Sports coaching on film

Oh man, if in real life I was as cool and suave as Coach Taylor and had all the answers, things would be easier. (Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) in the series Friday Night Lights)

Every inch the coach

This special issue, “Sports Coaching on Film”, sets out to analyse representations of sports coaches in film and to indicate some of the ways in which the study of film depictions of coaches might be informative for actual sports coaching. The project was inspired, in significant part, by Emma Poulton’s and Matthew Roderick’s ground-breaking special edition of Sport in Society, “Sports in Films”. In their Introduction to the special issue, Poulton and Roderick draw attention to how “constructions and representations of sport and athletes have been marginalised in terms of serious analysis within the long-standing academic study of films and documentaries” (2008, p. 107). There were notable exceptions to this state of neglect, scholars who had already brought the study of sports films to the fore included Aaron Baker, particularly through his book Contesting Identities, and Deborah Tudor who had authored Hollywood’s Vision of Team Sports (Baker, 2003; Tudor, 1997).

The state of affairs described by Poulton and Roderick has subsequently changed with a number of important monographs and edited collections published in the past five years (e.g. Babington, 2014; Chare, 2015; Crosson, 2013; Ingle & Sutera, 2013; Lieberman, 2015). These studies foreground the importance of the study of sports films for increasing our understanding of class, ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality as they are articulated in specific cultural, social, and historical contexts. Some of these recent investigations briefly explore the significance of the figure of the sports coach. Lieberman, for instance, devotes a chapter of her book Sports Heroines on Film to portrayals of female coaches (pp. 126–150). There is, however, still no in-depth study focussed specifically on portrayals of coaches and coaching in sports films. This is a considerable omission given coaching forms a particularly influential dimension of athlete development. Our special issue contributes to the ongoing process of bringing the coach from the sidelines of sports film scholarship to centre-field.

In The Sports Film, Bruce Babington (2014) suggests that the coach “is arguably the recent sports film’s defining figure” (p. 102). For Babington this perceived rise to prominence reflects “modern sport’s ever increasing rationalisation” and the growing reliance on coaches rather than players for decision-making with the added pressures and responsibilities that brings for the coach (p. 102). On film, the coach can come to embody “the tensions and contradictions of modern sport generally” (Babington, 2014, p. 104). The coach in sports films therefore reflects changing cultural and social conceptions of sport which in turn have been shaped by broader socio-cultural transformations. Film, however, like any art form is far from mechanistic in its reflection of dominant beliefs and values and manifests a degree of independence from them.¹ As will become clear from many of the essays in this issue, film occasionally provides visions of coaching that are at odds with prevailing approaches and accepted behaviours in real life. The coach in film is often seen as if through a glass darkly rather than clearly mirroring contemporary social mores and actual coaching practices. John Lyle (2002) suggests that claims to artistry have enabled coaches to “weave an aura of mystique about coaching” and to create “a protective occupational shell” (p. 29). This mystique may be reinforced and perpetuated through film depictions of coaching.

Coaches in film are also often understood in polarising ways, seen either to exemplify good or bad practices. Scott Crawford (1991), for instance, has analysed the figure of the “bad” coach in sports films. Crawford considers how popular cultural stereotypes of coaching are replicated in films and argues that there is inadequate character development. In this context, E.M. Forster’s idea of “flat” and “round” characters in novels is enlightening (1974).² For Forster, flat characters are constructed around a single idea or trait. Round characters, by contrast, develop, change. For Crawford, coaches in sports films are never fleshed out. They remain stuck at the level of caricature for the entire narrative, never progressing to having character proper. Films too often sharply contrast good and bad rather than acknowledging that “elite coaches are complex chameleon personalities” (Crawford, 1992, p. 57). Similar findings have been made in relation to cinematic portrayals of physical education teachers who are consistently framed as butches, bullies or buffoons (McCullick et al., 2003).

Crawford’s observation about film representations of coaches arguably has merit for the majority of films produced up until he conducted his 1992 study. This issue, however, demonstrates that simply dividing portrayals of sports coaches into the good (nice, encouraging, and empathetic) and the bad (abusive, aggressive, and dictatorial) is reductive. There has been an enduring Hollywood tendency to excise moral ambiguity from mainstream cinema, a tendency given its strongest expression not in the context of sports films but psychological thrillers. Insomnia the 2002 remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name replaces all the subtlety and opacity of the original with a straightforward tale of choosing between right or wrong. This special issue shows, however, that recent sports films complicate either/or understandings of the sports coach, providing representations that are more nuanced and depicting behaviours that are difficult to gauge and do not invite clear-cut judgements.

