25 best sports movies, ranked by the dust in your eye

Here’s a rundown of 25 great sports movies ranked by their ability to make you cry, including Rocky, Friday Night Lights, and Hoosiers.

The reason movies have consistently been a predominant form of entertainment in America for more than 100 years now is their unparalleled ability to evoke emotion. Regardless of how you feel beforehand, a good movie can completely and temporarily change your entire outlook on life. Watch a horror movie before going out at night, you’ll jump at every furtive shadow. Put on a life-affirming rom-com after an awful day at work and you’ll regain your sense of optimism about tomorrow. And sit down for one of the better sports movies and you’ll find a bit of serenity.

That last and most elusive emotional state can’t be achieved with just any sports movie. It requires one that tells a story that is particularly inspiring or depressing. One that can completely subvert all of your cultivated adult detachment and leave you crying tears of joy or sorrow. It always helps if the story is based on true events, but that’s not a requirement. Conversely, not every fact-based sports movie can bring on the sobbing. It has to be a story that feels grounded in some kind of relatable emotional reality. To provoke sustained weeping, a sports movie needs to make you feel for yourself as much is the characters on screen.

But as most American sports movies are promoted with the promise of providing a tearful catharsis, it can be hard to differentiate the truly resonant from the emotionally manipulative. To make that process a little easier, here’s a list of 25 sports movies that are likely to leave you sobbing uncontrollably.

This slider contains spoilers for the movies mentioned.