Football season is nearly upon us, and coming with it is a new spate of football movies.
 
"Invincible," a Disney film starring Mark Wahlberg as a 30-year-old bartender trying to win a job with the Philadelphia Eagles, is scheduled to come out later this month. Due out in September are "Gridiron Gang," which stars The Rock as a coach who puts a team together at a juvenile detention center, and "Facing the Giants," which tells the tale of a Christian football coach struggling with issues of faith.

With that in mind, here are my picks for the best football movies of all time:

1. "Remember the Titans." The true story of how black and white players at newly-intergrated T.C. Williams High School came together to win the 1971 Virginia Class AAA state title confirmed my belief that yes, Rodney King, we can all get along. The best scene: Titans coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) tosses a banana at a coach who called him a "monkey" after humiliating that coach's team in a state playoff game.

2. "Rudy." There aren't too many movies made about undersized, walk-on scrubs who appeared at the end of one college game for all of eight seconds. However, the story of Rudy Ruettiger (Sean Astin), who went to incredible lengths just to get into Notre Dame and then got pounded on mercilessly for two seasons as a scout-team player for the Fighting Irish, is one of the most inspiring films ever.

3. "All the Right Moves." Tom Cruise gives a moving performance as a high school cornerback who sees a college scholarship as his ticket out of a Pennsylvania steel town but makes a bad choice that puts his chances in jeopardy.

4. "Knute Rockne, All-American." It's kind of eerie to watch Ronald Reagan as ill-fated Notre Dame halfback George Gipp and think, "That's a future president."

5. "Everybody's All-American." Dennis Quaid is worshipped as a god as an LSU football star and Jessica Lange is his beauty-queen bride, but the fairy tale ends once Quaid turns pro.

6. "Any Given Sunday." The best scene: Linebacker Luther "Shark" Lavay (played by real-life Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor) cuts quarterback Willie Beamen's van in half with a chainsaw after Beamen (Jamie Foxx) rips the Miami Sharks' defense during a TV interview.

7. "Varsity Blues." James Van Der Beek makes a surprisingly sympathetic hero as a backup quarterback who, after being thrust into the starting role when his team's star gets injured, takes on his win-at-all-costs coach (Jon Voight) in football-mad West Texas.

8. "The Longest Yard." Adam Sandler's 2005 version was surprisingly true to the 1974 film starring Burt Reynolds (who also appeared in this one) as an imprisoned former NFL quarterback who leads a ragtag team of convicts against a semipro team of prison guards. Sandler's version was funnier, however, which is why it gets the edge.

9. "The Program." Pretty much every evil the NCAA tries to keep under wraps comes out in this film about fictitious ESU, from coaches who clean up their players' messes in and out of the classroom to boosters handing out cash under the table.

10. "Necessary Roughness." The flipside of "The Program" with a comedic twist: After its championship program is dismantled for committing pretty much every NCAA violation in the book, fictitious Texas State University tries to field a team led by a 40-year-old quarterback (Scott Bakula). This film gets bonus points for having Kathy Ireland play the team's kicker.

Honorable mention: "Wildcats," a comedy featuring Goldie Hawn as a female coach at an inner-city high school; "North Dallas Forty," which (penned by former Dallas Cowboy Peter Gent) exposed the world of sex, drugs and general machismo that is professional football; "Friday Night Lights," a true story about football in West Texas that doesn't quite measure up to the book; "The Replacements," which features Keanu Reeves as a quarterback who leads a team of scabs during a players' strike.  

 What are your picks, Bakersfield?