9 Best Movies and Shows with All-Star Coaches

From a plethora of fictional and documentary sports shows and movies, we’ve drawn up a hall-of-fame roster, with each title on our list featuring  a notable manager. By the end of some of these, you just might be the one shouting, “Put me in, coach!”

All American

Inspired by the life of former NFL player Spencer Paysinger, All American begins with Spencer James (Daniel Ezra), a top high school wide receiver, leaving his hometown of Crenshaw for the glitz, glamour, and visibility of Beverly Hills High. Spencer’s recruiter, coach, and new mentor is Billy Baker (Taye Diggs), whose path from Crenshaw High to Beverly Hills High to the NFL is what Spencer hopes to emulate. But Spencer’s transition is far from an easy touchdown, due to the pull of his old life and the jealousy of his new teammates — including Baker’s son, star quarterback Jordan (Michael Evans Behling). The Greg Berlanti–produced series has since spawned a spin-off, All American: Homecoming, which is set at a historically Black college in Atlanta.

The Beautiful Game

Oscar nominee Bill Nighy scores a beautiful performance in The Beautiful Game. Directed by Thea Sharrock, the inspiring film stars Nighy as Mal, the manager of England’s soccer team participating in the Homeless World Cup, with many of the characters portrayed by real-life players in the tournament. As the team prepares for global competition,Mal encounters a former prodigy (Top Boy’s Micheal Ward) who just might be able to lead them to victory if he can overcome his own troubled past. “Every player has a story to tell,” Mal says. “Heartbreaking, unexpected, thrilling stories. And they tell those stories in one great universal language. And that’s football.”

Coach Snoop

Snoop Dogg is many things: a Grammy-winning rapper, a thriving entrepreneur, a WWE Hall of Famer, a busy actor, and, maybe most personally important to him, a coach. Since 2005, Snoop has operated Snoop Youth Football League (SYFL) in Los Angeles, which has been a training ground for many future NFL players. But Snoop doesn’t just leave the coaching to others — he’s long been running his own team, Snoop’s Steelers. The 2018 docuseries Coach Snoop goes inside his mission to mentor and protect kids from LA’s roughest neighborhoods while also attempting to win a state championship. You’ll start feeling like Snoop and Dr. Dre when, after each installment concludes, you find yourself demanding “The Next Episode.”

Home Team

With the New Orleans Saints accused of paying out bonuses for hits that injured opposing players, the NFL’s Bountygate scandal was no joke. But Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison Productions team found some laughs in the subsequent season-long suspension of Saints head coach Sean Payton. Produced by Sandler, Home Team stars his friend and frequent collaborator Kevin James as Payton and follows the Super Bowl winner as he returns to his hometown of Argyle, Texas, to reconnect with his 12-year-old son. With a year off from pro football, Payton soon finds himself coaching young Connor’s middle school squad. (The real Payton also makes a cameo in the film as a janitor.) Home Team proved to be a family affair on-screen and off, with Sandler’s wife, Janice, playing Payton’s ex-spouse and Happy Madison regulars Taylor Lautner and Rob Schneider co-starring.

Hustle

Score another mention on a sports movies list for the Sandman. The actor has long found ways to incorporate his love of basketball into his films, but his two passions come together in a powerful way with Hustle. The crowd-pleasing dramedy from director Jeremiah Zagar and producer LeBron James stars Adam Sandler as trusted Philadelphia 76ers international scout Stanley Sugerman, who dreams of getting off the road and onto the bench as an assistant coach. That temporarily becomes a reality, until the new arrogant, in-over-his-head owner (Ben Foster) decides that he needs Sugerman back in his old gig. This is when the former college player finds a truly game-changing prospect in a promising, previously unknown athlete from Spain, Bo Cruz (Toronto Raptors forward Juancho Hernangómez). Believing that Cruz is the key to a permanent spot on the 76ers coaching staff, Sugerman takes it upon himself to serve as Cruz’s coach, trainer, and mentor. In fact, considering that much of the film takes place in Philadelphia, think of Sugerman as the Mickey to Cruz’s Rocky. And ifyou just can’t get enough of coaches, know that Hustle has you more than covered, with appearances by real-life current and former head honchos: Doc Rivers, Mark Jackson, Brad Stevens and Maurice Cheeks.

Last Chance U

While most movies or shows with a coach at the center solely focus on the inspiration that these mentors can provide, Last Chance U shows the good and the bad. This gripping docuseries from Cheer creator Greg Whiteley explores the inner workings of junior college football, making stops at East Mississippi Community College, Kansas’s Independence Community College and Laney College in Oakland, California. Over the course of five seasons. Whiteley and company always manage to find schools with charismatic coaches surrounded by passionate academic advisers and promising athletes facing often seemingly insurmountable odds. But controversy has also followed some of these football leaders, with their tempers, unorthodox approaches, and language being called into question — and at times even costing them their jobs. If football isn’t your sport, though, don’t throw in the towel: Following the conclusion of Last Chance U, audiences were introduced to the ballers at East Los Angeles College in 2021’s debut season of spin-off Last Chance U: Basketball, which was greenlit for a sophomore installment.

The Playbook

“I’m not gonna coach you to who you are, I’m gonna coach you to who you should be someday.” Those words from NBA champion head coach Doc Rivers are just one of the many moving lessons and messages in The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life. Hailing from producer LeBron James, the docuseries spotlights five coaches at the top of their respective sports: Rivers, Dawn Staley, José Mourinho, Jill Ellis, and Patrick Mouratoglou. Despite coaching in different parts of the world and working with different athletes, they’ve achieved a similar level of greatness, and their rules of success are equally goal-worthy.

The Redeem Team

Every dream team needs its dream coach. When Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Magic Johnson helped put the United States back at the top of the basketball world during the 1992 Olympics, they were guided by recent two-time NBA champion Chuck Daly. And so when the next era of stars, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade, were looking to redeem themselves and the US following a string of shocking upsets, they needed their own Hall of Fame coach. The Redeem Team provides an inside look at the assembling of the 2008 US men’s basketball team, which began with the appointment of Mike Krzyzewski, a former Army officer who went on to become the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history during his 40-plus-year run at Duke University. This 2022 documentary features never-before-seen footage and interviews with the Redeem Team players, including film producers James and Wade, as well as the late Bryant, and showcases how a lifelong college coach earned the respect of a star-studded roster of NBA players on the way to a golden finish.

Rez Ball

LeBron James knows a championship-winning coach when he sees one, having captured four NBA titles with three different teams (and coaches). In the James-produced film Rez Ball, Heather Hobbs (Frontier’s Jessica Matten) proves her own bona fides. Inspired by Michael Powell’s book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation, Rez Ball comes from the Reservation Dogs team of director Sydney Freeland and co-writer Sterlin Harjo, and tells the fictional story of the Chuska Warriors, a high school basketball team anchored by its Native American culture. But when her star player dies, Coach Hobbs, a former standout herself, must pick up the emotional pieces and rally her squad.