10 Greatest Sports Movies of the Last 100 Years, Ranked

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Published Jan 24, 2026, 6:15 PM EST

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Movies with sports as a focus are sports movies. It’s an easy genre to define. Beyond that, what stands out about sports movies is that some of them really stick to a formula, and showcase underdogs emerging triumphant against more powerful opponents, but it’s a formula that, when done well, really works, and proves hard to resist. Also, not all sports movies succeed because they follow a formula.

Some are a little darker and more subversive, and there are quite a few of those below. Also, sports movies have some variety because of how many sports there are out there. What follows is an attempt to highlight some of the best from the last 100 years, going back as far as the early 1930s (so, almost a century, at the time of writing). Also, no documentaries, but there are some amazing ones out there, obviously, especially the likes of Hoop Dreams and Tokyo Olympiad. Consider that a pair of honorable mentions, maybe.

10 'Horse Feathers' (1932)

There were some silent movies that tackled sports in a comedic way, but some of those are older than 100 years at this point, and also, none are quite as funny, in any event, as Horse Feathers. This isn't even at the very top of the Marx Brothers’ output, in terms of all their classic comedies, but it is pretty great, being about college football at times, while also being an excuse for the Marx Brothers to do all their usual nonsense.

It’s funny, though, and something being funny after coming out almost a century ago is impressive. Part of the reason it’s included here is that if you're talking about a century of movies, and you don’t go back a century, it can feel a little suspicious, so here you go. Here’s one that turns 94 this year, at the time of writing. That’s close enough to 100.

9 'I, Tonya' (2017)

Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) takes in the applause in 'I, Tonya' with her arms opened and smiling.

A biographical sports film, and one of the best in recent memory, I, Tonya is all about Tonya Harding, showing a rather infamous series of events that were narrativized by the media and pop culture at large, but from her perspective. This complicates the well-known story, and makes it all more nuanced, with further complexities coming about because some other characters also get their points of view highlighted.

It doesn’t do that to the same extent as Rashomon, but likening it to the sports movie equivalent of that Akira Kurosawa film surprisingly isn't the most outrageous thing in the world. I, Tonya is also quite funny at times, working as a dramedy on top of being a biographical sports movie, but it’s a very dark sort of comedy, and it does ultimately end up leaning more into drama than comedy by the time it comes to a close.

8 'The Set-Up' (1949)

Robert Ryan as Bill with a bloody face inside a boxing ring in The Set-Up.

The Set-Up is a lean and – some would say – mean film noir that also serves as a sports movie. It’s about boxing and the way it can be influenced by crime, because of betting and the whole issue of trying to fix matches. There’s a plan, and things don’t go to it, with The Set-Up being about inevitable consequences that come about when things don’t go the way some powerful/nefarious people wanted them to.

It probably influenced the Bruce Willis storyline in Pulp Fiction, but it’s also not exactly the same, by any means. It’s of its time in some ways, but also a bit ahead of the curve in other departments (like the way it’s paced, coming in at a tight 73 minutes), and it’s easily one of the very best sports movies made in the first half of the 20th century.

7 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' (2001)

Quite comfortably the best sports movie ever made about cricket, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India also stands out for being an epic sports movie, with a runtime that nears four hours all up. It takes place toward the end of the 19th century, and the plot involves the people of an over-taxed village in India agreeing to play a game of cricket against the British, with a win meaning the taxation due will be canceled.

But it’s a wager, so if they lose, they stand to be taxed more. And they begin training for the game with very little idea of how to play cricket, so it becomes a real underdog sort of story, ensuring it’s very easy to get emotionally invested once the final match starts getting played. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India is just expertly done, on a storytelling and emotional front, and it makes cricket a whole lot more exciting and cinematic than it is in real life, truth be told.

6 'Enter the Dragon' (1973)

Not all martial arts movies are sports movies, but those that revolve around martial arts tournaments can count themselves as sports films, too. Enter the Dragon spends quite a bit of time in and around a strange martial arts tournament of sorts, with a few different people going to the island where it’s being held for their own reasons, and then at a point, fighting starts happening outside of the tournament itself.

