^{OK cinephiles, this one’s for you! There have been three Best Picture Academy Award Winning films with sports as the main theme. Those three films’ original theatrical posters appear, in part, above. What three sports movies have won the Best Picture Oscar?}

Sports, athletes, and their stories have long been fertile ground for Hollywood stories.

Yet in the 96-year history of the Academy Awards only three feature length films have earned the Best Picture Oscar: Rocky (1976), Chariots of Fire (1981), and Million Dollar Baby (2004).

^{The movie posters from Rocky, Million Dollar Baby, and Chariots of Fire.}

Interestingly enough, two of the three films focus on boxing. Rocky, of course, is the famous Sylvester Stallone project that he wrote and starred in. It received solid reviews when released and wound up being the lead in a series that, if the Creed films are considered part of the lineage, still going strong nearly 50 years later. Million Dollar Baby is the project of another Hollywood heavyweight (get it;-), Clint Eastwood. Based on the a collection of F.X. Toole entitled Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner, Eastwood went on to direct, co-star, produce, and score the film that stars Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. Like Rocky, it was also well received by critics.

Chariots of Fire is the film about two British track athletes running in the 1924 Olympics and intertwines timeless themes such as religion, prejudice, and athletics.

Have other sports-themed films been more popular among cinephiles, certainly, but this trio has resonated with critics and fans (and Academy voters!) alike.