Zygmunt Bauman (1991) suggests that ambivalence produces “acute discomfort” (p. 1). We do not like things that resist easy categorisation. This may explain why there has been a certain reticence in some areas of the Social Sciences to embrace film as an object of study. Film is a complex audio-visual medium that can be remarkably resistant to efforts to systematically analyse and classify, to categorise and quantify, to treat as data. We are therefore particularly grateful to those of our contributors from backgrounds that might be labelled as social scientific who have embraced our topic. A major aim of the issue from the outset was to foster dialogue across the Humanities and Social Sciences in relation to sports coaching on film. There are often distinct approaches and methodological differences between our contributors, but the essays taken as a whole include enriching and inspiring moments of crossover, most notably a shared commitment to social justice, to combatting expressions of violence and to identifying instances of oppression as they manifest in films featuring sports coaches.

In the context of social justice, it is important to remember that film as a medium is not passive. Film possesses agency, potentially intervening in and changing understandings, influencing actions. This influence can sometimes be direct and obvious. In her autobiography, for example, Jessica Ennis (2012) refers to the way her coach Toni Minichiello’s conduct is inspired by cinema: “He loves the film Any Given Sunday and is prone to making the Al Pacino speech near the end. “You’ll find out life is just a game of inches,” Chell will growl as Pacino” (p. 60). Minichiello’s tongue-in-cheek mimicking of the character Tony D’Amato’s motivational speech-making in Oliver Stone’s American football film Any Given Sunday raises a serious issue about the effects of fictional portrayals of coaching on real coach–athlete interactions. Pacino’s character D’Amato in Any Given Sunday is based, in part, on Vince Lombardi, who was coach of the American football team the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s. The film is therefore influenced by sports coaching history and, in turn, influences, thus demonstrating the real-life power of sports films. In a pioneering early analysis of depictions of coaches in American football films, Douglas Noverr (1990) drew attention to how the characters of onscreen coaches are inspired by actual figures.

D’Amato also embodies the ambiguity we referred to earlier as characteristic of recent representations of coaches in sports films. He is shown in consistently contradictory terms. At once put upon and imposing, D’Amato manifests an aggressive tenderness to his charges, displays an exuberant atrabiliousness in everyday life, is old-fashioned in his approach to coaching yet this anachronistic outlook is ultimately framed as forward-thinking, bringing footballing success. Babington has interpreted him as a “split figure” who incarnates “the clashing values of pragmatism and idealism, instrumentalism and loyalty in contemporary sport” (103). Any Given Sunday is designed to inflame conscience as, through the divided and divisive figure of D’Amato, it explores the nefarious influence of corporate America on gridiron. The theme of corporatism, the presence of greed (here for success), positions Any Given Sunday as the sporting equivalent to Wall Street in Stone’s corpus. Babington suggests the film engages with “changing actual world realities” (108). By highlighting these realities, Stone invites his audience to question their effects and query their continuing existence, taking responsibility for a situation they are embedded within. He makes use of the audio-visual as a potential catalyst for change, a possible means of acting upon the world.

More often, however, films are conservative, influencing unknowingly and reproducing the status quo unreflectively. In an important precursor to some of the analyses that follow, David Kahan’s and Mensah Kutame’s essay ‘Observing and Analyzing a Fictional Coach’s Behaviors: Implications for Coaching Education’ examines how films shape beliefs about what comprises coaching practice. They suggest popular cultural media such as films provide under-examined templates for how coaches should behave. A real-life coach’s behaviour is frequently shaped by their own personal historical experiences of being coached and by media images including film. Kahan and Kutame suggest that the perceptions of reality purveyed by film makers “subtly becomes our perceptions of what is real” (1997, p. 21). For this reason, it is as important to study fictional coaches as real ones.

