"You want to know about America? Learn football. It's three-dimensional chess. It is complex, violent, very fast and with all kinds of skullduggery. And as a gold mine of human behavior, its metaphoric power on film is staggering."

So says Al Ruddy, the godfather of the modern sport movie. Ruddy's success in creating "The Longest Yard" revived studio interest in the genre during the mid-'70s, paving the way for classics like "Slap Shot," "Rocky" and "The Bad News Bears."

Moviegoers have embraced gridiron-based stories ever since the silent film "Strongheart" made its debut in 1914. The compatibility of the two has produced more than 100 pictures using football as a backdrop. And why not? Grit and grace, camaraderie, teamwork and individual effort, courage, pain, and joy -- filmmakers love the allegories the sport offers that parallel everyday life, and it has been scoring at the theaters for nine decades.

From the burlesque ("Horse Feathers") to the inspirational ("Knute Rockne: All American") and from the tragic ("Brian's Song") to the insightful ("Friday Night Lights"), football provides a wide range of cinematic backdrops as a player in Hollywood.

The latest entry hoping to join that illustrious team and tap into our love affair with football is "Leatherheads," a romantic comedy that kicks off this weekend. Directed by and starring George Clooney, the Universal picture is set against the backdrop of America's nascent pro football league in 1925. Clooney, in trying to take his ragtag league to respectability and national attention, brings in a golden boy war hero (John Krasinski) who has both speed and charisma. A spirited news reporter (Renee Zellweger) suspects holes in the new star's story, and while she digs, the new teammates become serious off-field rivals for her affections.

Why has football on the silver screen been as durable as Jim Brown and Brett Favre? The secret is that they go deep. As a team, they cover the full spectrum of the human experience with the range of Deion Sanders and Champ Bailey. They tackle life's thorny issues with the skill of Shawne Merriman and Dick Butkus. They score with audiences with the regularity of Paul Hornung and LaDainian Tomlinson because their stories merely use the field of play as a kicking-off point.

Certainly the genre, like any other, has had its share of fumbles, injuries and interceptions with critics and moviegoers, but as you'll see, the very best movies produce a magic that penetrates. Their imagery creates powerful personal connections. Like football games themselves, football films even serve as reference points that can instantly conjure up feelings, sensations, and memories of days past. Want proof? The locker-room scene in "Brian's Song," where Gale Sayers informs teammates of Piccolo's illness. The slow-motion unveiling of Paul Crewe's winning touchdown run in "The Longest Yard." Coach Boone's graveyard jaunt in "Remember the Titans." Why do you not flip away from a cable viewing of "Friday Night Lights," even though you've seen it a dozen times and own it on DVD?

By looking at the best down through the years, it is clear how football films have been a reflection of the times in which they were made and how common themes of the human experience have been explored in similar and different ways across the generations.

In any era, the smartest filmmakers know the most important race presented in a sports movie is the human race. They put character above winning. They know that what's interesting is what you don't see, the drama between the plays, not the plays themselves, not the big game.

In contrast to a statement attributed to Mr. Lombardi about the be-all and end-all of winning, when it comes to scoring in football cinema, winning is definitely not the only thing. As a matter of fact, basing a movie on the last-second victory decreases the odds of it being a hit with the public and critics. There are exceptions, such as if we care about the characters enough or if a last-second victory is crucial to the story. Prime examples are the comedic antics of the Marx Brothers in "Horse Feathers" and the redemption of Paul Crewe in "The Longest Yard."

Now huddle up. Here are the X's and O's of football cinema's all-prose.

In the early days, as Clooney's new film will reveal, football was primarily a college sport. For Hollywood, it really began with "Strongheart," a 1914 silent picture based on a popular stage play about a young Indian man at Columbia University who sacrifices himself for the good of his team. (It was remade nearly a dozen years later as "Braveheart," but none of the players wore kilts.)

All through the Roaring '20s and leading into 1940, Hollywood cranked out dozens of films, most poking fun at the institution of higher learning and coming-of-age themes, many with college in the title: "The College Boob," "College Love" and "College Days," among a lot of forgettable ones.

