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A look back at the history of football movies

By Randy Williams
Special to Page 2

Thursday, April 3, 2008

"You want to know about America? Learn football. It's three-dimensional chess. It is complex, violent, very fast and with all kinds of skullduggery. And as a gold mine of human behavior, its metaphoric power on film is staggering." So says Al Ruddy, the godfather of the modern sport movie. Ruddy's success in creating "The Longest Yard" revived studio interest in the genre during the mid-'70s, paving the way for classics like "Slap Shot," "Rocky" and "The Bad News Bears." Moviegoers have embra ...

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