Best movies like The Last Whistle
Sometimes to win you have to lose it all.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Last Whistle Starring Brad Leland, Les Miles, Jim O'Heir, Eric Nelsen, and more. If you liked The Last Whistle then you may also like: 23 Blast, Undefeated, Varsity Blues, When the Game Stands Tall, Wildcats and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A high school football coach struggles with the fallout after one of his players dies onfield during practice.
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Undefeated
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.
Varsity Blues
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.
When the Game Stands Tall
A young coach turns a losing high school football program around to go undefeated for 12 consecutive seasons.
The Pigs vs. The Freaks
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.
Johnny Be Good
It's recruiting time and despite being short and scrawny, Johnny Walker is America's hottest young football prospect. His dilemma: should he take one of the many offers from college talent scouts or should he attend the local state college with his girlfriend and give up his football career?
All the Right Moves
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.
Beneath the Darkness
After watching their best friend get murdered, a group of teens struggle to expose a local hero as the vicious killer and keep from becoming his next victims.
Friday Night Lights
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.
12 Mighty Orphans
Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.
Facing the Giants
A losing coach with an underdog football team faces their giants of fear and failure on and off the field to surprising results.
80 for Brady
A quartet of elderly best friends decide to live life to the fullest by taking a wild trip to the Super Bowl LI to see their hero Tom Brady play.
The Slaughter Rule
A young man finds solace with a young woman, his mother, and a high-school football coach who recruits him to quarterback a six-man team.
Catching Faith
From the outside, Alexa has the perfect life. Her son is the high school football star, daughter a straight A student and her husband is CFO of a booming start-up company. The sudden death ...
Hoosiers
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.
Pigskin Parade
Bessie and Winston "Slug" Winters are married coaches whose mission is to whip their college football team into shape. Just in time, they discover a hillbilly farmhand and his sister. But the hillbilly farmhand's ability to throw melons enables him to become their star passing ace.
The Pom Pom Girls
A football player at Rosedale High School is amorous of one of the cheerleaders, who is going with another guy. Another player can't decide which of two cheerleaders he wants to be with. Meanwhile, the Big Game with Hardin High School is approaching, and a prank war is in full swing.
The Program
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.
Brian Banks
An All-American football player's dreams to play in the NFL are halted when he is falsely accused of rape and sent to prison.
Slap Her... She's French
Welcome to Splendona High School, Texas, where football players, cheerleaders and beauty queens rule the hallways. And Starla Grady, the most popular girl in school, is on top of it all. That is, at least until Genevieve LePlouff, a French foreign exchange student arrives and turns her life upside down.
Tru Loved
Recently relocated from San Francisco to conservative suburbia by her lesbian mothers, Tru struggles like all teens to fit in and find love, but her quest is complicated by sexual politics, closed minds, and closeted friends as she seeks to establish her school's first Gay-Straight Alliance.
Radio
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.
Fantasy Football
Callie A. Coleman discovers she can magically control her father, Bobby’s performance on the football field. When Callie plays as her dad, Bobby is transformed from a fumblitis-plagued journeyman to a star running back bound for superstardom alongside his daughter and wife Keisha.
Father Was a Fullback
Coach George Copper's college football team is losing game after game, much to the dismay of stiff-and-stuffy but influential alumni Roger Jessup, and also having trouble at home with his oldest daughter, Connie. The team keeps losing and Coach Cooper is about to lose his job as his efforts to win the last game of the season, against the team's Big Rival, end in disaster. But, unknown to he and his wife, Elizabeth, Connie has sold an article, called "I Was a Bubble Dancer" to a 'True-Confession" magazine, and the girl-who-couldn't-get-a-date becomes suddenly popular and, because of her, the high-school football star from another town decides to play his college-ball for Coach Cooper. Jessup is forced to keep Cooper on as the school's football coach.
The Primrose Path
A naive high school girl falls for the school's star football player. Her ignorance in the matters of sex leads to pregnancy and heartbreak.