The best of these are the quirky satires -- "The Freshman" (1925) and "Horse Feathers" (1932). The former features the brilliant Harold Lloyd as Harold "Speedy" Lamb, a naïve, geeky figure who longs to be a big man on campus. He rides the pine -- essentially as the team's waterboy -- until, in desperation, the coach sends him in and a miracle play ensues, helping Speedy achieve his goal. In the latter, the Marx Brothers are absolutely hilarious in this witty, irreverent look at the distorted influence football had on college at the time. (It stands the test of time because in many ways that influence is still out of whack.)

The new Huxley College president, Professor Wagstaff (Groucho Marx), addressing a couple of professors standing in his office:

Wagstaff: "Have we got a stadium?"
"Yes."
Wagstaff: "Have we got a college?"
"Yes."
Wagstaff: "Well, we can't support both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college."

With a war raging in Europe and America still suffering from the ravages of the Great Depression, things got serious by 1940. Hollywood passed the pigskin from crazy college comedies to inspirational tales of teamwork and rousing heroes. In a time starved for hope and inspiration, film studios turned to the football coach as a mentor and leader of young men, foreshadowing the military leaders who would mold raw recruits with the United States soon marching off to war.

The best of these were "The Iron Major" and "Knute Rockne: All American," both starring Pat O'Brien. Both are textbook examples of how movies are a reflection of the period they portray. The latter would make football an institution at Notre Dame and a star out of a future two-term U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, who portrayed George Gipp. Reagan's "Win just one for the Gipper" scene would become part of Hollywood lore.

After WWII, football took a respite during the '50s and '60s. Still, the hero had a role, but as an individual within the team concept. This was best personified in "Jim Thorpe: All-American," (1951) featuring Burt Lancaster as the brilliant American-Indian athlete, but done with a twist from the rah-rah stories of yesteryear. This was a no-warts, rise-and-fall story, quite unusual for the time.

In 1968, with the emergence of football as popular television programming, it didn't take much imagination for armchair quarterbacks to share their Walter Mitty dreams about being the next Joe Namath and throwing the decisive touchdown pass. Alan Alda, starring as journalist George Plimpton playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions in "Paper Lion," filled that bill.

In contrast to the Roaring '20s, when college dominated football, with professional football now setting stadium and television records, the '70s are, without a doubt, the Golden Age of Football Cinema.

Just look at the results.

With a lineup that includes "Brian's Song," "Semi-Tough," "North Dallas Forty," "Heaven Can Wait" and "The Longest Yard," no decade comes close to matching this Hollywood gridiron era in terms of range and creativity.

Football is an emotional game, and it often has been said that if a movie can make you laugh, cry or inspired, then it will be successful. Based on the true story of popular Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo (portrayed by James Caan), who was knocked down in the prime of his life by a terminal disease, "Brian's Song" covers it all.

"If you're not affected by that, you've got a heart of stone," says Mike Tollin, a veteran producer/director of several sports movies. "Truly memorable. Billy Dee Williams saying 'I love Brian Piccolo' is not something you're going to forget."

"It was a tremendous emotional experience," recalls John Davis, a producer coming out with his own football film this fall. Titled "The Express," it will feature another true story of a footballer facing a terminal illness -- the first black Heisman winner, Ernie Davis.

Williams, who was nominated for an Emmy as Piccolo's roommate, Gale Sayers, has gone on to great success in film and television, yet he speaks with reverence about this role that explored the themes of race and friendship so well.

"The best way I can describe that whole experience is that it was an act of love. It was meant to be. It was just a pure, beautiful kind of friendship that you don't often see in movies," says Williams.

While "Brian's Song" dealt with optimism, the '70s were largely a cynical era. With the Vietnam War raging and the Watergate scandal breaking, Hollywood football took a dark look at power with two acclaimed pictures, "North Dallas Forty" and "The Longest Yard."

"North Dallas Forty," based on former Cowboys receiver Pete Gent's book, took a dimmer look at friendship than "Brian's Song." Through the prism of the contrasting themes of individuality, big business and labor relations, Nick Nolte is unforgettable as the aging wide receiver, who despite all the backstabbing carnage, strives to be true to his simple truth -- to play for the love of the game. It eventually proves futile.