The Lombardi inspired D’Amato of Any Given Sunday, with its circular relationship of art imitating life imitating art that the example of Ennis’s coach demonstrates, suggests that this distinction between fiction and reality is itself questionable. In a recent essay, “That Spectacular Supplement”, Paul Bowman has argued that the seemingly opposed realms of reality and representation are imbricated (2016). Bowman views distinctions between the domains of the filmic and daily life as a needless metaphysical convention. In reality, these seemingly opposed realms supplement each other. Bowman is writing in the context of martial arts films but his observations, influenced by deconstruction, are also relevant for films featuring sports coaches. In their essay “The traditional, the ideal and the unexplored”, Sue Jolly and John Lyle make a similar point, suggesting in the context of Twenty Four Seven that the film is as much ethnographic documentary as social realist fiction. They explain that some sports documentaries similarly cross “the boundaries between fact and fiction”. The capacity of film, be it documentary or fiction, to potentially impact lived behaviour is a common theme in many of the essays in this issue.

Getting in on the act

Kahan and Kutame, who focus on the ice hockey film D2: The Mighty Ducks for their analysis, regard coaching films as potential pedagogical tools and suggest that documentary films, in particular, might one day be made use of in training prospective coaches (32). In a sense, the two researchers regard sports films as in themselves coaching, fostering particular behaviours, fulfilling certain objectives. The idea of being coached by film is implicit in interpretation of film as a tool of ideology, as an embodiment of hegemonic values. Such a conception is at work, for example, in Seán Crosson’s essay, “Configuring Irishness through Coaching Films”, which provides a subtle and refined examination of Peil (about Gaelic football) and Christy Ring (about hurling) as films that do not solely provide sporting instruction for their audiences but also operate to instil particular understandings of Irishness in them. This understanding is engendered not solely through depicting Indigenous Irish sports but also through the ways in which these sports are framed. Crosson refers to the films ‘coaching’ viewers about Irish identity, working to fashion citizens attuned to the language, politics and religion of Éire. This coaching manifests through choice of shots, editing and the soundtrack.

In “‘I love you guys’: Hoosiers as a model for transformational and limited transactional coaching”, Bryan Mead and Jason Mead consider how films featuring coaches might consciously be deployed as educational aids. For Mead and Mead, Hoosiers embodies many of the ideas about leadership advanced by James Kouzes and Barry Posner in their classic text, The Leadership Challenge (1987). This lends the film potential pedagogical value. The central character Coach Norman Dale’s management skills, which are seen to epitomise the five practices of exemplary leadership, provides viewers with leadership lessons. Through a sophisticated analysis of cinematography and shot selection in Hoosiers, Mead and Mead demonstrate that the effectiveness of these lessons is reinforced by way of camerawork and editing. These dimensions of the film can be seen to “coach” about leadership effectiveness.

Hoosiers is loosely based on the legendary success of the 1954 Milan High School basketball team. Coached by Marvin Wood, the team defeated the significantly bigger school Muncie Central to become Indiana State Champions. Unlike the team in the film, Milan High School’s win was not unexpected. Hoosiers, a regular in “best sports films” lists, such as the American Film Institute’s AFI’s 10 Top 10 (Sports Films), has had impact beyond the confines of basketball.³ The politician Ted Cruz, seeking to woo the voters of Indiana in the run up to a Republican primary in 2016, recreated a scene from the film as part of a speech he gave in a gym where scenes from Hoosiers were filmed. Cruz performed the role of Norman Dale (originally played by Gene Hackman) for his audience, recreating a famous sequence where the coach measures the height of the basket before the crucial State Championship game to seek to calm the nerves of his players: “Ten feet. I think you’ll find that’s the exact same measurements as our gym back in Hickory”. After choreographing the taking of similar measurements, Cruz sought to channel the spirit of Dale, proclaiming “You know, the amazing thing about that basketball ring here in Indiana, it’s the same height as it is in New York City and every other place in this country. And there is nothing that Hoosiers cannot do”.

Here Cruz uses the demonym Hoosiers to refer to natives of Indiana. It is in the power of the people of Indiana to vote for him and slow the momentum of his main rival for the presidential nomination, the real estate mogul Donald Trump. He uses language that casts him as the underdog, with his reference to New York made in the aftermath of Trump’s considerable success in a primary there. Effectively he is calling on the people to become his Norman Dale, leading him to an unlikely victory. Through rhetorical sleight, he is positioning himself as both coach and athlete. The people of Indiana are simultaneously his coach and cast as his team, underdogs with him as their underdog leader, working together they can become champions. He both patronises the people of Indiana (who are figured as “not winners”) and rouses them, validating his rallying cry by reference to a state-loved film. Cruz also, unconsciously, affirms the power of cinema: “there is nothing that Hoosiers cannot do”. He exhibits a belief that through re-staging the film something of the coach’s successful leadership will rub off on him and, perhaps, some of his heroic masculinity. In their thought-provoking reading of the film, Laura Hills and Eileen Kennedy (2013) argue that Dale would make a poor youth coach because of his disciplinarian approach but he successfully embodies Hollywood masculinity, which is to say hegemonic masculinity.