My All American
Freddie Steinmark, an underdog on the gridiron, faces the toughest challenge of his life after leading his team to a championship season.
The 5th Quarter
In the wake of a car crash that killed his brother, football player Jon Abbate leads his school's struggling team to its most successful season ever.
College Coach
Ruthless Coach Gore creates turmoil at a college by hiring players and alienating students. Along the way, the coach loses his wife Claire Gore to a grandstanding player. Inside look at college football of the 1930s replete with fake grades, non-student players, and the importance of football to a college's reputation.
One Minute to Play
"Red" Wade, a star high-school football player, has intentions of going to Claxton College, which has a powerhouse football team, but changes his mind when he meets the sister of the pitiful Paramlee team and goes to college there, just as his father, an alum of the school, had wished. But his father has ordered him not to play football. "Dad" Wade, has offered a $100,000 endowment to his old school, not knowing his son has joined the football team but is going to withdraw it if his son plays in the Big Game against Claxton. This puts "Red" between a rock and a hard place.
Reggie's Prayer
Reggie White stars as Reggie Knox, a pro football player who retires, frustrated because he hasn't won a championship. Knox begins coaching a Portland, Ore., high school football program, where he befriends a troubled student. Reggie fights local ruffians with Christian values. And punches.
America Brown
A coming-of-age drama that centers on a young quarterback from West Texas, a priest in New York, and the two women in their lives.
American Underdog
The true story of Kurt Warner, who went from a stockboy at a grocery store to a two-time NFL MVP, Super Bowl champion, and Hall of Fame quarterback.
Backfield in Motion
When Nancy and her teenage son move to Deerview, the small, old-fashioned community will never be the same. Nancy soon realizes she is the only woman in town who would rather crack a joke than an egg. But the town gets their biggest laugh when Nancy organizes a mother-son football game with the unathletic housewives.
SnowComing
Samantha, once jilted by her high school sweetheart Jake during Snowcoming, returns home to honor her football coach father, who’s retiring, and runs into Jake, now a famous quarterback. After seeing the library needs updating, Samantha asks Jake to use his celebrity as a draw for a “Tailgate at the Library” fundraiser.
Second String
American football coach Chuck Dichter has worked wonders with the Buffalo Bills, and is even confident to crown his career with a Super Bowl victory, but before the play-offs an oyster food-poisoning wipes out his first team for a month. Dan Heller, an insurance salesman and former college quarterback, who was hired -relactantly, but his wife twisted his arm- just for practice, now has to captain and train a bunch of rookies and old-timers against the hardest adversaries. Dichter decides to sign up triple Super Bowl-winner Tommy Baker in Dan's place...
The Halfback of Notre Dame
A high school halfback must choose between the gridiron dreams of his football coach father, and his own dream of becoming a musician.
Blood Sport
A searing commentary on the "win at all costs" mentality of American high school sports. David Lee Birdsong is the smalltown quarterback hoping to escape with a college scholarship and a pro career. David's father is the overbearing taskmaster vicariously living through his son. The third side of the triangle is Coach Marshall, a hypercritical and cruel man who sees David as the key to his future success. David's lockstep commitment to his father and coach is altered when he witnesses a teammate die after a grueling practice.
Return to Campus
A 55-year-old former high school football player finally gets to fulfill his life-long dream and play in the big game in this autobiographical fantasy.
While Thousands Cheer
Kenny Harrington, the star football player of Gilmore College, leads his team to many victories, raising hopes that Gilmore will play in the "Peach Bowl," the championship playoffs of the Western conference. Unknown to Kenny, Downey, the head of a gambling syndicate, has placed a $100,000 bet against the Gilmore team.
23 Blast
When a high school football star is suddenly stricken with irreversible total blindness, he must decide whether to live a safe handicapped life or bravely return to the life he once knew and the sport he still loves.