Some sports movies win Oscars, some become cult classics and some just turn into a comfort film to throw on at a moment’s notice.
According to a Seton Hall Sports Poll, one title stood out as the defining sports movie of this century.
Over the past 25 years, “The Blind Side” was the sports movie Americans reached for most, edging out another football staple, “Remember the Titans,” at the top of the list.
“We always talk about how sports drives culture,” said Daniel Ladik, marketing professor at Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business and methodologist for the poll. “Here we see two movies of America’s most popular sport coupled with challenges that the players and coaches faced due to the racial struggles of their places and times. And who can forget that these movies also feature compassionate performances including an Oscar winner.”
The poll, conducted Oct. 3-6, surveyed 1,519 U.S. adults and asked them to pick their favorite sports movie released in roughly the past quarter century. The columns reflect the percentage of respondents who picked each movie. Since respondents were allowed to select more than one, the percentages will add up to more than 100%
“The Blind Side” led the general population at 30%, followed by “Remember the Titans” at 26%. “Talladega Nights” (22%), “Happy Gilmore 2” (21%) and “Dodgeball” (21%) rounded out the top tier, alongside “Million Dollar Baby,” “Creed” and “Friday Night Lights.”
Here are the biggest takeaways from the poll.
Football runs the show
“The Blind Side” and “Remember the Titans” were No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, and combined for more than half of all responses (30% and 26%). “Friday Night Lights” (18%) also cracked the top 10, and football-adjacent stories peppered the lower part of the list.
The pattern is even stronger among people who identified as sports fans. In that group, “The Blind Side” jumped to 36% and “Remember the Titans” to 34%. And “Friday Night Lights” (26%) received extra love from avid fans in particular. The emotional tentpoles at the top mirror how the NFL and college football dominate the sports calendar in real life.
For many Americans, “sports movie” immediately brought to mind helmets, pads and big speeches on the gridiron.
Fans and nonfans aren’t as far apart as you’d think
One of the more surprising splits in the poll was how small the gap was between sports fans and nonfans.
Among nonfans, “The Blind Side” still led at 20%, followed by “Dodgeball” (16%), “Happy Gilmore 2” (15%), “Remember the Titans” (14%) and “Talladega Nights” (14%). Those numbers were lower than the fan totals, but the titles are nearly identical. Even people who don’t follow sports closely reach for the same mix of feel-good football and lighthearted comedies.
Among sports fans overall, those same movies sit comfortably in the top tier, just with bigger slices of the pie. Avid fans bumped “Creed” (33%), “Friday Night Lights” (30%) and “F1: The Movie” (24%), while “The Fighter” (14%), “The Iron Claw” (14%) and “42” (13%) also gained traction.
The takeaway: You don’t need to know how to read a defense to cry at an underdog story or laugh at a ball being thrown at someone’s face.
Comfort watches beat prestige pictures
If the Academy Awards handed out statues based on this poll, Oscars night would look a lot different.
Oscar winners and prestige dramas were scattered throughout the middle of the pack. “Million Dollar Baby” (20%) and “I, Tonya” (10%) showed up, as did “The Fighter” (8%), “King Richard” (7%) and “Invictus” (6%). But they trailed far behind the movies people said they turn to for entertainment comfort.
The films that people said they put on again and again are the ones that are easy to quote and follow and are emotionally straightforward. While looking at streaming options on any given day, if Michael Oher’s story pops up, a locker room dance breaks out at T.C. Williams High School or Will Ferrell is doing anything remotely athletic, viewers are staying.
The poll suggests that, for most viewers, the “best” sports movie isn’t the one that impressed critics, it’s the one that feels familiar enough to leave on in the background while checking scores.
The generational split
The age ranges didn’t differ entirely, but there were subtle distinctions in what resonates.
-
18-34: Younger adults gave solid attention to comedies and newer titles. “Happy Gilmore 2,” “Dodgeball” and “F1: The Movie” projects all performed well, and “Challengers” got its best look in this group. “Creed” played strong, too.
-
35-54: This group is the sweet spot for a lot of these films. “Remember the Titans” hit 31% here, and “Love & Basketball” jumped to 21%. Most members in this category are old enough to remember these movies as theater experiences and young enough to have rewatched them on streaming or cable.
-
55+: Older respondents leaned toward classic-feeling dramas. “Remember the Titans” and “Million Dollar Baby” stayed sturdy, while comedies and newer films didn’t pop as much.
The generations didn’t disagree entirely — “The Blind Side” and “Remember the Titans” were consistent across the board. But the second tier shifted based on when respondents first viewed these movies.
Twenty-one percent say: ‘None of the above’
The loudest stat might be the one that looks like a throwaway: 21% of respondents in the general population selected “N/A.” Among nonfans, that number jumped to 41% and increased to 36% for sports fans.
In other words, roughly one in five people didn’t have a favorite sports movie from the past 25 years — or at least didn’t feel strongly enough to pick one from the list. That doesn’t mean they don’t watch sports or films. It might mean their sports storytelling comes from series or docuseries that weren’t part of this poll.
That’s both a challenge and an opportunity for creators of sports movies, with the data indicating a massive undecided and untapped audience. For those in that “N/A” crowd looking for a way in, the poll can double as a programming guide.
Reading between the lines: The movie rankings look a lot like real life
The data shows a hierarchy that mirrors the sports landscape. Football titles sit on top, reinforced by a mix of sentiment and spectacle. Just behind them are the comedies that have become background noise for late-night streaming and group rewatches. Prestige entries fill in the gaps — respected but not always revisited.
Sports fans and nonfans are closer than expected, gravitating toward many of the same films, while the sharpest break is in the percentage of people who skip the question altogether. That “none of the above” block hints at shifting habits and different ways of consuming sports stories.
The list doesn’t just rank movies: it maps the overlap of emotion, routine and sports culture, and highlights which stories still carry weight or have slipped into the background and how much space is left for the next breakout sports film.
But don’t let the poll results speak for you. Rank the top 25 movies yourself by dragging the titles into your preferred order below and see how your list stacks up against everyone else’s.
Editor’s note: The film list used in this poll was created through a multistep selection process. Seton Hall’s Sports Poll began with The Athletic’s 2020 ranking of the top 100 sports movies, then limited the pool to films released since 2000 and capped the list at 30 titles. Additional candidates were drawn from seven “best sports movies” lists from The Hollywood Reporter, Rotten Tomatoes, IndieWire, Vulture, Forbes, Time Out and Time magazine, with input from ESPN. To be included, a film had to appear on at least three of the eight lists reviewed, with a final few titles removed based on internal editorial review.
The Seton Hall Sports Poll was conducted Oct. 3-6 among 1,519 adults. The poll, which was sponsored by The Sharkey Institute within Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business, featured a national representative sample from YouGov Plc., and was weighted per U.S. Census Bureau figures for age, gender, ethnicity, education, income and geography and has a margin of error of +/-2.5 percentage points.
