Best movies like The American Game

Set against the backdrop of a high school football season, Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s documentary UNDEFEATED is an intimate chronicle of three underprivileged student-athletes from inner-city Memphis and the volunteer coach trying to help them beat the odds on and off the field. For players and coaches alike, the season will be not only about winning games — it will be about how they grapple with the unforeseeable events that are part of football and part of life.

In small-town Texas, high school football is a religion, 17-year-old schoolboys carry the hopes of an entire community onto the gridiron every Friday night. When star quarterback Lance Harbor suffers an injury, the Coyotes are forced to regroup under the questionable leadership of John Moxon, a second-string quarterback with a slightly irreverent approach to the game.

Anthony Keller, star of his NYC high school basketball team, is riding his way to Cornell on a sports scholarship. But he can only maintain his popular jock facade for so long, as his troubled father Lee has a gambling addiction that threatens to derail his dreams both on and off the court.

In a small town, the hippie faction often clashes with the mainstream. To settle their differences, the hippie "freaks" take on the town police "pigs" in a football game. On opposing sides of the fence are Frank, the police sergeant, and his son Neal. Also at odds are Neal and one time friend Doug, a returned Vietnam Vet who has joined the police force, who is also protective of his younger sister who prefers the hippie element. To make things even more intense, Mickey South, who has fled to Canada to avoid the war, returns to play for the Freaks football team. Tensions mount and all are challenged as the climax of the film approaches.

Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.

Sensitive study of a headstrong high school football star who dreams of getting out of his small Western Pennsylvania steel town with a football scholarship. His equally ambitious coach aims at a college position, resulting in a clash which could crush the player's dreams.

Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.

A mother's worst nightmare comes true when her teenage daughter goes missing.

Based on a true story, in which Richmond High School head basketball coach Ken Carter made headlines in 1999 for benching his undefeated team due to poor academic results.

Set in Palm Springs during a long, fun-filled weekend where several Los Angeles college students flock to spring break, centering on Jim who finds romance with Bunny, the daughter of Palm Springs harred, stressful police chief. Jim's bumbling roommate, Biff, tries to get Amanda, a tomboyish girl's attention with a so-called love gadget. Meanwhile, Gayle Lewis is a high school senior posing as a wealthy college girl who is pursued by Eric Dean, a wealthy and spoiled college prepie, while Gayle has eyes for a cowboy from Texas, named Stretch. Also Jim and Biff's basketball coach, Campbell, tries to romance Naomi, the owner of the motel where all of the gang is staying at, which is interfered by Naomi's young, trouble-making, brat son who's dubbed, Boom-Boom.

The Watergate Plumbers, a poorly-performing college basketball team, lose their best players one by one to death and dismemberment at the hands of a mysterious masked stalker.

As he approaches manhood, Ben Meechum struggles to win the approval of his demanding alpha male father, an aggressively competitive, but frustrated marine pilot.

Henry Steele is a basketball phenom at his small town high school, but when he matriculates to a big city university on a scholarship, soon realizes that he has few skills outside the sport. Expected by his coach to contribute significantly to the team, Henry is overwhelmed by the demands on his time, the "big business" aspect of college sports, and the fact that he never fully learned to read. Things look bleak for Henry when Janet Hays, a pretty graduate student, is assigned as Henry's tutor. Her intellect and strength lift Henry out of his doldrums just in time to battle the coach, who attempts to rescind Henry's scholarship.

Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.

Failed college coach Norman Dale gets a chance at redemption when he is hired to coach a high school basketball team in a tiny Indiana town. After a teacher persuades star player Jimmy Chitwood to quit and focus on his long-neglected studies, Dale struggles to develop a winning team in the face of community criticism for his temper and his unconventional choice of assistant coach: Shooter, a notorious alcoholic.

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

After reluctantly agreeing to coach cross-country, high school basketball Coach John Harrison helps the least likely runner attempt the impossible in the biggest race of the year.

A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.

A high school in a small-town in Mississippi prepares for its first integrated senior prom.

A former basketball all-star, who has lost his wife and family foundation in a struggle with addiction, attempts to regain his soul and salvation by becoming the coach of a disparate ethnically mixed high school basketball team at his alma mater.

High school senior Michael (the son of a preacher and a Christian) is the new guy in a small town still reeling from a high school basketball star's unforeseen suicide of a year ago.

Despite different backgrounds and disapproving parents, a working-class teen falls in love with the wealthy son of a prominent family in a small West Texas town.

Travis Elliot, a star high school basketball player from Memphis, Tennessee must save his older brother but is torn between playing the sport that he loves or living a life of crime.

The true and inspiring story of the Elliott family, who refused to surrender, instead turning to one another and their faith in the worst of circumstances, to rebuild their lives, their boy, and their dreams... together. Step by grueling step, with faith, love, and the tireless work of a mother and father to save their family, their farm, their dream, Hoovey learns to walk again. To read again. To dribble and shoot a basketball again. And yes, to dream again himself. Then stepping out in his faith, back onto the hard court, to live that dream of playing this game once more...

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.

Based on a True Story War Eagle, Arkansas is a character-driven drama about a young man’s choice of whether to leave his family and friends for a career in baseball or stay and redeem his struggling community. The story takes place over a few pivotal weeks in the summer after Enoch Cass’s senior year, and is set against the backdrop of Arkansas’ beautiful Ozark Mountains. War Eagle, Arkansas poses important questions that face all young people in rural America. The answers we find could touch us all.

An unqualified teacher finds himself saddled with coaching duties after a small group of high school seniors form a wrestling team in a last ditch effort to end a 9-year losing streak against a rival school.

Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball is a documentary about making it to Koshien, the summer high school baseball tournament in Japan. The documentary follows two teams: Chiben Academy from Wakayama Prefecture and Tennoji Public High School from Osaka. The documentary covers what motivates the players and coaches, and also covers the cheer team and team managers who support the team.

A boy moves into a new town and has difficulty making friends, so he joins the basketball team. Initially experiencing little success, his popularity increases when he convinces a Sasquatch to join the team.

A former basketball star moves to a small town to assistant coach for a high school championship-winning basketball team.

Charlie Fitzpatrick is the most successful high school basketball coach in Georgia history. While many of his players think of him as a father, his relationship with his own "bookworm" son, Evan, is strained. With the help of his wife, Laura and Evan's wife, Heather, Charlie determines the best way to connect and bond is to take his son and grandson, Markie, who has just announced he's dropping out of college to tour with his folk band, to a rustic mountain cabin for a weekend retreat. Only this cabin is the same site where he took his many winning teams to test their mettle over a grueling military-style obstacle course, the same one Evan, as a student never got the chance to complete. This is Charlie's idea of fun, Evan's idea of a nightmare, and Markie's idea of-well he's young and idealistic; he's just going with the flow. .

As Middleview High School's woeful boys basketball team prepares for another certain loss, several unusual dramas take shape around its periphery.

The Phantoms is a television movie inspired by the heart-warming, real-life events surrounding the 2009 New Brunswick provincial championship victory by the Bathurst High School (BHS Phantoms) boys varsity basketball team, a year after a terrible road accident takes the lives of seven players and the coach’s wife. In the following school year, as tragedy hangs over the community, the BHS Phantoms are reconstituted. The ragtag bunch of players gels as a team, and manages to lift community spirit on the long road to the provincial basketball finals.

Key figures from an infamous 2004 incident between players and fans at an NBA game in Michigan discuss the fight, its fallout, and its lasting legacy.