If that doesn’t sound wild enough, then Enter the Dragon is also reminiscent of a spy movie at times, and it’s also the greatest film Bruce Lee starred in during his short but ever-influential movie career. It’s got a lot that it juggles at once, but it doesn’t really drop a ball at any point, and it’s still a blast to watch more than 50 years on from its initial release.

5 'Marty Supreme' (2025)

Timothée Chalamet smiling in a crowd in Marty Supreme

It’s an incredibly recent release, in the overall scheme of things, but Marty Supreme does feel like it lives up to the hype. Its recency and maybe less of a focus on table tennis than you might be expecting could make including it here questionable, but if you want to talk about 100 years’ worth of movies, it helps to go back almost 100 years, sure, but then there’s also a benefit to highlighting the best of what came recently.

On top of being a sports film, Marty Supreme is a dramedy/thriller as well, and almost something of a crime film, at times.

2025 is part of the last 100 years, after all. Anyway, Marty Supreme is about a very ambitious and dangerously confident table tennis player in the early 1950s, who wants to make a name for himself, but keeps making bad decisions in all the areas of his life that don’t strictly involve table tennis. The whole movie is a dramedy/thriller as well, and almost something of a crime film, at times. It’s pretty wild, but the chaos of it all is also quite wonderful to behold, and it’s such a rush of a movie, making 2.5 hours feel more like 90 minutes, if that.

4 'Million Dollar Baby' (2004)

Sorry in advance for having the last chunk of this ranking dominated by boxing movies, but there is something about the sport that quite clearly translates well into cinema. It can be brutal and makes for good conflict, and movies get quite a lot out of exploring how the sport can impact those who take part in it, both on a physical and emotional front.

That goes for Million Dollar Baby, which is a high point of Clint Eastwood’s filmmaking career, and it also contains one of his best-ever performances, too. He plays an aging and troubled trainer who begins coaching a young, up-and-coming female boxer, and there’s a lot that doesn’t go to plan. Million Dollar Baby works as a subversion of certain sports movie conventions, or functions as a generally grim/realistic one, and it is undeniably powerful stuff.

3 'The Hustler' (1961)

Paul Newman as Eddie playing pool in The Hustler

Long before Marty Supreme showcased a potential sports star also being a hustler, there was The Hustler, which is easily one of the darkest and most intense sports movies of all time. For its time, it might well have been the grimmest, with the story here centering on a pool hustler trying to get a big break and a big score, going up against another player who’s a whole lot more experienced.

There are consequences for the whole endeavor, and much of where The Hustler goes narratively and thematically still has the capacity to shock to this day. It’s a slower kind of sports movie, especially by modern standards, and pool might not seem as inherently cinematic a sport as some of the other sports featured in the other movies here, yet there is ultimately something special about The Hustler, and how it’s all executed.

2 'Rocky' (1976)

You can’t talk about great sports movies without mentioning Rocky, since it kind of does for the genre what Casablanca did for romance, and Metropolis did for science fiction. Well, maybe that sounds a little hyperbolic, and those movies were admittedly older (and maybe, thereby, slightly more influential), but Rocky (1976) is kind of the sports movie; the one it’s hard to imagine anyone disliking.

The only thing that could hold Rocky back is that it sticks to conventions that it perfected, and maybe even popularized, so it’s slightly harder to appreciate 50 years later than it might've been in 1976. But maybe you could say the same about the first Star Wars, released one year after Rocky. Rocky is phenomenal for its time, and the absolute best example of how to properly execute a personal and character-focused underdog story.

1 'Raging Bull' (1980)

A bruised Jake La Motta on the ring in the film Raging Bull.

If you watch Rocky and Raging Bull as a double feature, it’s probably best to watch Raging Bull first, just so you don’t end things on a downer note. While Rocky is uplifting and inevitably about moral, personal, and romantic triumphs, Raging Bull is about one man’s downfall, with his life outside the ring getting worse the older he gets, whereas the title character in Rocky finds a pursuit of boxing to be something that helps him in other areas of his life.

That is to say that Raging Bull is more of a drama/biopic/character study than it is a boxing movie in the traditional sense, but still, it’s about a boxer, and there are a good many boxing scenes. Those boxing scenes are also so ruthlessly done, and add so much to what’s already a visceral and unapologetically heavy drama about an incredibly flawed man and the lives damaged by his behavior.