As a result, the best sports films and TV shows engage with the game on that level. Throughout history, sports have proved cultural lightning rods - a forum where the game has the power to change hearts, minds, and ultimately society. Throw on some 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' in the locker room and revisit this all-time football classic based on the true story of Herman Boone's (Denzel Washington) attempt to integrate an all-white Alexandria, Va.

Jordan), or just longing for a love like Coach and Tami, it's easy to declare a simple truth: Friday Night Lights forever. Whether we're swooning over Tim Riggins ( Taylor Kitsch), rooting for Matt Saracen ( Zach Gilford), feeling our heart break for Vince Howard ( Michael B. Shot on location, the show always feels forged from the grit and dust of the hardscrabble Texas town it features. The game and the obstacles the Panthers (and then, the Lions) face provide a gridiron metaphor for both the characters and the audience to make sense of life. And it's the lens through which we view the hopes, dreams, struggles, and romances of its residents. high school football team through the eyes of Coach Taylor (an impossibly decent Kyle Chandler) and his players. Based on a book of the same name, it examines the challenges of the Dillon, Tex. Not only is Friday Night Lights at the top of EW's list of the greatest teen TV shows of all time, but it should probably head up any list of sports shows as well. But few genres cause passions to rise like the best sports TV shows and movies, to which we say: Bring it on. Different results than our last go-around, and if readers were to pose this question again in five years, we'd probably have completely different answers. So in this place in time, in this virtual EW bar debate about our favorite sports movies and TV shows, these are the best. The current argument in baseball asks fans to answer a complicated question: Is it really fair to compare Shohei Ohtani's dominance in the modern game as a two-way player against Babe Ruth's run in the same position 100 years ago? 'Best of' debates create similar discourses among entertainment writers: Is it really fair to compare eras of art and the movies that still speak to audiences years later? What about the shows that we liked 20 years ago, but in retrospect weren't that great, but everyone was so starved for material they liked it? Unlike baseball, there are fewer stats to rely on when considering the best sports movies and TV series, because awards are an unreliable metric.

Joshua malina movies and tv shows