16 Screenwriting Lessons From the Best American Football Movies of All Time
Are you ready to focus in on the gridiron?
'Any Given Sunday'
Every Sunday during football season, I wake up early, make some coffee, and then spend like 12 hours on my couch yelling at the television. It's one of the best feelings in the world.
So when my favorite sport overlaps with my favorite thing, movies, I rejoice. I love a good mashup of a football movie.
I think football is the perfect sport to use when it comes to screenwriting. And I think football movies can have some valuable screenwriting lessons in them.
Today, I want to go over sixteen lessons that you can take away from football movies. They're some of my favorites, and I think they deliver lots of lessons on character, plot, and structure.
Let's dive in.
1. Remember the Titans (2000)
This movie rocks. It tells the true story of a newly integrated high school football team in 1971 in Virginia. Denzel Washington stars as the coach who has to bring everyone together through football. It has happy moments as well as sad moments. And I bet you can't watch it without shedding a tear. The performances here take it to another level.
Screenwriting Lesson: Use a contained event, like a football season, to explore a much larger social issue.
2. Friday Night Lights (2004)
Based on the acclaimed non-fiction book, this film offers a raw and realistic look at the immense pressure and passion surrounding high school football in a small Texas town. The movie is gritty and does not sugarcoat things. It shows how football is a way of life, and it offers an unflinching depiction of the sport's impact on a community. When the team wins, it goes well. But when they don't, the world begins to fall apart.
Screenwriting Lesson: Ground your story in authentic details and show the real-world impact on your characters.
3. Rudy (1993)
Hard to write about football without mentioning the ultimate underdog story. The movie tells the true-life tale of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, a young man who dreams of playing football for the University of Notre Dame. But Rudy is short and not much of an athlete, so instead he spends his life working for the team and hoping to make it onto the field someday.
Screenwriting Lesson: Clearly define your protagonist's goal and stack overwhelming odds against them.
4. Any Given Sunday (1999)
Director Oliver Stone taking on football is a dream. This is a visceral and brutal movie about aging, capitalism, and professional football. The star-studded cast, led by Al Pacino, gives faces and emotions to the bug plot points. Cameron Diaz is the perfect angry owner, and seeing Jamie Foxx become a movie star is worth it alone. I love how it takes on corporations and what these athletes go through.
Screenwriting Lesson: Match your film's tone to the chaotic nature of the world you're depicting.
5. The Longest Yard (1974)
Burt Reynolds crushes it as a disgraced former professional quarterback who is coerced into forming a team of inmates to play against the prison guards. I love how this movie uses comedy to sort of talk about authoritarianism. It also has all these movie tropes that get subverted and exploited.
Screenwriting Lesson: A high-concept premise combined with familiar archetypes can create a story that is both instantly understandable and highly entertaining.
6. Brian's Song (1971)
This might be the most influential TV movie of all time. We follow the true story of the friendship between Chicago Bears teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers in the face of Piccolo's terminal cancer diagnosis. Look, this is the ultimate guy cry movie. There has never been another like it. I think it's a poignant and powerful friendship movie.
Screenwriting Lesson: Center your sports movie on a powerful human relationship to give the story an emotional core.
7. North Dallas Forty (1979)
I was making a different list about dramas, and someone wrote in and told me to watch this movie. I did, and it rocks. It's a take on the darker side of professional football in the 1970s, based on a novel by a former player. It exposes the pain, drug use, and all the bad parts of going pro.
Screenwriting Lesson: Subvert genre tropes by exposing the reality behind a world.
8. Varsity Blues (1999)
A popular teen drama that captured the zeitgeist of the late 90s. It sensationalizes high school football in a small Texas town. It has all the sex, violence, and drama you'd expect and takes them all to new levels. The film follows a backup quarterback who is unexpectedly thrust into the starting role and has to deal with all the pressures of the town and his family.
Screenwriting Lesson: A strong antagonist should have a philosophy that directly challenges the protagonist's values.
9. Invincible (2006)
I am a massive Eagles fan, so this movie would be #1 on most lists I make, but I tried to be objective today. It's a true story that follows Mark Wahlberg as Vince Papale, a 30-year-old bartender who, against all odds, earns a spot on the roster of the Philadelphia Eagles. But can he stay there and actually make a play? It is a quintessential feel-good movie about a hometown hero achieving his dream. Go birds.
Screenwriting Lesson: Tap into a universal fantasy to create an instantly relatable protagonist.
10. Jerry Maguire (1996)
While not exclusively a football movie, you can't beat this Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise collaboration. The film's classic dialogue and heartfelt performances earned it critical and commercial success. And I love Cuba Gooding Jr. playing a high-maintenance wide receiver that gets his agent to actually care.
Screenwriting Lesson: Use a "mission statement" to launch your protagonist out of their old life and into the main story.
9. We Are Marshall (2006)
I still cannot believe this is a true story. The movie follows the aftermath of the 1970 plane crash that claimed the lives of most of the Marshall University football team. They just had to rebuild from scratch. It was truly a horrific event. The movie is about how football can build a community and also how they need it to support them later.
Screenwriting Lesson: Your story's central conflict doesn't have to be about winning; it can be about the emotional struggle to heal and to simply show up.
12. The Blind Side (2009)
Okay, so the story behind this movie wound up being mostly false, but if you just look at this as a movie, it is pretty good! It got Sandra Bullock the Oscar! Again, there have been lawsuits about the "truth" of this story. But anyway, we follow Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized youth who went on to become a first-round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring and determined family.
Screenwriting Lesson: Take two characters from completely opposite sides of life and explore what it's like when they're thrust together.
13. The Waterboy (1998)
I really like this movie. It's one of the quintessential Adam Sandler comedies. He plays a socially awkward waterboy for a college football team who discovers an unexpected and ferocious talent for tackling. It has so many good quotes and ideas, and really lampoons college football in the best ways.
Screenwriting Lesson: Build your comedy around a central character with a unique hook. Make it easy for execs to understand.
14. Draft Day (2014)
There aren't that many behind-the-scenes NFL movies because they're notoriously stingy with rights. So that makes this movie all the more special. It offers a compelling look at what goes into the NFL draft, albeit fictionalized. Kevin Costner plays the manager of the Cleveland Browns on draft day as he navigates the trades and mind games that can define a franchise's future.
Screenwriting Lesson: Confine your story to a compressed timeline with a "ticking clock" to build natural tension.
15. Gridiron Gang (2006)
Another one based on a true story. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a probation officer who creates a football team at a juvenile detention center. We have all the cast of misanthropes who find a new lease on life and on discipline as they play football. It's all about teamwork, discipline, and getting a second chance.
Screenwriting Lesson: A redemption arc can be applied not just to a single protagonist, but to an entire team of characters.
16. Little Giants (1994)
This is fun for the whole family. The movie centers on two rival brothers coaching opposing Pee-Wee football teams in a small Ohio town. One team is of all-stars, and one is stuffed with misfits. Of course, the misfits learn to play, and then they face off in the big fame. It's just a wild movie that gave us some amazing trick plays and characters that live on forever.
Screenwriting Lesson: Frame the central conflict around a personal rivalry (like sibling vs. sibling) to give the on-field stakes emotional weight.
Summing It All Up
As I mentioned earlier, I love football so much. It's the ultimate team sport. And I think it lends itself to film so well because it incorporates a wide range of characteristics. Also, you usually have clear good and bad guys, stakes, and all the other elements that make up a great story.
Did I miss any of your favorites?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
