times 11 Best football movies.Exclusive and source from latimes

12.Al Pacino is Miami Sharks coach Tony D'Amato and Cameron Diaz is the team owner in 1999's "Any Given Sunday," which filled our 11th spot. The Oliver Stone drama included Dennis Quaid and Jamie Foxx.

11.Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) comforts Brian Piccolo (James Caan) in 1971's "Brian's Song," our No. 10 film. Buzz Kulic directed the true-life story about the friendship between Sayers and Piccolo, who died at age 26.

10.Alan Alda puts on his football gear for a practice session with the Detroit Lions in 1968's "Paper Lion," our No. 9 film. Alex March directed the story from the real-life adventures of George Plimpton, who spent a training camp and preseason scrimmage with the Detroit Lions. NFL stars Alex Karras and Roger Brown played themselves.

9.Alan Alda puts on his football gear for a practice session with the Detroit Lions in 1968's "Paper Lion," our No. 9 film. Alex March directed the story from the real-life adventures of George Plimpton, who spent a training camp and preseason scrimmage with the Detroit Lions. NFL stars Alex Karras and Roger Brown played themselves.

8.The Marx Brothers take the field in 1932's "Horse Feathers," No. 7 on our list. Norman Z. McLeod directed this college-based comedy that features Groucho as headmaster Quincy Adams Wagstaff, who tries to recruit a couple of ringers for the football team but winds up with Harpo and Chico.

7.Tom Cruise stars as the title character, a sports agent, in 1996's "Jerry Maguire," No. 6 on our list. Cameron Crowe directed the blend of a romance and a sports story. The film costarred Renee Zellweger and Cuba Gooding Jr. and spawned the catchphrase "Show me the money!" shouted by Gooding's character, wide receiver Rod Tidwell.

6.Warren Beatty stars as Joe Pendleton, a backup quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams who is summoned to heaven before his time in the romantic fantasy movie "Heaven Can Wait," our No. 5 football film. Beatty codirected the 1978 romantic comedy with Buck Henry and costarred with Julie Christie, James Mason, Dyan Cannon, Jack Warden and Charles Grodin.

5.Permian Panthers Brian Chavez (Jay Hernandez), left, Mike Winchell (Lucas Black) and Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) take the field for the pre-game coin toss in 2004's "Friday Night Lights," our No. 4 football film. Peter Berg directed from H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger's 1988 book about the Permian High School team in Odessa, Texas. Billy Bob Thornton played coach Gary Gaines.

4.Sean Astin stars as the Notre Dame football underdog in 1993's "Rudy," our No. 3 football film. David Anspaugh directed the story of walk-on Rudy Ruettiger's time with the Fighting Irish. The cast included future stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.

3.Burt Reynolds stars as quarterback Paul Crewe, thrown into prison in 1974's "The Longest Yard," our No. 2 football film. Robert Aldrich directed the story about a group of prisoners taking on the guards on the field. Eddie Albert played the evil warden.

2.Nick Nolte is wide receiver Phillip Elliott in 1979's "North Dallas Forty," ranked No. 1 on our list of the 11 best football movies. It was directed by Ted Kotcheff and includes Mac Davis and former Oakland Raider John Matuszak in the story of the North Dallas Bulls, a team modeled after the Dallas Cowboys.

1.This month the real world finally lived up to Hollywood fiction by giving us two transcendent moments that many reasonable people expected might never happen. The first was the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States, following through on the White House dress rehearsals by James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock and Dennis Haysbert. The second moment was even more staggering and unexpected: The Arizona Cardinals actually won a big game.

Thirteen years after "Jerry Maguire" tested the boundaries of our national imagination by presenting the Cardinals as the winners of a crowd-pleasing victory, the perpetually downtrodden redbirds are playing for the NFL championship today against the Pittsburgh Steelers. It's not the first time Hollywood had a crystal ball: In 1978, a spectral Warren Beatty led the Los Angeles Rams (remember them?) against the Steelers in "Heaven Can Wait" and, 18 months later, the Rams made it to the big game for the first time. There was a big difference, though: Instead of movie extras, real-life Rams passer Vince Ferragamo played the actual Steelers and, well, that didn't go so well.

"Jerry Maguire" and "Heaven Can Wait" are part of a long tradition of football films. How long? Well, the New York Times review of a movie, "The Quarterback," ran under the been-there-done-that headline of "Another football comedy" -- and that was in 1926. Despite the heritage, the sector gets relatively little credit, which you can blame on baseball snobs who have the world convinced that sports-film history must be measured in innings. That's "Horse Feathers," to borrow the title from another good football film, and upon further review we've found enough quality gridiron movies to come up with a starting lineup -- the 11 essential movies -- and another 11 for a strong bench. These films, like football, are tribal, violent, cynical and fast-paced (it sounds like "GoodFellas" with a scoreboard) but also defiantly sentimental and funny.

Some of our picks may surprise you, but feel free to get defensive; that's half the game after all.



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