Somewhere perfectly in the middle between Randy Quaid making us laugh as Cousin Eddie and going batshit crazy and wrecking his career, he was the innocent Bowling prodigy named Ishmael. He was equal parts straight man and funny man, which is a rare accomplishment in any movie and shows the ability of how the Farrelly brothers to equally distribute comedic lines. Ishmael was a good character, but was it close to being as good as Woody Harrelson’s “Roy Munson”?  

Is Isis really a villain? Yes, Gabrielle Union was the opponent of Kirsten Dunst in the cheerleading film, “Bring it on”, but it was her routine that was unwittingly stolen, and though she does not play a sympathetic character in most of the film, many cheered her victory in the end. Again we ask…is cheerleading a sport?  

J.J. McClure was not necessarily the best driver in the Cannonball Run, but wasn’t he the coolest? He got the ladies (in her prime Farrah Fawcett), befriended the geek (Dom DeLuise) and was the focal hero of the motley crew of racers from Connecticut to California; AKA, the Cannonball Run. As much as the Burt Reynolds of 1981 was fairly close to being as big an icon of cool as there was, we have one pivotal question for J.J. McClure: Since the race was based on time cards, and they appeared to be the last vehicle to leave Connecticut, did…

Dennis Quaid in an action or athletic film always seems to work. It may never blow you away, but it just seems natural. Perhaps it is why that we feel he gets overlooked a little too much in “Any Given Sunday”, but maybe that was the point. As “Cap” Rooney, Quaid is struggling to keep his starting Quarterback job, against the younger and flashier, “Steamin” Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx). Rooney is not just fighting for his job, but he his fighting for his will to keep playing a sport that is punishing him physically. Of course, after seeing his barracuda…

Just to make sure we understand this correctly….Matt LeBlanc decided that his first movie while at the height of his television fame during Friends was to play second fiddle to a chimpanzee? Did his agent tell him it worked for Eastwood; who may we state is the only man who could get away with that? At least his character name of “Deuce” was appropriate because that is what this movie was a stinking pile of. This is a role beneath even Joey Tribiani.

Perhaps this is a bit of a stretch but the final act of John Candy’s (Jack Chester) film, “Summer Rental” saw him sail his way to victory in an old boat while defeating the blowhard who looked suspiciously like Rambo’s only friend. There has to be something memorable about Candy winning the regatta by using his boxers as a sail, and the Chicago Blackhawks jersey he wore on the beach. Still, we prefer the scene where he explains his favorite Smurfs episode, but we here have never been accused of our high level of maturity.

Robin Williams may be one of those comedians that younger people can’t understand why he was popular, but let us assure you, in the 1980’s, he was considered one of the top comedians in the world. In regards of his 80’s cinematic career, he had some hits, some bombs, and a few perplexing choices. “The Best of Times” has become a forgotten film in the Williams filmography, and in a way, that isn’t so bad. The film was average, but as much as we loved Williams in the 80’s (and despise him now), the idea of Mork from Ork as…

This is kind of a shame for a few reasons. The first being that Tom Selleck in 1992 looked every bit the part of an aging slugger and could have been in a better film as opposed to the clichéd racism that he was in here. As Jack Elliott, Selleck entered the world of Japanese Baseball and the attempt at outdated humor began. Frankly, Selleck deserved better, and so did the movie going public. Maybe that movie would have worked a decade before, but for every year that passes, this film becomes more and more offensive. However, can we give…

The film that launched the career of James Earl Jones, “The Great White Hope” was the very much based on the life of the first African American Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Jack Johnson. As Jack Jefferson, we watched Jefferson struggle with the race card in an era that thankfully none of us know firsthand. The film was more about that, than actual boxing, but the performance of Jones is a gem we should not forget.

When we watched Jack Parkman in Major League 2, we subconsciously wondered if his anger was residual affect from being jilted in “An Officer and a Gentleman”. Lame joke aside, Major League II was clearly not as good as the original but we enjoyed and bought David Keith as the arrogant slugger who coined a Ricky Vaughn pitch as the “Masturbator”. Although we were not supposed to like Parkman as the bad guy, he was a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Will Farrell was at his comedic best as Jackie Moon in Semi-Pro as the Owner/Power Forward of the 1976 ABA Flint Tropics. Moon was a bungling owner who was able to purchase the team based on the royalties of his hit single, “Love Me Sexy”, a song he stole from his mother three weeks before she died. Moon worked hard with various gimmicks (all with poor success) to draw crowds with the hope of bringing the team into 4th place, a position that was promised an NBA birth in the impending merge between the two American Professional Basketball Leagues. On…

Considering that Mike Myers loves the sport of Hockey so much and his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs so much, why did he make a movie that seemed to destroy it? We won’t go into detail about how bad the movie is, as a million blogs in cyberspace have already done it. However for us, the lone bright spot in this Golden Raspberry winner was Justin Timberlake showing why he is someone to look forward to when he hosts Saturday Night Live. Basically, our support of Timberlake here is that he didn’t kill his career, like Myers did in this movie.…

How did this movie not do better?Considered the spiritual sequel to “Dazed and Confused”, Richard Linklater had a gem with this look at the first weekend of a college baseball team in Texas (where else?).  The focal point was freshman Pitcher, Jake Bradford, a hotshot Pitcher in High School, but in typical Linklater fashion, Baseball was not exactly forefront on his mind. 

