The stadium lights are on, the crowd is on their feet, and the world watches holding its breath. There is tr✱uly nothing more dramatic than the wild world of sports. With some of the greatest movies ever made centered around athletic competition and the chaotic pressures of athletes (both physical and mental), it begs the question: What are some of the greatest sports movies ever made?

Since almost the dawn of cinema, Hollywood filmmakers have regularly fixated their cameras on sports and athlet✅es, whether they live on squeaky basketball courts or between the ropes of bloodstained boxing rings. (Some bar💛 trivia for you: The first documented sports film is the 1914 film The Knockout, a boxing comedy starring Charlie Chaplin. Boxing and cinema have quite the history together.)

Movies and sports have much in common, with the art of storytelling naturally affording the dramatic stakes in the climax - a critical point when a▨ll the blood, sweat, and tears culminate and either pay off or reward no🀅thing in return. In celebration of athletes everywhere, here are 36 of the greatest sports movies of all time.

36. Fearless (2006)

Many martial arts movies double as sports films: Bloodsport (1988), Kickboxer (1989), Never Back Down (2008), and of course, The Karate Kid (1984). But all of them must bow to Ronny Yuan’s opulent rendition of the grandmaster: Fearless, the Huo Yuanjia biopic starring Jet Li. Released in 2006 and bille💧d as Li’s last wushu epic, Fearless chronicles the life of the 19th century Chinese martial arts master who claimed victories over foreign competitors. In Fearless, Li leaves it all on the floor with some of the most elegant and balletic martial arts scenes ever put to screen. The extended director’s cut includes Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh in a cameo, with scenes set in the present day where her character advocates for the inclusion of wushu as a sport before the International Olympic Committee. 

35. Days of Thunder (1990)

Tom Cruise and Tony Scott hoped lightning would strike twice with Days of Thunder, an action sports drama that swaps the fighter jets from their ‘86 summer blockbuster Top Gun for the stock cars of NASCAR. It didn’t, but that doesn’t stop Days of Thunder💧 from being a total thrill. Cruise is in peak form as hotshot rookie Cole Trickle who aligns with veteran rival Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker) to outrace conniving racer Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes). Days of Thunder was a box office and critical bomb, but among its most ardent fans is director Quentin Tarantino, who once raved about the movie i🔯n a 2013 interview.

34. Major League (1989)

What do you get when you take the plot of Ted Lasso, swap Premier League football for Major League Baseball, and throw in Charlie Sh🌳een and Tom Berenger? You get Major League. Directed by David S. Ward, this classic ‘80s sports comedy is about a fictional version of the Cleveland Indians who fall under the new ownership of a billionaire widow (Margaret Whitton) who tries to sabotage the team to force a sale to Miami. When the players get wind of it, they rebel and begin playing like true all-stars. Hysterical and uplifting with its spir🐈it de corps story, Major League steps up to the plate with heart and humor.

33. Happy Gilmore (1996)

Hockey pucks become golf balls in this mid-‘90s classic starring the one and only Adam Sandler. Sandler stars in the title role of Happy Gilmore, a high-strung hockey player with a mean slapshot who discover🦩s a talent for golf. Happy winds up a working class hero in the upper class sport - as well as mentorship from a veteran player, played by Carl Weathers - all while playing to save his grandmother’s home. Happy Gilmore was just one of many movies in Adam Sandler’s hot streak in the ‘90s that catapulted him to mainstream fame, but the movie stands alone as one of the best underdog sports comedies of all time.

32. Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

At first glance on the pitch, Bend It Like Beckham looks like a goofy movie about an 18-year-old girl with football dreams. But this lively British early-aughts comedy from Gurinder Chadha is so much more. Parminder Nagra stars as a young woman from a traditional Punjabi Sikh family in London who secretly pursues her passion for football, encouraged by her new best friend Jules (Keira Knightley). (The movie’s title references pro footballer David Beckham and his unique style of curling the ball, or “bending.”) Themes of family, heritage, and dreams all collide in this kaleidoscopic feel-good comedy that hilariously explores the highs and lows of second-generation immigrant upbringings. Fun fac♑t: For its U.S. release, distributors nearly titled the movie Move It Like Mia, in reference to American star Mia Hamm.

