Best movies like Soul of the Game

Lex 'El Animal' Vargas is a promising Portorican boxer in Queens, but lacks ambition to aim for the big career. That changes after his brother Paulie is accidentally shot dead by a teenager in an amateur hold-up on their late dad's shop, which he now closes to turn professional boxer. His star rises fast, but success brings its own problems, as he he lacks experience to handle professionals and resist the abuse they and his ghetto past entourage make of his generous nature.

Molly is a high school track coach who knows just as much about football as anyone else on the planet. When a football coach's position becomes vacant, she applies for the job, despite snickers from fellow staff members and her former husband.

Love and unity in a school torn by racism and hate in the 1970s. A gifted high school football player must learn to embrace his talent and his faith as he battles racial tensions on and off the field.

When the Texas Southern Armadillos football team is disqualified for cheating and poor grades, the University is forced to pick from a team that actually goes to school. Will they even win a single game?

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she learns an unforgettable lesson about the power of words and the true meaning of freedom.

A semi-fictional account of life as a professional football player. Loosely based on the Dallas Cowboys team of the early 1970s.

After leading his football team to 15 winning seasons, coach Bill Yoast is demoted and replaced by Herman Boone – tough, opinionated and as different from the beloved Yoast as he could be. The two men learn to overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions.

Jim Morris never made it out of the minor leagues before a shoulder injury ended his pitching career twelve years ago. Now a married-with-children high-school chemistry teacher and baseball coach in Texas, Jim's team makes a deal with him: if they win the district championship, Jim will try out with a major-league organization. The bet proves incentive enough for the team, and they go from worst to first, making it to state for the first time in the history of the school. Jim, forced to live up to his end of the deal, is nearly laughed off the try-out field--until he gets onto the mound, where he confounds the scouts (and himself) by clocking successive 98 mph fastballs, good enough for a minor-league contract with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Jim's still got a lot of pitches to throw before he makes it to The Show, but with his big-league dreams revived, there's no telling where he could go.

12-year-old Henry Rowengartner, whose late father was a minor league baseball player, grew up dreaming of playing baseball, despite his physical shortcomings. After Henry's arm is broken while trying to catch a baseball at school, the tendon in that arm heals too tightly, allowing Henry to throw pitches that are as fast as 103 mph. Henry is spotted at nearby Wrigley Field by Larry "Fish" Fisher, the general manager of the struggling Chicago Cubs, after Henry throws an opponent's home-run ball all the way from the outfield bleachers back to the catcher, and it seems that Henry may be the pitcher that team owner Bob Carson has been praying for.

Biography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues.

Tom Berenger leads an outstanding cast in this bone-crunching dramatization of legendary college football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's debut at Texas A&M in the summer of 1954. The often unnerving story finds Bryant ducking the school's good ol' boy network of rich, influential alumni by spiriting his new team away to a makeshift training base in a tiny town called Junction. There, Bryant runs the equivalent of a POW camp, brutalizing an oversized, underdeveloped bunch of rowdy young men and tormenting those who seek medical attention for cracked spines and deadly heat exhaustion. Berenger delivers a warts-and-all performance as the vulgar, monstrous, yet much-respected Bryant, and the direction by seasoned television vet Mike Robe is brisk and almost explosively charged. Whatever one thinks of Bryant's punishing methods, the film does not flinch from telling its powerful tale. --Tom Keogh

The football team Jesse is on is terrible, and after the death of his father Jesse quits the team. Then angels come to help the team get better and nobody can see them but Jesse's little brother.

An aging, down-on-his-luck ex-minor leaguer coaches a team of misfits in an ultra-competitive California little league.

In this third film version of the Bad News Bears series, Tony Curtis plays a small time promotor/hustler who takes the pint-sized baseball team to Japan for a match against the country's best little league baseball team which sparks off a series of adventures and mishaps the boys come into.

The story of a New York pro baseball team and two of its players. Henry Wiggen is the star pitcher and Bruce Pearson is the normal, everyday catcher who is far from the star player on the team and friend to all of his teammates. During the off-season, Bruce learns that he is terminally ill, and Henry, his only true friend, is determined to be the one person there for him during his last season with the club. Throughout the course of the season, Henry and his teammates attempt to deal with Bruce's impending illness, all the while attempting to make his last year a memorable one.

In a depressed Texas town, British foreign exchange teacher Anna attempts to inject some life into her hopeless kids by introducing them to soccer. They're terrible at first, but Anna and her football-hero assistant whip them into shape. As they work overtime, the pair help kids build their self-esteem and also get involved in solving family squabbles.

In the world of 1930s Negro League baseball, a spirited team of renegade players travels around the Midwest looking for that one big score. Richard Pryor, Billy Dee Williams, and James Earl Jones star as three barnstorming ballplayers who take on prejudice and their own League's unfair rules while stealing cars, food and home base - anything to prove that they're the best team around. It's a showdown of brains over booby traps and sportsmanship over racial segregation as Bingo Long's All-Stars swing their way into a winning season;.

