Sports movies

Though I'm not a fan of most organized sports, I do like me some team sports movie action.

Team sports movies are great in several ways. Let me list a few:

1. Hot topless men. Exhibit: most college football movies.

2. Movies like Miracle notwithstanding, another thing going for team sports movies is a diverse cast. But by "diverse" I do NOT mean white guy learns inorganic Bojangles hip-hop dance move from black guy, giving suburban viewers false sense of colorblindness back at home. Exhibit: Save the Last Dance (yes, I know it's not a sports movie, but that's precisely my point.) By diverse I essentially am talking about the whole sub-genre of sports movies that involve a. girls /boys pretending to be boys/girls to get on a team (exhibit: Ladybugs), and b. Asians. Exhibit: Bend it Like Beckham, and my most favorite baseball movie ever - Mr. 3000. (Don't laugh)

3. Believable injuries. I hate watching action films because in my lifetime, I've never heard of or seen entire city blocks taken over by speeding cars that eventually explode into three stadium-sized balls of fire...in other words, the fatalities of action film are totally unbelievable.
Taped up wrists and ankles, a limping linebacker, broken fingers, drug addiction, being shot by a crazed fan...all believable! Exhibit: Jerry McGuire; Any Given Sunday

4. Cool nicknames. I've always hated my nicknames ("Anne the Man," "Fishy Ishii,"), envied those of my friends. For example, I grew up with a lot of Filipinos, who are categorically allergic to their Christian names. There's a whole school of abstract Filipino calculus in which a random phoneme repeated twice will produce one's nickname. If all else fails you're "jun" which is short for "junior." and not a common native Tagalog name as I'd believed for over a decade. Anyway, when you play sports on film, you get to be "The Natural," "Babe," "Mr. 3000," "Rocky." And for that matter in real sports too - Godzilla, Big Papi, Walrus (I'll admit these nicknames are also poor examples of phallic wish-fulfillment, but hey, if it ain't brain, I'll give them brawn. Why not.)

5. The last five minutes of the game. Really, have you ever been disappointed by the end of a sporting event in a movie? Exhibit: OK, other than Waterboy.