Best Sports Documentaries
 

The Best Sports Documentaries of All Time | Bleacher Report

This gives 10 good documentaries. Do you have some other recommendations?

I've only seen Once In A Lifetime & When We Were Kings from that list. Enjoyed the former more, tbh, because Ali has been slightly done to death as a subject by various filmmakers over the years.

The story of the NY Cosmos & the NASL is a fascinating and largely forgotten one, until the docu redressed the balance. In the late 70s the Americans were playing fantasy football for real with the world's game; anyone who was anyone played over there.

ITV did a rather good documentary on Brian Clough this year, called simply Clough, however my personal favourite was a 3-parter written & presented by the legendary football scribe Hugh McIlvaney called The Football Men. It focussed on the three Scottish managers who shaped British football in the second half of the 20th century: Bill Shankly, Jock Stein & Sir Matt Busby.

Channel 4 did a very interesting series on football sometime in the last 5-8 years iirc, I can't remember what it was called, but they had some very good ones on Sven Goran Eriksson and Alex Ferguson.

The list is complete crap if only for the reason that they put 'Wrestling With Shadows' on it. The only thing that documentary is good for is demonstrating what a complete mark Bret Hart is for himself.

I cringed when I saw the scene where Bret Hart is talking about how he'd prefer to see his character getting raped in the ring than lose to Shawn in Montreal. "I won't let them rape me."

Biggest load of **** I've ever seen.

Only seen Murderball and When We Were Kings, but both are fantastic.

Number 8 once in a lifetime is an excellent doco and it's the one I would have mentioned before seeing the list.

An Impossible Job is well worth a look. It's on Google video, actually.

Have seen Dogtown and Z Boys and When We Were Kings from that list (was watching the latter on ABC when the planes hit the twin towers...came back from making dinner and thought "What the hell is this, I don't remember this part")

Another really good sports documentary is 'The Other Final':

THE OTHER FINAL

Haven't seen Unforgiveable Blackness, but if it's even a remotely well put together piece on Jack Johnson, it would be well worth a look.

OT, but what are your favourite sports movies? There are so many, most of them are pretty diabolical. Excluding pure docos, I still think This Sporting Life is my all time favourite.

Coach Carter (H)

Only documentary I've seen in recent times is the Bulls dynasty one, I thought it did a pretty decent job but it spans 6 DVDs so requires a bit of patience.

I saw the Jack Johnson one... it is really long but pretty brilliant. He led an amazing life and it's a shame how forgotten he is. He really was an incredible boxer and person. I urge others to watch it and, if need be, in two sessions since it's almost 4 hrs long.

Senna

The name says it all, most inspirational doc featuring life of Senna

god hoop dreams is good

I thought ESPN's 30 for 30 series was fantastic - particularly Charismatic.
"30 for 30" Charismatic (TV episode 2010) - IMDb