In “Semi-Pro,” which hits theaters nationwide on Friday, Feb. 29, Will Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon, a player-owner for the Flint (Mich.) Tropics, the worst team in the struggling ABA. It's a safe bet Moon's Tropics turn the tide, overcome the odds and triumph in comedic fashion. It will not have been the first time an onscreen team achieved that feat. Here's a look back at some classic sports comedies in which a ragtag group of has-beens and never-will-bes manage to turn things around.
 

‘DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY'
YEAR: 2004
STARS: Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor
PLOT: A gang of misfits (led by Vaughn) enters a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament with the hopes of winning cash, thus saving their decrepit gym.
THE FALLOUT: Vaughn's team wins, and the actor becomes a certified star in the process. Good for him, bad for anyone forced to suffer the indignity of watching subsequent Vaughn flicks such as “Fred Claus,” “The Break-Up” and “Be Cool.”

‘MAJOR LEAGUE'
YEAR: 1989
STARS: Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipes
PLOT: A malicious baseball owner recruits a bunch of scrubs to play for the Cleveland Indians, hoping they'll lose enough games for her to move the team to Miami.
THE FALLOUT: The Indians defy their owner and defeat the New York Yankees for the division crown. The cast goes on to bigger and better things, such as prostitution/drug allegations (Sheen), tax evasion charges (Snipes) and playing the president of the United States on “24” (Dennis Haysbert).

‘BULL DURHAM'
YEAR: 1988
STARS: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins
PLOT: A minor-league lifer (Costner) mentors a temperamental young fireballer (Robbins). The two help their team win games on the field while jockeying for the affections of a minor-league baseball groupie (Sarandon) off it.
THE FALLOUT: Robbins and Sarandon actually got together on the set and remain together today. As for Costner, this film helped propel him to megastardom — until, that is, “Waterworld” was released seven years later.

‘SLAP SHOT'
YEAR: 1977
STARS: Paul Newman, Strother Martin, Jennifer Warren
PLOT: The horrendous Charlestown Chiefs hockey team — so bad that it’s due to fold at season's end — turns things around by enlisting the services of a comedic assortment of goons and thugs.
THE FALLOUT: The Chiefs win the league championship, and hockey achieves peak cultural relevancy as far as the American public is concerned.

‘THE BAD NEWS BEARS'
YEAR: 1976
STARS: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Jackie Earle Haley
PLOT: A drunken pool cleaner (Matthau) is paid off to coach a crappy Little League team, which turns things around thanks to his flame-throwing daughter (O'Neal) and a local delinquent (San Antonio's own Haley).
THE FALLOUT: The Bears lose the championship game, and fiery little Tanner Boyle tells the opposing team, “Hey, Yankees, you can take your apology and your trophy and shove ‘em straight up your ass!”

‘THE LONGEST YARD'
YEAR: 1974
STARS: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter
PLOT: A point-shaving football star (Reynolds), now a prison inmate, is recruited to assemble a football team of inmates to take on the guards.
THE FALLOUT: The inmates' Mean Machine team wins the big game, though you're left wondering if Reynolds' Paul “Wrecking” Crewe character will spend the rest of his life behind bars. As for Reynolds, he continued in his quest to become our country's foremost sex object, primarily because women in the 1970s really dug men with body hair.
 

Clint Hale | 210SA