31. Slap Shot (1977)

It will just never stop being funny that Paul Newman is in a movie like this. Released in 1977, Slap Shot is a raunchy, brazenly offensive hockey comedy about a minor league team from a depressed city. Facing money woes and even shutdown, the team's enlistment of three new players, the Hanson brothers, unleash a thuggish style of violent play that invigorates a once lethargic fanbase. Directed by George Roy Hill and written by Oscar-winner Nancy Dowd - who based the script on her own brother's experiences as a hockey player - the aggressively hilarious Slap Shot predates the raunchy sports comedies of the '90s and 200👍0s, with Paul Newman (as player-coach Reggie Dunlop) looking fly off the ice in an 🌳enviable wardrobe.

30. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

In 2006, the world of Fast & Furious shifted gears away from Vin Diesel and Paul Walker to place focus on teenager Sean Boswell (played by Lucas Black), whose recklessness at home forces him to live with his deadbeat dad in Tokyo. There, Sean discovers the attractive world of illegal, competitive drift racing, where victory isn't won through speed but control. Although Tokyo Drift is quite unlike its tent pole action and crime-oriented predecessors, it has become one of the most cons𓄧equential in the entire Fast Sag🏅a, being the first movie from recurring director Justin Lin and the debut of franchise favorite Han (Sung Kang) who mentors Sean in the finer points of drift racing. 

29. Goon (2011)

Seann William Scott and Liev Schreiber throw down on the ice in this cult hockey comed🌱y from 2011. Polite dimwit with a surprisingly violent mean streak, Doug Glatt (Scott) finds himself thrust into the role of enforcer for a minor league hockey team, which puts him in the direct path of a legendary veteran (Schrieber). While sports comedy aficionados may feel that Adam Sandler did that same story years earlier, in The Waterboy, Goon - which is actually an adaptation of a memoir by real-life minor league hockey legend Doug Smith - dares you not to laugh and cheer along.

28. Invictus (2009)

A few short years after Clint Eastwood won Oscars for his sports drama Million Dollar Baby, the cinema legend again focused his cameras on the world of sports. The result is Invictus, a courtly period drama set in post-Apartheid South Africa and the 1995 rise of its national rugby team led by Francois Pienaar (played by Matt Damon). Morgan Freeman stars as real-life political figure Nelson Mandela, who joins forces with Francois to rally the still-divided country behind the Springboks for the sake of national unity. Though Invictus doesn’t color outside the lines creatively, it is 🌜nevertheless a sweeping and majestic movie about the global language of sports.

27. Rudy (1993)

You’d be hard-pressed to find a movie more inspirational than Rudy. Based on the☂ life of Notre Dame Fighting Irish player Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, Rudy stars Sean Astin in the title role, a young man with learning disabilities and meager means who harbors dreams of playing football for the University of Notre Dame. Through patience and perseverance, Rudy eventually lives out his wildest dreams. While its sentimentality can be overpowering for some, Rudy is a remarkable movie about how our greatest dreams can come true with lots of work and just a little luck.

26. The Mighty Ducks (1992)

It's a family sports movie so good that it not only launched an entire media franchise, but a real NHL team too. But sequels and cartoons aside, the original The Mighty Ducks from 1992 stands out as a grounded underdog sports movie about a Minneapolis attorney, Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) whose court-mandated community service forces him to coach a floundering pee-wee hockey team. Over time, Bombay learns to be a proper coach - and rediscover his lost passion for the sport - while his team shapes up into true players. The Mighty Ducks is such a good movie that it's no wonder Disney actually founded the Mighty Ducks in the National H🧸ockey League shortly after its release. The team was renamed Anaheim Ducks in 2005, and won the coveted Stanley Cup in 2007.