Cruz is here endeavouring not solely to borrow from Dale’s metaphorical playbook and emulate his “hardman” image; he is also striving to exploit emotions bound up with the film and Indiana’s more general love of basketball. Trump likewise made the most of the high esteem in which basketball is held in the state by touting the endorsement of Bobby Knight, the “ornery” Indiana University basketball coach. Cruz though turned to a fictional figure from mainstream narrative cinema. In his estimation, Dale seemingly trumped someone such as Knight. The political manoeuvre therefore reveals something of the perceived power of the sports film to sway hearts and minds. Cruz, however, took his eye of the ball, making the cardinal error or referring to the hoop as a ring, betraying how poorly versed he actually was in language of basketball, how foreign it is to him. As a “basketball fan”, he revealed himself to be a bad actor, second-rate. Cruz’s efforts to incarnate the celebrated basketball coach proved superficial.

Superficiality, as already discussed, is a common concern about film depictions of coaches. Sue Jolly and John Lyle consider the danger of the lack of depth of character accorded to coaches in their essay “The traditional, the ideal and the unexplored” which involves thoughtful close readings of the films Bend it Like Beckham and Twenty Four Seven. Jolly and Lyle trace how coaching stereotypes feature, or are resisted, in the two films. They argue that the way coaches are portrayed is, in part, genre specific. Genres display similar narrative and stylistic elements, as such, films with shared properties are grouped together and create certain audience expectations. Those that intentionally set out to amuse, for example, fall under the genre “comedy”, those that strive to scare comprise the genre of “horror”. Tzvetan Todorov asserted that “the study of genres, which has as its starting point the historical evidence of the existence of genres, must have as its ultimate objective precisely the establishment of these properties” (1990, p. 17). Crosson (2013) has sought to establish the specific properties of the sports film genre in general in Sport and Film (pp. 60–65). Jolly and Lyle build on this important precursor, offering a more fine-grained analysis by focussing specifically on the figure of the coach and teasing out differences in the portrayal of coaches between major studio productions and independent or “indie” films in the sports film genre. The generic conventions at the level of coaching are shown to sometimes be different in independent films. Jolly and Lyle also reveal that the films provide varied depictions of the professionalisation of coaching contributing to ongoing debates about coaching as a valued profession.

Good coach/bad coach

Although the representation of coaches in many sports films resists easy definition as good or bad, displaying inconsistent behaviour, there are still numerous aspects of coaching practice shown in films that are clearly negative. Many of these practices, as Hills and Kennedy (2013) have shown in their thoughtful examination of representations of sports coaching, are bound up with ideas about heroism and hypermasculinity. Hills and Kennedy argue that “critical analysis of the heroic construction of coaches in film and the associated styles of masculinity could form part of a coach training programme serving as a catalyst for discussion or a basis of reflexivity” (2013, p. 50). They compellingly affirm that studying cinematic depictions of coaching, including negative practices, can aid with real life coaching.

In their article, “Film Depictions of Emotionally Abusive Coach-Athlete Interactions”, Gretchen Kerr, Ashley Stirling and Ahad Bandealy examine instances of abusive interaction between coaches and athletes. The figure of the emotionally abusive coach is an enduring commonplace in cinematic representations. Kerr, Stirling and Bandealy suggest that further research is needed to ascertain whether such negative depictions function cumulatively to normalise emotionally abusive coaching practices. Stirling and Kerr have already drawn attention to how athletes are often accepting of abusive behaviours due to media influence (Stirling & Kerr, 2014). Cinema potentially plays a contributing role in the formation of this state of acceptation. It may therefore also possibly have a crucial future role to play in contesting such a state either through critically reflexive analyses of the kind championed by Hills and Kennedy or through differing representational practices adopted by film makers in relation to their portrayals of coaching. There are already exceptional films such as Varsity Blues which condemn “bad coaching” even as they simultaneously represent it, films which might one day become the norm.

