Le'Veon Bell's favorite sports movies and an intro to analysis on the topic

Inevitably, the question of "best football movies" crops up around this time of the year. We're planning to go in-depth with this topic in a little while, but for now, I came across a video feature with Steelers rookie running back Le'Veon Bell giving his three favorite football movies.

He mentioned "Remember the Titans," then "Any Given Sunday" and "Friday Night Lights."

Let's just get this out of the way now. "Remember the Titans" is the most overrated sports movie of all time. I wouldn't call it the worst (largely because I saw "42," and if you've seen that, you likely agree with me that is far worse than nearly every sports movie ever made).

First off, I've never understood Hollywood's insistence on leaning on the melodramatic ending to games. Not every football game has to end on a 70-yard touchdown off of a trick play. And that seems to be the writer's interpretation of T.C. Williams High School's 1971 season.

In fact, when three larger schools merge into one, that team tends to be completely dominant, which that team was.

"There were more than a few times that I felt genuinely sorry for the teams we played," said Charles Mitchell, a backup running back, in Jeff Merron's Reel Life feature from ESPN.com. "We would have won the state championship without the coaches, in my opinion. We were that dominating. We were that deep."

We'll dig more into this movie, but this seemed like a good segue into the series. Drop a few of your favorites into the comments, and I'll use them in the series.

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