Three minutes till the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today.

You know the moment when the team morale is low, when it's do or die. You find out life's this

game of inches. So is football. I'm talking of course about the big speech and

Al Pacino gives one of the most memorable ones ever in the 1999 football

movie Any Given Sunday.

On this team we fight for that edge. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that

inch. Another staple of football movies, the underdog story, like in Rudy from 1993.

And ever since I was a kid, everybody said it couldn't be done. I always listen to him,

believe what they said. I don't want to do that anymore.

Rudy has become such a shorthand in sports fandom for that that person at the end of the bench

who practices with the team and you know bleeds and

sweats and cries along with everybody else but doesn't get to play like that person

has still made a sacrifice. Stephen Thompson is a host of NPR's pop culture happy hour and a

self-described sucker for underdog stories. It's not necessarily about like a

dominant athlete winning it all or whatever. It's just about how important to a person it can be to get to play.

And just as important in many football movies are the bonds formed on the field, often under extreme pressure. like in the 2000 film Remember the Titans.

Last Side!

Last Side!

Last Side!

I've seen Remember the, no fewer than 25 to 40 times.

Brittany Luce is the host of It's Been a Minute.

There's something about that teamwork aspect and that connection on that emotional level that to me

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