I’ve written many times about my movie blind spots.

For a variety of reasons I went long stretches without watching a lot of movies.

And that includes sports movies, and in some cases that includes some very highly regarded sports movies that I should have seen and haven’t.

I started to amend that a little bit back in 2022 when I tried to fill in some of those movie blind spots. That year I watched Miracle, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Brittany Runs A Marathon (after a minute of consideration I determined this is a sports movie), 42, Space Jam, Semi-Pro, Mr. Baseball, Coach Carter, and Any Given Sunday.

If you think of another sports movie that isn’t on that list that I should probably have seen, the chances are pretty good I haven’t.

And I’d like to get to those this year.

Among them was Remember The Titans, which should have made the cut in 2022 because it was certainly one on my radar, but for some reason I just didn’t get around to it.

And then a student recommended it and I figured that was as good a sign as any to make time for it now.

So I did.

As you’ve probably heard from many other sources in the past 25 years, this is a GREAT movie.

It’s based on a true story, although after doing some post-viewing reading I learned that a lot of the movie is Hollywood-ized. Still…it’s one of those movies that can show you that even though sports can be silly and unimportant in the grand scheme of life, sometimes it is a very important thing.

The hardest thing for me to believe in the movie was actually one of the truest: The final state championship-winning play (sorry if this is a spoiler but I think 25 years of a movie being out is beyond that window of spoiling) seems a little contrived…but it actually happened. (The difference is that game was a mid-season game, not the state championship. Most of the games, including the state championship, according to what I read, were blowouts.)

All that said, I loved the movie. Some highlights: great soundtrack, Donald Faison in a just pre-Scrubs role (but post-Clueless), and the movie was really well done overall. It seemed like everything was coming together a little too quickly, but that meant no dull moments. Just a really engaging movie.

I watched this one now because I have some baseball (and college basketball) movie watching to do as we approach those seasons. I didn’t want to wait until the fall to watch a college football movie. Also, with baseball on the horizon, me watching anything else will suffer a little bit because most nights will be dedicated to the Mets.

Final word, if you haven’t seen Remember the Titans, you should not wait 25 years to do so.