"It is not only a story of alienation and manipulation in an arena where human beings are under enormous pressure in striving for success, but also one of friendship and betrayal. It is a powerful metaphor for the American way of life," says the film's co-writer and director, Ted Kotcheff.

Al Ruddy, despite having won Best Picture Academy Awards for "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Godfather," holds "The Longest Yard" dearest to his heart.

"I lovesports going back even before my days at USC. Well, we all have read about athletes who shaved points, so I wanted to create a character who had seen it all, but was given one more shot in an arena no one would ever see. The fame had gone, so it wouldn't matter anymore, but one more chance to be somebody. He makes an important decision in his life and learns about dignity at a time when no one outside his confines would ever know about it. It's a tree falling in a forest a long way down the stream," Ruddy described about the character so brilliantly portrayed by Burt Reynolds.

"Heaven Can Wait" took a whole different approach to the game, providing some respite from the heaviness with the always-popular escapist tone.

A remake of the 1941 boxing picture "Here Comes Mr. Jordan," it was a love story with a whole range of themes including big business, loyalty and the environment. Nominated for nine Oscars, it features Warren Beatty as a Los Angeles Rams quarterback who was accidentally taken away from his body by an overanxious angel before he was supposed to die and comes back to life in the body of a recently murdered millionaire.

Co-director and co-star Buck Henry talks about a sort of blind faith in explaining why the picture succeeded.

"If the characters work and the behavior is believable, then something ultimately happens that's above and beyond the immediate context of the themes. Even unbelievers like myself have had the experience of recognizing something without a reality to it, but you recognize it anyway. The most dramatic instance of it is seeing it in a stranger's eyes," says Henry, who earned an Oscar nomination for his directorial efforts. (He also was nominated earlier for his screenplay of "The Graduate.")

Over the next three decades, while Hollywood football continued to find success at the college and pro level ("Everybody's All-American," "Rudy" and "Jerry Maguire"), it also spread its formation by calling an audible and incorporating high school to explore such themes as redemption, small-town life, coming of age, discrimination, self-discovery and ambition.

Before he went looking for endorsement money as Rod Tidwell's agent in "Jerry Maguire," Tom Cruise went looking for scholarship money as a small-town defensive back in "All the Right Moves." Cuba Gooding Jr. brought his Oscar-winning performance as Tidwell to a small South Carolina town in "Radio," portraying the title character, a developmentally challenged man in an engaging drama in which the high school coach takes Radio under his wing. Robin Williams had never been able to live down the fact that he dropped an important pass during a crucial high school football game and was given the rare opportunity to get another shot in "The Best of Times" more than a dozen years later.

But perhaps the two most compelling high school football-oriented stories are "Remember the Titans" and "Friday Night Lights," both based on true stories.

"Remember the Titans" is based on actual events. In 1971, a court order forced three high schools in Alexandria, Va., (two white, one African-American) to integrate their student bodies and faculties for the first time. As a result, Coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton), longtime head coach of the T.C. Williams High School football team, is asked to step down, and Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) is appointed to replace him as the school's first black faculty member. That's where the drama begins on the long road to teamwork.

"Friday Night Lights," based on H.G. Bissinger's book, profiles the small town of Odessa, Texas, with its economic hardships and racial undertones as a community and distorted identity values of living through its high school football team that eventually takes a toll on the players at Permian High.

"The Texas emphasis on football and winning is everything, was certainly well illustrated in 'Friday Night Lights,' notes Kotcheff, of "North Dallas Forty" fame.

No matter the level of play used as the canvas, football and Hollywood -- two pillars of American pop culture -- have enjoyed a merger that goes all the way back to the silent era. With upcoming comedies like Ruddy's "End Zone," where two gambling degenerates, God and the Devil, meet once a year to bet on the Super Bowl, Tollin's body-switching story "Traded," a football version of "Big" meets "Freaky Friday," as well as biographies of Broadway Joe and Johnny U. in the works along with many others, the sport is still making a gallant run at the box office nearly a century after it all started.

Randy Williams is the author of "Sports Cinema: 100 Movies -- The Best of Hollywood's Athletic Heroes, Losers, Myths, and Misfits"