Everybody loves a good movie about sports. Some of us love to watch films that follow our heroes and how they rose to fame, but some of the best movies that have ever been released about sport usually follow some form of controversy. While the world of sports can be glorious, it can also be riddled with athletes that have tried to bend the rules, athletes that have cheated through substance abuse, and basically everything else that you can think of.

On that subject, we would like to spend some time and highlight some of the best sporting movies that follow some of the more infamous characters in the sporting world. We are sure that you have heard about some of the guys that are mentioned in these movies! But love them or hate them, they have certainly paved the way for some great viewing entertainment.

Eight Men Out

If you’ve never watched this movie before, we highly recommend that you do when you get the chance. As far as sporting scandals go, they don’t come much larger than what you will discover in Eight Men Out. Some claim that the events that took place back in 1919 shaped the sports betting world as we know it today. To give you a brief overview of the storyline, this movie follows the Chicago White Sox and their efforts to throw the World Series for the sake of profit.

“Eight Men Out” was released in 1988 and is still considered one of the best “betting movies” ever done. The film gives you a glimpse into the unregulated world of sports betting back in the day - way before sports betting became legal. The topic is as relevant today as it was in 1919 which probably explains why the film is popular in the Arabic region currently witnessing a sharp increase of both legal and illegal betting. Besides the fact that this movie is based on a true story, you can’t help but get sucked into the interesting underworld of some rather nasty characters and their hope to profit from manipulating sporting outcomes. While these activities are still prevalent today, it is far more difficult to get away with, and far less entertaining when the stories do come to fruition.

The Armstrong Lie

Although there have been many sporting scandals over the years, few athletes have fallen from grace quite as hard as Lance Armstrong. As some of you may know, Armstrong was this seemingly superhuman cyclist that managed to battle his way back from terminal cancer and win the Tour de France a record number of times. This was all the more impressive since the Tour de France is seen as one of the most challenging sporting events in the world. However, Armstrong’s fame and inspiration would come crashing down when allegations came to light in 2012 concerning one of the largest doping scandals the world has ever seen.

The documentary, “The Armstrong Lie” (2013) focuses on what took place during those years, and what drove Armstrong to conduct himself in this way. Two years later a biographical drama titled “The Program” (2015) was released starring Ben Foster as Lance Armstrong. Once Armstrong confessed to what he had done, he was stripped of all seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for the rest of his life. The Armstrong Lie is available at Documentary Mania.

Diego Maradonna

It would seem timely to talk about the Diego Maradona movie given his recent and unfortunate death. While one cannot deny this man’s God-given talents on a football field, this movie gives us a glimpse into the highly troubled life of one of the legends of the game. Although Maradona seems superhuman when he stepped onto a football pitch, this movie shows that his personal life was anything but superhuman. The documentary “Diego Maradona” (2019) was constructed from more than 500 hours of footage not seen before and takes us behind the scenes into Maradonna’s problems with infidelity, his growing problems with substance abuse, and his associations with the Italian mafia during his time in Naples.

Maradona was one of the most successful football players of all time and the documentary lets us we see the man behind the scandal and difficulties. Arguably the most legendary of them all was his ‘hand of God’ goal, scored in the World Cup against England. Although this is now many decades ago, people still believe that Maradona’s handling of the situation showed that he had no problems with cheating or manipulation, both on the field and in life.

Final Thoughts

Each of these films are absolutely epic in their own rights. Whether you are familiar with the stories or not, we would definitely recommend that you spend a bit of time and get to know the characters behind these scandals. Not only do all of these movies supply you with hours of entertainment, but they also help to broaden your knowledge of the sporting world and how people try to manipulate it to their advantage.