Football Movie Trivia
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70 free Football Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Football movies are their own genre, with their own rituals: the underdog tryout, the halftime speech, the last-second play. This quiz covers 61 of them, from the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers and Harold Lloyd's The Freshman through Brian's Song, North Dallas Forty and The Longest Yard, on to Rudy, Remember the Titans, Friday Night Lights, The Blind Side, The Waterboy and recent true stories like American Underdog, Safety and 80 for Brady. The questions go beyond who starred in what. You will be asked which real NFL team the Replacements were based on, why the league would not let Leatherheads use the Duluth Eskimos' name, what scene was cut from The Program after copycat accidents, which Super Bowl Black Sunday filmed at, and how many games De La Salle really won in a row. Easy openers sit beside questions built to stump people who host movie nights every Sunday. Every answer has been checked against a source, and each question shows its citation and a short explanation once you answer. Play it before the game, at a tailgate or in a movie-trivia round, and share your score.
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Q 01In Remember the Titans (2000), which actor plays Coach Herman Boone?
Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington's Boone integrates a team on screen, but the real school had been integrated since it opened in 1965; the upheaval of 1971 was Alexandria merging its three high schools into one.
Q 02Remember the Titans ends on a last-play win, but how did the real 1971 state final end?
Shutout win
A shutout win, 27-0 over Andrew Lewis High, capped a 13-0 season with nine shutouts; the film moved the Titans' one close call, a 21-16 midseason escape against Marshall High, to the final.
Q 03Rudy (1993) was the first film Notre Dame let shoot on its campus since which earlier movie?
Knute Rockne, All American
Knute Rockne, All American (1940) was the last; Rudy's closing scene, with Sean Astin carried off the field, was shot at halftime of Notre Dame's real 1992 home game against Boston College.
Q 04Which team does Rudy Ruettiger finally get to play against in the closing game of Rudy?
Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech was the real opponent too: Ruettiger made a sack on the final play of Notre Dame's 1975 home finale, but no player handed in a jersey, and coach Dan Devine wrote that he had let the film cast him as the heavy.
Q 05Friday Night Lights (2004) follows the 1988 Permian Panthers of which Texas town?
Odessa
Odessa's real 1988 Panthers squeezed into the playoffs on a coin flip and lost to Dallas Carter in a semifinal, not in the state championship game the film stages.
Q 06Who plays Coach Gary Gaines in the film Friday Night Lights?
Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton played Gaines for director Peter Berg, and Kyle Chandler's Coach Eric Taylor arrived with the 2006 TV series; the real Gaines went 16-0 and won the state title in 1989, the season after the one on screen.
Q 07In The Blind Side (2009), which character won Sandra Bullock the Best Actress Oscar?
Leigh Anne Tuohy
Leigh Anne Tuohy. Bullock has said she repeatedly refused the film, and she only came round after a visit with the real Tuohy.
Q 08The Blind Side is based on a 2006 book by which author?
Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis. He and the father of the family that took Oher in had been longtime classmates at a New Orleans school, which helps explain his remarkable access.
Q 09In Any Given Sunday (1999), Al Pacino coaches which fictional pro team?
Miami Sharks
Miami Sharks. The NFL disliked Oliver Stone's script and withheld its team names and logos, so he invented a whole league for the Sharks to play in.
Q 10Which hip-hop star was first cast as quarterback Willie Beamen in Any Given Sunday before Jamie Foxx replaced him?
Sean Combs
Sean Combs. Oliver Stone put him through screen tests, but the football crew said he could not throw convincingly, so Stone turned to Jamie Foxx, a former high school quarterback.
Q 11Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Oscar-winning Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire plays for which NFL team?
Arizona Cardinals
Arizona Cardinals. Tidwell's 'Show me the money' came from real Cardinals safety Tim McDonald, who used the line while shopping for a new contract in 1993.
Q 12Which real sports agent did Cameron Crowe shadow for months while researching Jerry Maguire?
Leigh Steinberg
Leigh Steinberg. Crowe trailed him to drafts and a Super Bowl while researching the script, though Crowe insists Jerry himself is pure fiction.
Q 13The Longest Yard star Burt Reynolds played college football for which school?
Florida State
Q 21Invincible (2006) tells of Vince Papale, a 30-year-old bartender who made which NFL team in 1976?
Philadelphia Eagles
Philadelphia Eagles. The film leaves out that Papale had already played two seasons of pro football for the Philadelphia Bell of the short-lived World Football League.
