So for the past eight or nine years now, the American Film Institute has been celebrating the 100th anniversary of American cinema by coming out with top 100 lists, and yesterday they presented their choices for the 100 most inspirational American films. Since nothing is so inspiring to Americans as stories about people who are expected to be inferior succeeding over people who are otherwise expected to be superior (for further clarification, see Revenge of the Nerds), and since this theme is most easily (and frequently - did you know there was a third Major League movie?) presented in the context of sports, it was no surprise that there were several sports movies near the top of the list.

The problem is that none of the sports movies* that made the list are actually inspirational. Rudy struggled through five years of practice at Notre Dame and playing wingman to an overweight pre-Swingers Jon Favreau, and his "inspiring" hard work and dedication was rewarded with five years of humiliation as he was continually left off the game roster. Finally his whining gets to be too much and (with the star player threatening to sit) the coach puts him in for one meaningless play. And what did five years of practice prepare him for? Well, he didn't know where to line up, didn't know what his assignment was, so he just ran around and got a lucky sack. (In real life, he didn't record a tackle or sack of any kind.) The lesson: be an annoying pest for five years, finally get what you want, prove that you wasted five years by not being prepared for the one thing you've been begging for, and somehow you're still a hero. This makes no sense.

Some of the other top-ranked sports movies fail to live up to the underdog overcoming adversity theme altogether. Hickory High had Jimmy Chitwood, the best player in the state, and a coach who would have been coaching at a D-1 college if he didn't punch a player, so winning the state title really should have been expected for them. And it was well established in Breaking Away that the blond swishy guy was by far the best cyclist in Bloomington, IN long before the climactic relay race, so his winning was, again, no surprise. Just meeting expectations isn't inspiring.

You could make a case for Rocky, but the fact is that he was a big, strong guy who could take a punch long before fighting Apollo. He also had the advantage of having a trainer who was smart enough to study film of Apollo's fights and find a weakness that Rocky could exploit (never trust a southpaw). So this, again, isn't so much about overcoming insurmountable odds as it is about using trickery to take advantage of a superior opponent's overconfidence. Still not that inspiring.

The only way this really works is if the protagonist has no discernible quality that would in any way make it possible for him/her/them to beat a superior opponent. You need someone who is weak, unlikeable, stupid, poorly trained, ugly, and really annoying somehow miraculously overcoming an all-around superior antagonist without resorting to trickery or gimmicks to really create an inspiring sports story. Which is why The Karate Kid is the most inspiring American film of the past 100 years (er... 108, but who's counting?).

Daniel Larusso was a skinny, weak, uncoordinated, poor, funny-lookin, dim-witted, possibly mentally challenged young man, abandoned by his father (and who could blame him?), neglected by his mother, and friendless except for an elderly immigrant janitor who, likewise, had no friends. But he was still able to bag Elizabeth Shue and beat up the Cobra-Kai kids who were physically stronger, better motivated, and better trained than he could ever wish to be. This is by far the single greatest underdog story ever put to film and the only movie that could truly inspire equally pathetic wretches to such levels of greatness (or at least dressing up in a karate outfit for Halloween and getting their tails kicked). Yes, even greater than the non-sports movies that topped the list. An Oskar Schindler or a George Bailey or an Atticus Finch would be expected by the audience to ultimately overcome due to their moral superiority over the system, making their eventual successes anti-climactic. But deep-down, weren't we all rooting just a little bit for Daniel-san to bleed? That just makes success that much more sweet.

And it didn't even make the list. We was robbed!

(* Field of Dreams is not now and has never been a sports movie.)