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How good are sports films? A View from the Top loves a good sports film almost as much as it loves live sport itself. The genre is split into two camps – films based on a true story and straight-out Hollywood fiction.
While there is no doubt films like Remember the Titans, Glory Road and We are Marshall are some of the best sports films of all time, we’re going to bring to you the Greatest Fictional Sports Characters of the last twenty years (plus Rocky).
While we might all love Gary Bertier and Julius Campbell, they haven’t been considered for this list.
10. Rocky’s Opponents
Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang and Ivan Drago (Tommy Who and Antonio Tarver don’t make the list) are some of the coolest anti-heroes in all of sport.
All bad and all beaten by Balboa, they play their role in the huge success of the Rocky franchise. As characters, they are impossible to split.
9. Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell Sports Characters
These two play so many great sports characters that you just have to make room for them in the Top Ten; but including one over the others just wouldn’t be fair.
There is Happy Gilmore and Bobby Boucher who paved the way for Ricky Bobby, Jackie Moon and Chazz Michael Michaels to delight crowds.
8. Rod Tidwell
The Arizona Cardinals wide receiver from the movie Jerry Maguire, Rod Tidwell was a preview of what to expect in the NFL over the next two decades.
Tidwell has served as the prototype flamboyant wide receiver as the sports world has watched fiction form fact through the career of Terrell Owens. Hell Chad Ochocinco even admits to modelling his personality on Tidwell.
7. Tony D’Amato
Do yourself a favour and watch this speech. By the time this speech gets to the end, I’m ready to chew concrete if he asks me.
6. Patches O’Houlihan
The Tommy Raudonikus of the Dodgeball world mentors the Average Joes in his own unique kind of way. The ever-so-obvious ‘if you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball’ is Patches’s coaching philosophy in a nutshell.
5. Gordon Bombay
The story is familiar. Man does wrong. Man sentenced to community service and ordered to coach a little league team. Man is changed by the experience.
While Rod Tidwell might have inspired a generation of brash American footballers, the Bombay-coached Mighty Ducks actually paved the way for their own professional sports franchise – the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in the NHL.
The Bombay-coached multi-ethnic and multi-gender Mighty Ducks always find a way to overcome their larger and completely male opponents.
4. Rocky Balboa
The original underdog Balboa kickstarted and continues to define the sports film industry.
The first sports movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture, the Rocky character isn’t the most talented or gracious but he just never stops trying, and that’s why people love him.
Routinely voted amongst the Greatest Film Characters of All Time, he just misses out on a podium to finish here.
3. Shooter McGavin
If ever there was a sports character I wish existed, it is Shooter McGavin.
Played to perfection by Christopher McDonald, Shooter is the perfect sports villain – a complete jackass, playing sport for the money that would prefer his closest opponent is kicked off the Tour then rise to the challenge of beating him.
I would sit and watch Shooter play 18 holes week after week purely for the entertainment value.
2. Kenny ‘Squeak’ Scolari
Squeak is a little guy and I love him. This is what it means to be a part of a team. Your teammates can make you life difficult and it’s all good, because, well, you’re a team.
Squeak wasn’t even that good a BASEketball player, but he’s the type of morale-boosting little guy you’d want on your team.
1. Shane Falco
Shane Falco is my favourite fictional sports character of all time. I see a lot of myself in Shane Falco.
He never made it as a pro – neither did I. He plays quarterback – the American football equivalent of a halfback and he gets the girl. You can’t help but love Shane ‘#16 in your programs #1 in your hearts’ Falco.
He’s the College football failure that finds himself cleaning the bottom of boats before the Washington Sentinels come calling after players go on strike and ‘Footsteps’ Falco finally gets his chance in the big league.
Predictably, Falco is the hero in the movie’s final game, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.
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