The 20 biggest underdogs in sports movies

The word “underdog” is literally in the title of this movie, so we figured it earned the chance to be included. Sure, maybe you don’t consider dodgeball a sport, but it is presented as such in this comedy. Plus, the underdog team is called “Average Joe’s” and they seem to have no clue how to play dodgeball at first.

Perhaps the greatest underdog upset in real sports, at least if you are American. The “Miracle on Ice” is a well-known story. America’s hockey team at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980 were amateurs. The Soviet Union’s “Red Army” was effectively a group of professionals. Everybody assumed the USSR would win, but then Team USA pulled off the upset, an upset so big it got the biopic treatment.

Rarely was a team featuring prime Michael Jordan an underdog, but that was the case in “Space Jam.” The Looney Tunes team were going up against the Monstars, who had stolen the talent of a few of the best basketball players in the world (and also Muggsy Bogues and Shawn Bradley). The Tune Squad’s underdog status is further established by the fact they are getting absolutely obliterated at the half. Jordan’s skills – and the Looney Tunes really breaking just about every rule of basketball – eke out the win, but just barely.

Rocky Balboa is perhaps the quintessential sports movie underdog, at least in the original film. He’s viewed as an easy win for the champion Apollo Creed, a tune-up fight, a resumé booster. Instead, the “Italian Stallion” trains hard and gives Creed the fight of his life. Famously, Rocky doesn’t win, but he does go the distance in a sports film that even won Best Picture at the Oscars.

Look, if you are relying on a dog to step up to save your basketball team, you are probably lacking in talent. If you have never seen “Air Bud,” you might assume that it is all about a dog that plays basketball, but actually Buddy is mostly a mascot for the Timberwolves. In the state finals, though, the team is down to four players because of injuries, and they are losing pretty soundly. Fortunately, as you may have heard, there is no rule saying a dog can’t play basketball.

In addition to being a classic coming-of-age movie, “Breaking Away” is an underdog sports movie. Dave and his friends are townies in Bloomington, home to Indiana University. The university has a “Little 500” bicycle race, and decides to open the competition up to one team from the town. Dave and his friends are that team, but Dave is the only good cyclist in the mix, so he has to ride almost the entire race himself, while other teams swap out riders. Then, Dave gets injured, and the underdog element is increased even more.

In the 1994 sequel “D2: The Mighty Ducks,” Team USA is not an underdog, even if it lost to Iceland the first time. However, District 5, aka the Ducks, definitely are underdogs in the first film. Gordon Bombay is able to get them proper equipment and turn them into a real team, even before Adam Banks shows up to boost the talent of the roster.

Another story from real life, and the Olympics at that, “Cool Runnings” tells the story of the Jamaican bobsled team. Obviously, Jamaica is not a nation you associate with winter sports. A comedic take on the events, “Cool Runnings” culminates with the Jamaican bobsled squad making it to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Then, they did really poorly. Hey, there’s a reason why the team is on this list of biggest sports underdogs.

Sure, the members of the Washington Sentinels are scabs, but this ragtag group of, well, replacements are also underdogs. One of them is a sumo wrestler who has never played football before! Now, scabs or not, the Sentinels earn both further underdog status and our rooting interest because the Dallas not-Cowboys’ entire team crosses the picket line, even more egregious from a labor perspective. Fortunately, the Sentinels picked up the big win.

Speaking of athletes taking up a new sport, Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore is a failed hockey player who ends up taking up golf thanks to his natural ability to drive the ball further than anybody else on the PGA tour. Of course, golf is more than just driving, and it definitely isn’t about fighting Bob Barker. Thus, even with one great skill, Happy is largely an underdog, even if he takes down Shooter McGavin in the end.

It’s pretty self-evident: If you are a team of convicts playing a team of prison guards in a prison yard, you are underdogs. That’s true even with a former NFL quarterback on your team in Paul “Wrecking” Crewe. Crewe and his fellow convicts are able to come together against the odds, though. Notably, “The Longest Yard” was later remade with the aforementioned Sandler in the Crewe role.

You think beating prison guards in a football game is tough? Imagine facing off against a proper German soccer team when you are a group of POWs during World War II. That’s what faces the Allied soccer team in “Victory,” sometimes titled “Escape to Victory.” The movie has a fascinating cast, including Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, and Brazilian soccer legend Pele.

If you are a professional MLB team, how can you be that big of an underdog? Well, maybe your new owner is tanking the team, hoping to move them. That’s what happens to Cleveland’s MLB squad in “Major League.” Of course, these scrappy underdogs are able to come together and climb up the standings. “Major League” is still considered a top sports comedy of all time, and spawned a couple of sequels as well.

Hickory High is a small school in a small Indiana town, so even having Norman Dale as head coach can only take them so far. The Huskers have to deal with having only five players for a time as well. Sure, when Jimmy Chitwood returns to the team, locally they are less of an underdog, but then they make it to the state championship game in Indianapolis. The South Bend Central Bears are a larger, more athletic team, but Hickory High is not about to give up, even if it is a bigger underdog than ever.

Problematic, crass, and about youth baseball, “The Bad News Bears” is a strange film, to be sure. It was also a hit at the time, even getting remade. The titular team is one of the handful of sports-movie underdogs on this list not to win in the end, and they would remain underdogs in future sequels.

Infamously, the SMU Mustangs football team was handed the “death penalty” by the NCAA, ruining a once-venerated program for a generation. “Necessary Roughness” is influenced by that. The Texas State Fightin’ Armadillos see the entire coaching staff fired and all but one of the players expelled for corruption and malfeasance. That leaves new coach Ed Gennero to put together an entirely new roster without any scholarships available. Naturally, the new roster is a little bit “wackier” than the usual college football roster, but that’s what makes an underdog sports squad.

At first, the Beavers are major underdogs against the Dragons, a rival high school basketball team. Also, they lose badly. Then, Scott Howard becomes a werewolf, a teen wolf as it were. Suddenly, Scott is great at basketball, and the Beavers are no longer underdogs. However, Scott then renounces playing as his werewolf self, not ideal for the Beavers as they head into the championship game against the Dragons. This time, though, the underdogs pull it off.

Yes, the Marx Brothers made an underdog sports comedy. Huxley College is consistently losing, and a big game against rival Darwin College is coming up. The new president of the school, played by Groucho, is convinced his team should pay profeessional football players to join the team. Unfortunately, through a series of misunderstandings, Huxley recruits Chico and Harpo, who are not football players. Even so, Huxley is able to pull off the win, even if they do resort to using a horse-drawn wagon to score a touchdown.

In the small town of Mystery, there is a big hockey game every Saturday that is a massive event for the community. This leads to a news story, which in turn leads to the NHL’s New York Rangers coming up to Alaska to play an exhibition game. The expectation is the Rangers will trounce the locals, but in the end, the Rangers barely eke out a 5-4 win. “Mystery, Alaska” is probably somewhat inspired by when a team from Dawson City traveled to Ottawa to face the Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup in 1905. In reality, though, Ottawa won the first game 9-2, and the second game 23-2.

American Samoa has a national soccer team. It is, arguably, the worst national team in men’s soccer. However, Thomas Rongen took the gig coaching the team to try and get them to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. It didn’t work out, but it inspired a documentary, which now has become a narrative film directed by Taika Waititi.