In his article “Sound Coaching”, Nicholas Chare also traces examples of abusive interactions as they manifest in the sub-genre of the American football film. Chare focusses specifically on sounds in relation to coaching, considering how dialogue, film score and sound effects, in combination with the film image, contribute to the construction of specific representations of the football coach. While these representations echo many of the lived realities of football coaching including the need to privilege emotional input at specific moments (such as during the delivery of a motivational speech), they also reinforce the pervasive sexism that still characterises gridiron. Sexism in sport is, of course, not limited to American football and neither is its depiction in sports films, something Bonzel (2013) has effectively shown in her analysis of the female athlete-coach Dottie in the baseball film A League of Their Own. Dottie, despite a clear understanding of the game and an impressive rapport with the team she is instructing, is replaced by a man.

American football, however, often forms an expression of hypermasculinity that is bound up with violence (Dundes, 1978) and in films featuring gridiron, the violent dynamic of the sport is frequently gendered with coaches associating femininity with delicacy and passivity and constructing it in negative terms. Weaving together analyses of both dialogue and visual elements, Chare examines ways sexism is sometimes linked to animal metaphors by football coaches in films. The long tradition of linking woman and the non-human animal in Western culture (Creed & Hoorn, 2016, pp. 90–1) is given forceful expression in the onscreen language of football coaching. Chare concludes by suggesting that both the sexism and the zoomorphism manifested by football coaches on film is bound up with their efforts to foster emotional responses in their players and, by extension, with the efforts of film makers to make their audiences feel something.

Gendered representations of coaches come into even sharper focus in Katharina Bonzel’s contribution to this special issue “Mind the Gap: Female Coaches in Hollywood Sports Films”. According to the movie database IMDB, of the 122 Hollywood sports films that focus on coaching produced since 1985, only three feature female coaches.⁴ Focusing specifically on female coaches of men’s teams, Bonzel uses close visual analysis to demonstrate that representations of female coaches are not only rare but also problematic in their stereotypical depiction of femininity in general and of women within the sporting arena in particular. Despite some of the films endeavouring to legitimize the female coach, their insistence on an essential difference between the sexes—an insistence articulated both through the narrative and by way of filmic techniques such as cinematography—means that they ultimately fail in their proposed “feminist” agenda.

In their inspiring close reading of Bend it Like Beckham, “Too hot to handle?”, Dean Garratt and Heather Piper provide an incisive social semiotic analysis of instances of physical contact between coach and athlete as they are portrayed in the film that is impressively coupled with a consideration of the Foucauldian themes of discourse, power/knowledge and governmentality. There have been a number of consideration of visual depictions of touch in coaching recently (e.g. Chare, 2013; Jones, Bailey & Santos, 2013). Garratt and Piper, however, provide the first sustained analysis of a single case study, ably demonstrating how a close analysis of the film is enlightening in relation to the cultural politics of touch in coaching situations. At times, fiction films such as Bend it Like Beckham provide an alternative outlook to tactile encounters between coaches and athletes, one that is at odds with contemporary risk-averse attitudes. Touching encounters between coach and athlete in sports films are not always represented negatively. Garratt and Piper suggest, in fact, that films such as Bend it Like Beckham offer a reminder “of a world which we have lost but that, with some clearer thinking and good sense, we may choose to find again”.

Time watching

Coaches and athletes frequently have a particularly complex relationship to time. Bruno Rigauer has examined how the use of time by athletes is meticulously controlled and regimented as part of their goal-oriented existence. Rigauer (1981) asserts that “the top-level athlete cannot train according to his [sic] own time plan” (p. 43). An athlete’s time is closely managed by their coach. Their performance is also often assessed in temporal terms. The stopwatch is a frequent prop in film representations of coaches ranging from coach Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire finding another split second for his charge Harold Abrahams to win the gold medal in the 100m sprint, to the players gifting coach Molly McGrath a stopwatch in Wildcats. While the stopwatch in Chariots is a symbol of efficiency and mastery over time, in Wildcats it represents the players’ acceptance of their female coach.