Q 22Who plays Bobby Boucher's fiercely protective Mama in The Waterboy (1998)?
Kathy Bates
Kathy Bates. She threw the script in the trash after 12 pages, until her niece fished it out and told her who Adam Sandler was.
Q 23Who plays Coach Klein, the Mud Dogs' nervous head coach, in The Waterboy?
Henry Winkler
Henry Winkler. He got the part after phoning Adam Sandler to thank him for a name-check in 'The Chanukah Song' on Saturday Night Live.
Florida State. A knee injury and then a car crash that cost him his spleen wrecked Reynolds's playing career there, and he turned to acting.
Q 14Mean Machine, the 2001 British remake of The Longest Yard with Vinnie Jones, switched the sport to what?
Soccer
Soccer. Vinnie Jones was a real former professional, and British audiences already knew the title: the 1974 original was released there as The Mean Machine.
Q 15The 1971 TV movie Brian's Song is about Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, teammates on which NFL club?
Chicago Bears
Chicago Bears. Weeks before Piccolo died in 1970, Sayers accepted the league's courage award and told the room it belonged to his teammate, the speech at the heart of the film.
Q 16Which Godfather star played dying running back Brian Piccolo in the 1971 TV movie Brian's Song?
James Caan
James Caan. He said he refused the TV movie four times, fearing the stigma television carried for film actors, then earned an Emmy nomination for it.
Q 17In Varsity Blues (1999), Jon Voight's coach Bud Kilmer leads a team from which fictional Texas town?
West Canaan
West Canaan. The town is invented, but the title stuck: in 2019 the FBI code-named its college-admissions bribery investigation Operation Varsity Blues.
Q 18Who plays rebellious backup quarterback Jonathan 'Mox' Moxon in Varsity Blues (1999)?
James Van Der Beek
James Van Der Beek. He only took up acting because a football concussion at 13 sidelined him for a year, and he landed the lead in his school's Grease instead.
Q 19Who plays head coach Jack Lengyel in We Are Marshall (2006)?
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey. The 1970 crash killed all 75 aboard, and Lengyel rebuilt the team with freshmen after the NCAA waived its ban on them playing varsity.
Q 20Which Lost star plays assistant coach Red Dawson in We Are Marshall?
Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox. The real Dawson was not on the plane because he had driven to the game so he could go on to a recruiting trip, and he heard about the crash on his car radio.
Q 24ESPN's 30 for 30 film Year of the Scab follows the 1987 strike replacements of which eventual Super Bowl champion?
Washington Redskins
Washington Redskins. Their 3-0 strike team loosely inspired The Replacements (2000), yet most of the real replacement players waited until 2018 for Super Bowl rings.
Q 25In Little Giants (1994), the winning trick play is named after which historical event?
The Annexation of Puerto Rico
The Annexation of Puerto Rico. In 2011 the Carolina Panthers scored an NFL touchdown on a hidden-ball play, and coach Ron Rivera said the idea came from the film he had watched with his kids.
Q 26Which duo play rival pee-wee coaches and brothers Danny and Kevin O'Shea in Little Giants?
Rick Moranis and Ed O'Neill
Rick Moranis and Ed O'Neill. The film grew out of a McDonald's Super Bowl commercial about pee-wee football: Steven Spielberg phoned its writers the next morning wanting his own Home Alone.
Q 27Kevin Costner plays the general manager of which team in Draft Day (2014)?
Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Browns. Co-writer Rajiv Joseph was born and raised in Cleveland, yet he had at first avoided writing about his own team, saying the Browns were too close to his heart.
Q 28In Concussion (2015), Dr. Bennet Omalu's 2002 autopsy of which Steelers Hall of Famer led him to identify CTE?
Mike Webster
Mike Webster. His brain looked normal when Omalu opened the skull, and the damage only showed after special sectioning and staining that Omalu paid for out of his own pocket.
Q 29Ernie Davis, first African American Heisman winner and subject of The Express (2008), played for which university?
Syracuse
Syracuse. Davis wore number 44 there, as Jim Brown had before him, and the number became so revered that the university had its ZIP code changed to 13244.
Q 30In Radio (2003), James Robert Kennedy befriends a high school football team in which state?
South Carolina
South Carolina. T. L. Hanna High in Anderson gave the real Kennedy permanent status as a junior, so he never had to graduate and leave the team.