The story of professional football players Gale Sayes and Brian Piccolo, and how their friendship on and off the field was affected when Piccolo contracted a fatal disease

Alex believed in his baseball hero Billy Young. When Billy's performance struggled, Alex's friends began to doubt Alex; and Billy began to doubt himself. Alex wants to prove to his friends, to Billy, and to himself that believing in someone can make the difference.

In 1966, Texas Western coach Don Haskins led the first all-black starting line-up for a college basketball team to the NCAA national championship.

Inspired by the true story of Vince Papale, a man with nothing to lose who ignored the staggering odds and made his dream come true. When the coach of Papale's beloved hometown football team hosted an unprecedented open tryout, the public consensus was that it was a waste of time – no one good enough to play professional football was going to be found this way.

In a last-ditch effort to save his career, sports agent JB Bernstein dreams up a wild game plan to find Major League Baseball’s next great pitcher from a pool of cricket players in India. He soon discovers two young men who can throw a fastball but know nothing about the game of baseball. Or America. It’s an incredible and touching journey that will change them all — especially JB, who learns valuable lessons about teamwork, commitment and family.

A small, turbulent town in Texas obsesses over their high school football team to an unhealthy degree. When the star tailback, Boobie Miles, is seriously injured during the first game of the season, all hope is lost, and the town's dormant social problems begin to flare up. It is left to the inspiring abilities of new coach Gary Gaines to instill in the other team members -- and, by proxy, the town itself -- a sense of self-respect and honor.

Louisiana football star Gavin Grey had it all. He was an All-American champion who married his high-school sweetheart, homecoming queen Babs Rogers, and who was a hero to his hometown. Yet after a failed professional career, Gavin realizes that fame and success have passed him by and that he no longer is the hero everyone keeps reminding him he should still be. His dissatisfaction with his life leads to strains in his marriage, and Gavin begins to wonder who he is, if he's not a hero anymore.

A losing coach with an underdog football team faces their giants of fear and failure on and off the field to surprising results.

Tommy Riley has moved with his dad to Chicago from a 'nice place'. He keeps to himself, goes to school. However, after a street fight he is noticed and quickly falls into the world of illegal underground boxing - where punches can kill.

When Rachel Phelps inherits the Cleveland Indians from her deceased husband, she's determined to move the team to a warmer climate—but only a losing season will make that possible, which should be easy given the misfits she's hired. Rachel is sure her dream will come true, but she underestimates their will to succeed.

At the behest of Roger Dorn -- the Minnesota Twins' silver-tongued new owner -- washed-up minor league hurler Gus Cantrell steps up to the plate to take over as skipper of the club's hapless farm team. But little does he know that Dorn has an ulterior motive to generate publicity with a grudge match between the big leaguers and their ragtag Triple A affiliate.

In this uplifting film based on a true story, coach Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) shocks the community and changes lives when, aided by a local janitor (Bernie Mac), he sets out to form Philadelphia's first black swim team. But the odds are against them as they battle rigid rules, racism and more.

Several players from different backgrounds try to cope with the pressures of playing football at a major university. Each deals with the pressure differently, some turn to drinking, others to drugs, and some to studying.

The true story of Jasmine Plummer who, at the age of eleven, became the first female to play in Pop Warner football tournament in its 56-year history.

Based on true events amid the wreckage and chaos dealt by Hurricane Katrina; one basketball coach in Marrero, Louisiana just will not give up. Coach Al Collins, gathers other players from hard-hit schools and builds a team actually worthy enough to go to the state playoffs.

A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.

When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.

The unintentional shooting by police of a star basketball player has profound personal, political and community repercussions in this acclaimed adaptation of the novel Hog Butcher by Ronald Fair. This was one of the more thoughtful urban dramas produced at the height of the "blaxploitation" craze. Also released under the title Hit the Open Man, it features the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, who was barely a teenager at the time.

Based on the real-life relationship between teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers and the bond established when Piccolo discovers that he is dying.

A school teacher takes over a talented, but undisciplined high school basketball team and turns them into a winning team.

After taking a job managing a little league team, a homeless man inspires the kids to reach for it all and they inspire him to reclaim his life.

High school football coach, Harold Jones befriends Radio, a mentally-challenged man who becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina. Their friendship extends over several decades, where Radio transforms from a shy, tormented man into an inspiration to his community.

The irascible manager of a lower-division Scottish football side must contend with problems off and on the field when his team's impatient American owner demands they win the Scottish Cup or else be relocated to Ireland, while also dealing with the forced arrival of a new star striker - who happens to be his estranged son-in-law, whom he blames for the breakdown of his relationship with his daughter.

Freddie Steinmark, an underdog on the gridiron, faces the toughest challenge of his life after leading his team to a championship season.

A Florida boy (Bryan Russell) tells his Little League buddies that his father knows two New York Yankees (Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris).

The story of a small-town high school football team in rural Ohio destined to play their cross-town rival, a perennial powerhouse, while standing up for an entire community.

In a conservative small town, a young man's wish to coach high school basketball are tweaked by a school board decision that makes him the new coach of the girls' team.

When an 11 year old boy gets cut from his Little League baseball team, he sets out to form his own team.

Major League Baseball scout must find promising young player to save his job and his team.

A film about the early life of the baseball star in the army, particulary his court-martial for insubordination regarding segragation.

A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.

This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.