Story Type: Sports

In Hollywood movie circles, there are genres like Horror or Science Fiction, cross genres like Action-Thriller or Drama-Comedy, and sub-genres like Romantic Comedy or Mystery Thriller.

Then there are story types, a shorthand way to describe a specific narrative conceit that is almost always tied directly to the movie’s central concept. They can be found in any genre, cross genre, or sub-genre.

Knowledge about and awareness of these story types can be a boost not only to your understanding of film history and movie trends, but also as fodder for brainstorming new story concepts. Mix and match them. Invert them. Gender bend them. Genre bend them. Geo bend them.

Story types exist for a reason: Because they work. Hopefully this series will help you make them work for you.

Today: Sports.

Baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, golf. Can you name a sport which Hollywood hasn’t featured in a movie?

Some examples of sports movies:

Fear Strikes Out (1957): True story of the life of Jimmy Piersall, who battled mental illness to achieve stardom in major league baseball.

Winning (1969): Frank Capua is a rising star on the race circuit who dreams of winning the big one — the Indianapolis 500, but to get there he runs the risk of losing his wife to his rival.

North Dallas Forty (1979): A semi-fictional account of life as a professional Football (American-style) player. Loosely based on the Dallas Cowboys team of the early 1970s.

Breakng Away (1979): A small-town teen obsessed with the Italian cycling team vies for the affections of a college girl.

Raging Bull (1980): An emotionally self-destructive boxer’s journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring, destroys his life outside it.

Caddyshack (1980): An exclusive golf course has to deal with a brash new member and a destructive dancing gopher.

Chariots of Fire (1981): The story of two British track athletes, one a determined Jew, and the other a devout Christian who compete in the 1924 Olympics.

Hoosiers (1986): A coach with a checkered past and a local drunk train a small town high school basketball team to become a top contender for the championship.

Bull Durham (1988): A fan who has an affair with one minor-league baseball player each season meets an up-and-coming pitcher and the experienced catcher assigned to him.

Field of Dreams (1989): An Iowa corn farmer, hearing voices, interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields; he does, and the Chicago Black Sox come.

The Mighty Ducks (1992): After being charged with drunk driving, a hotshot lawyer is forced to coach a hapless youth hockey team.

Rudy (1993): Rudy has always been told that he was too small to play college football, but he is determined to overcome the odds and fulfill his dream of playing for Notre Dame.

Remember the Titans (2000): The true story of a newly appointed African-American coach and his high school team on their first season as a racially integrated unit.

Ali (2001): A biography of sports legend, Muhammad Ali, from his early days to his days in the ring.

Bend It Like Beckham (2002): The daughter of orthodox Sikh rebels against her parents’ traditionalism by running off to Germany with a soccer team.

Seabiscuit (2003): True story of the undersized Depression-era racehorse whose victories lifted not only the spirits of the team behind it but also those of their nation.

Sports movies are perennial winners. Youths are drawn to films featuring sports of their choice. There’s plenty of action on the field to provide entertainment. But perhaps the single most powerful dynamic of most every sports movie: rooting for the underdog.

While most sports movies feature a Protagonist or Protagonist’s team that wins the Big Game / Match, there are other sports movies with an enduring legacy in which the lead character does not win. In this LAT article — “Hollywood Sports Movies: Do Fans Love Losers As Much As Winners” — Patrick Goldstein suspects there’s a new trend emerging:

If you divided up the best-known Hollywood sports films, the vast majority could be cataloged as stories about triumph over adversity (“The Blind Side,” “Miracle,” “Rocky” and “Rudy”), spiritual uplift (“Field of Dreams” and “The Natural”), raunchy high jinks (“Major League,” “The Bad News Bears,” “The Longest Yard” and “Caddyshack”) and underdog empowerment (“Remember the Titans” and “A League of Their Own”).

But I have a hunch we’ve recently embarked on a new era of sports films whose stories are just as compelling as the ones you’d find in any other dramatic genre, in part because they aren’t obsessed with happy endings.

What other qualities and dynamics do you think are present in sports films? What other movies of note belong in the list?

For more articles in the Story Types series, go here.