The Littlest Guy on the Field, but has the Biggest Heart

Rudy is a 1993 American sports film directed by David Anspaugh. The movie Rudy is one of the greatest inspirational movies of all time, as well as one of the best sports movies of all time. The star Sean Austin (Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger) grew up in Joliet, Illinois where he played football up until high school and dreamed of going to school at Notre Dame and to play football for them. His whole family loved him, but knew he was never going to ever get into Notre Dame.  While achieving some success with his local high school team Joliet Catholic, he lacks the grades and money to attend Notre Dame. Not only was it hard to get in, but Notre Dame was a prestigious school, as well as a fantastic football team that were all huge and highly recruited to the NFL. Ruettiger was much smaller than an average football player, standing just 5'6" and weighing 165 lb. He at first failed to get into Notre Dame, so he attended Holy Cross to get grades good enough to get into Notre Dame. After the first semester he gets admitted into Notre Dame. He walks onto the football team, becoming practice dummy where they only practice and do not dress for games. He took abusive hits from his fellow players from trying to outplay everyone else. He had so much heart, he did not care if he made the players upset, he just always wanted to try his best and be able to dress up for at least one game his senior year. He did not only want to do this for himself, but to prove to everyone, especially his family, that he could achieve anything he strived for. He certainly proved everyone who doubted him when he got to dress up for the last game of his senior year, and got in for the last 30 seconds of the game against Georgia Tech. Not only did Rudy want this, but his whole team wanted him to dress for one game because of the heart Rudy has showed that past four years. The week before the last game, the whole team dropped their jerseys off in the coach's office so the coach could understand how big of a deal it was to Rudy. The coach did not like the fact of him dressing up but gave him. Rudy came to show that not matter how small you can be, as long as you have the heart and determination to reach a goal, you can do it. After all the humiliation he took from the coaches, players, and practice, in the end he came out a winner. After everyone who has doubted him his whole life from getting into Notre Dame and even playing on the team, he proved everyone wrong. He is the true definition of a man who had heart.

The Good Ole Gridiron of Texas

Friday Nights Lights is a movie for anyone who loves the game of football. It is about a a football team in Texas where football is "The Life" of the town. All people attend the football games like every other football team but in this town they go to the practice. In this town, the citizens of this town Odessa, pressure the payers to win every game and "Win State". Even the coach, Gary Gaines who is played by Billy Bob Thorton, tells their players after a practice, "We are gonna win State". This puts a lot of the pressure on the boys, even from the townspeople as well. The stars of the movie are about 4 football players with different backgrounds. "Boobie" Miles, plays as the star of the football team going into the season until he tears his ACL. Don Billingsly, is a crazy, party animal whose dad won an Odessa Super Bowl ring back in his day, pressures Donny to be the best running back and "Not fumble the football." Brian Chavez is the smart, in control safety who always keeps his cool and is playing football for the love of the game. Mike Winchell is the quarterback, who has a pressuring mother who studies his playbook with him every night and looks for college scouts to come talk to him all the time. This movie is full of crazy ways how this football team and acts around "just a game" of football.

The "U"

The Miami football team was never a successful program back in the 60's and 70's. When Schnellenberger took over, his first speech said that "We are going to win a National Championship". This shocked everyone and didn't know what to expect. He turned this team around, the drought that they were in that past 20 years needed to end. In 1983, his team ended up beating the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Orange bowl, who were thought to be the best college team ever. They won their first national championship the first year Schnellenberger was the coach. This was the start of the great dynasty. The next year, Jimmy Johnson took over. He brought the team to winning a national championship in the 80's. Miami did heavy recruiting all over Miami, looking for the bad boys, going through every small neighborhood all over southern Florida. Starting with Johnson, his players turned out to be crazy players who would dance, taunt, and be a complete nuisance on the field all the time. Players would do late hits all the time and didn't care if they were penalized. The players woukd have a erotic touch down dance or talk mad shit to the other players after plays. These players did not even care, they would through themselves around and act like a bunch of monkeys. The funny thing is that the coach Jimmy Johnson didn't even think to control his players, he encouraged it! He thought, "Well they are doing their job, and college football is supposed to be fun so let them have their fun." Everyone viewed this team of the 80's as bad boys. They were seen as criminals that got away with everything. This team dynasty won 3 national championships in 6 years in the 80's, 1 by a different coach (Dennis Erickson coached from 1989-1994). In the early 90's, the NCAA made so many rules regardless to the way Miami acted, they had to stop them all from getting away with everything and make rules. With this, the team had to change their dress code and try to act more appropriate. From 1983-2002, the "U" won 8 championships. They dominated their ERA. Everyone loved watching them because they did what they wanted, they cheered the crowd up and dominated their ERA. They were badasses. They didn't have rules.

Hometown Team

Only the people who has ever played for a sports team knows how it feels to represent your town, city, state, country, etc. In almost every area of the world there is a sport that the area loves playing or watching others play, for example professionals. Sports are so important because it brings a community or people together in unity to support their local sports against opposing teams. Whether it’d be the New England Patriots vs. The New York Giants, U.S.A. men’s Hockey team vs. the USSR Olympic team, or the famous boxing fight between Joe Lewis vs. Primo Carnera. Sports make up peoples lives, some people only watch TV to watch ESPN like me. Sports are what give people a living, whether playing it all your life or being a huge supporter for the love of the game.

Being apart of a professional or collegiate organization is something to really enjoy. Sports are even greater to people in their life than serious news that is happening across the world. Like when Ohio State University beat the Michigan State football team for the first time in three years. The headline of the news paper was this team winning, rather than the controversy in Asia that brought war. When Joe Lewis (African) fought Primo Carnera (White) in the 1930's for the heavyweight title, every African American was rooting for Joe to be the first African to be the Boxing heavyweight champion of the world. When he won, all the Africans went nuts. They felt so cocky that they were the strongest people in the world now that Joe was. All the African Americans joined together in celebrating and they felt apart of Joe, that they all won in a sense because this was a huge thing.

People who do not follow a team near them or support sports at all I feel like they are missing out. Sports are what make people get up everyday and look forward to the nighttime or the weekends after work and watch their sports team win. It is not even have to watching games religiously, just being supportive of your hometown professional or collegiate sports team or player, you feel apart of the team. You feel as if you have something to show off when your team wins a game, division, or even championship. Sports mean everything in the world to me, and without them I do not know what I would do for fun. Without sports, I would have nothing to support or look forward to enjoy.