Rowe (2008) has considered the sometimes complex relationships sports films establish towards time. Rowe reads sports films as simultaneously bound to chronological time and able to escape its sequenced constraints. He suggests the documentary Zidane, Un portrait du 21e siècle, for instance, embodies a proliferation of temporalities, “from the progressive to the recursive” (Rowe, 2008, p. 156). Zidane displays some of the ways in which sports films possess a creativity lacking from live sports broadcasts; a creativity made particularly manifest through the multiple temporalities that the documentary is able to engender. Rowe’s time-based analysis foregrounds the distance and difference between documentary sports films and fiction films and other forms of sports representation.

The majority of the contributors to this special issue chose to engage with fiction films. In “We’re In This Together!” Leslie Heywood, however, provides a sophisticated analysis of temporality in the context of CrossFit coaching that centres upon analyses of two documentaries and a commercial. Heywood is a leading theorist of the CrossFit phenomenon who has previously examined ways in which CrossFit employs affective immersion to foster bonding between groups who participate in the programme (Heywood, 2015). In her current article, Heywood explores how different modalities of time manifest in CrossFit, namely “clock time” and “network time”. CrossFit’s temporal characteristics cannot be dissociated from the neoliberal values that are embodied in the fitness programme. Through a subtle and incisive analysis of the CrossFit documentaries Every Second Counts and The Test of Fitness and the CrossFit “Thank You Coach” commercial, Heywood demonstrates that these values impact upon the relation between athlete and coach, blurring the boundaries between the two. These differing representations cumulatively reinforce the decentralised quality of physical training in CrossFit. Heywood reads the “Thank You Coach” commercial as reflective of the values and self-envisioning of many CrossFit coaches. The kinds of coaching visible in the commercial are far removed from the stereotypical aggressive authoritarian coaching style depicted in mainstream narrative sports films.

The “Thank You Coach” commercial that Heywood discusses is approximately a minute long yet it is clear from her beautiful, in-depth reading of the advertisement that she has studied it repeatedly. Mulvey (2006) reflects on how digital technology has permitted the “lack of smoothness that has always been an aspect of film narrative” to become amplified (p. 150). In all film media it is now easier to find and to freeze frame key shots, to repeatedly view particular scenes, than when technology such as a film projector or a VCR was required. Mulvey (2006) writes:

In film theory and criticism, delay is the essential process behind textual analysis. The flow of a scene is halted and extracted from the wider flow of narrative development; the scene is broken down into shots and selected frames and further subjected to delay, to repetition and return. In the course of this process, hitherto unexpected meanings can be found hidden in the sequence, as it were, deferred to a point of time in the future when the critic’s desire may unearth them. (p. 144)

All the articles in this issue, in their different ways, perform this kind of excavation, this archaeological labour. Film does not surrender these secrets immediately. It is a time-consuming, interminable process. Nevertheless, we believe that these directed analyses of sports coaching provide lasting insights and lay the groundwork for important future research.

Conclusion: film credits

Bringing together leading scholars in their respective fields, this collection of essays showcases the rich potential of studies of sports coaches in cinema and how these might benefit, complicate and/or even hinder actual coaching practices. We hope that our readers will agree that the diversity of approaches and contributors is a particular strength of the issue, bridging the sometimes gap between the Humanities and the Social Sciences fruitfully and to their mutual benefit. We encourage a continuation of this dialogue as there is much still to discover in the tensions between coaches and their on-screen counterparts. We want to conclude by thanking the editorial team of Sports Coaching Review, who enthusiastically embraced this project from the get-go, enabling us to investigate the important tensions, issues and questions that surround film depictions of sports coaching. We would also like to warmly acknowledge the many anonymous peer reviewers whose insightful comments and criticisms have proved invaluable to all of our contributors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Karl Marx (1993) provides the skeleton for such an argument in Grundrisse using Greek art as his chosen example (pp. 110–1).

2. See Chare’s (2015) chapter on boxing films in Sportswomen in Cinema for a lengthier discussion of how Forster’s ideas about literary character can be applied in a cinematic context (pp. 41–66; pp. 57–60).

3. See http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=4, accessed 29 May 2016.

4. These are the 1986 football comedy Wildcats, the 1996 basketball comedy Eddie and the 2009 drama The Mighty Macs. IMDB is of course only helpful in so far as one trusts its generic categorisations and keywording, and thus one further film, the 1996 drama Sunset Park can be added to this exclusive list of films.