You don’t normally think of James Franco in an athletic role, nor if you saw the trailer for Annapolis, would you think of it as a boxing film, but despite the poor reviews and formulaic plot, Franco as James Huard, a cadet at Annapolis does not do a bad job. For us, we were content to fast forward through most of the film with the exception of the boxing, where Huard using the sport to gain respect from his peers and father. Ah, sports teaching us lessons again!  

Sports movies (especially Basketball) often have the common theme of the superstar athlete who has no concept of teamwork, become humbled and learn that being part of a successful group is better than being a successful individual. You know the cliché how there is no “I” in team? Basically Juwanna Mann took this premise and merged it with Tootsie, where star (and selfish of course) player Jamal Jeffries is kicked out of the league, and with no other options (again echoing NBA stars, he squandered his money), he pretended to be a woman and joined the women’s league. Let the…

This one almost escaped us. From the brilliant Gus Van Sant film, “Finding Forrester” we have a film about friendship when a reclusive writer Sean Connery) befriends an inner city kid (Rob Brown) who is adept at poetry as he is in Basketball. Jamal Wallace (Brown) has a chance to receive a full scholarship based on both his academics and hoops skills and through his new friendship with Forrester (Connery) they learn from each other. Realistically, Basketball plays a small role here, but this is a great film to watch.  

In re-watching the pilot for the White Shadow, we had to wonder why more episodes did not focus on James Hayward. He was the focal player in the pilot, but in many other episodes, he was largely ignored. Sure, it was an ensemble cast, but Hayward emerged as the intellect of the group; and the one who exhibited the most social conscious. It may not have been the most remembered character of the show, put perhaps it could have been.

He showed up out of shape, unmotivated and disinterested, but James “The Grim Reaper” Roper was the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world, and in 1996, no white man was going to take that away. That may touch on racial nerves, but let’s face it, that was the only logical assumption in 1996!   Incidentally (spoiler alert) this turned out to be the right assumption.

As the Notre Dame bound Quarterback star for the Dillon Panthers, while watching the premiere episode you naturally thought this was not just the star of the team, but the star of the show; as is this not the rule of all Football cinema?   So when we received the curve ball to Jason Street with his career ending injury in the opening game, we knew that we did not just have a Football show, but a character driven program that just happens to have a gridiron backdrop. The question is do we reward his potential, his coaching or his wheelchair…

“Practice like you Play”.  The bespectacled hurler who was allegedly drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays, Jay Niles was not somebody you wanted to party with, or even hang around really.  While that was true his desire to win and compete was admirable…and psychotic.

The fictitious former Rookie of the Year for the Montreal Canadians had somehow lost his will to play Hockey and found himself working for Elsinore Brewery on the line where he was mysteriously under the spell of the evil Brewmeister. If you haven’t figured this out; yes this is a Canadian film, and will likely be a cult hit forever North of the United States. Of course, the McKenzie Brothers saved the day, and we can’t think of anything more Canadian than that. Now “Take off, eh?”

We are trying to think of the possibility of an eccentric gay French race car driver will ever be the antagonist of a film again. That is worth something isn’t it? The Bullet Points: Movie Appeared: Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (2006) Actor: Sasha Baron Cohen Position Portrayed: Nascar Driver Played for: Dennit Racing Team Why you should vote for him: It was easily one of the most interesting sports villains ever. Why you should not vote for him: Maybe it was too far left field to be completely effective.

Here is another tough one. In what has turned into a cult classic, “The Big Lebowski” has a lot of bowling in it, and “The Dude” is an avid player of the sport. So does this pot smoking slacker deserve a slot in this Hall? It probably depends on how many pot smoking slackers visit our site.

“The Hammer” may not have had a large box office return, but the critics did like it, and we can argue that this was the funniest boxing portrayal ever, and it was done by a comedian who actually knew what he was doing in the ring (Carolla competed in the Golden Gloves). We grant that this is a dark horse candidate, but check this film out; it will be worth your time.

As the lead character in “Bend it Like Beckham”, Jesminder Bhamra crossed gender and racial lines and gave us what was overall a very good film; and not just one of athletic accomplishments. Indirectly, this is more of a coming of age female flick than a sports one, so should that matter? We will let you decide on that one.