ESPNTheMag.Com Presents: All-World Power Rankings

by Ted Bauer

WHEN IT COMES TO THE BEST SPORTING SPEECHES (MOVIES AND REAL LIFE!), WE'LL TAKE LOU GEHRIG'S FAREWELL

What are "All-World Power Rankings?"

We normally do these Rankings at the end of the day, and yea, we'll end today with one too. Seeing as how it's a big day in American history, though, we're gonna drop one in the morning too. At around 12:01pm today, Barack Obama delivered a roughly 20-minute speech setting his agenda for the next four years, including invoking George Washington's Delaware River remarks. Frankly, there's a good chance the total viewership will outdraw this year's Super Bowl. You want to watch some speeches from sporting movies (and real-life situations) to fire you up? That's where we come in.

TOP 5
RANK (YESTERDAY)		WHAT	WHY
	1 (4)	THE LOU GEHRIG SPEECH	The thing is fairly iconic.
	2 (6)	NORMAN DALE SPEECH IN HOOSIERS	So good. If we had a coach like this in high school, jeez, the sky would really be the limit for us.
	3 (7)	"RUDY AND THE JANITOR"	In truth, the best thing about Rudy is that Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau met on the set, and the second-best thing is that a kid from The Goonies played a member of Notre Dame football less than a decade after the former flick. The third best thing? This speech. Our dad once walked in on us watching this, saw us crying and goes, "Ugh."
	4 (9)	TONS OF STUFF FROM REMEMBER THE TITANS	Cue the commenters: "Disney homers!" Naw. (Well, somewhat.) There's a lot of good stuff in this movie. We picked out this clip as our fave, although there are other good ones. Side note: remember Denzel's Oscar acceptance speech for Training Day? It's underrated.
	5 (11)	CUBA GOODING JR'S OSCAR SPEECH	Speaking of Oscar speeches, we had to get this in here. Think it's not "sporting-related?" He won it for playing a wide receiver on the Cardinals, right? With the possible exception of Jack Palance, this might be the funniest Oscar acceptance ever. The look on Tom Cruise's face is priceless.

HONORABLE MENTION
RANK (YESTERDAY)		WHAT	WHY
	19 (180)	ED REED'S HALFTIME SPEECH, MIAMI VS. FSU	Because he plays with Ray Lewis in the pros, you sometimes forget Reed is a fired-up dude and a true leader. Here's the proof.
	138 (1,651)	AL PACINO'S SPEECH IN ANY GIVEN SUNDAY	Too high? Maybe. What really intrigues us about this movie is that Jessie Spano plays a hooker, but this speech is pretty money too. Any Given Sunday gets shafted in many discussions: best sports movie, best football movie, best Al Pacino role, best Oliver Stone movie, etc. It's better than most people think.

RISING AND FALLING
MOVEMENT		WHAT
		BILLY DONOVAN SPEECH BEFORE THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP (Florida's on the way back. Mark our words.)
		PHIL FULMER BEFORE THE '01 FLORIDA GAME (Uh, he's fired now.)

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