Peyton Manning Reveals Favorite Football Movie — and the Runners-up That Gave It 'Good Competition'

Even after spending decades on the field, Peyton Manning never gets tired of watching his favorite football movies.

In a new interview with WSJ. Magazine, the retired NFL star, 44, ranked his top movies about football and revealed that the original 1974 film The Longest Yard is his leading choice.

"That'll probably win for best football movie in my book," Manning said.

However, picking a favorite was no easy feat.

"But there’s some pretty good competition with Remember the Titans, and North Dallas Forty," he said.

Manning has such a love for football films that as the host of the ESPN documentary series Peyton's Places, he said he hopes to "do an episode on the guys who played quarterbacks in movies."

The longtime Indianapolis Colt said he already has a list of actors in mind, including Jamie Foxx from his turn in Any Given Sunday and Anthony Michael Hall in Johnny Be Good.

"But we gotta have Kurt Russell from The Best of Times. And we also need to have Mox, which is James Van Der Beek from Varsity Blues," he continued. "I’m looking forward to interviewing those two guys on their quarterbacking skills."

The former quarterback also shared his top five favorite comedy films and revealed that he once made a group of young quarterbacks watch the movies as "homework."

Manning recalled being in a quarterback meeting in 2008 and quoting a line from Vacation while watching football replays with the backup quarterbacks.

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"I say it, but nobody knows what I’m talking about...And I just said, 'Look, this isn’t going to work. If we’re going to be together all day watching these films that are going to challenge you to stay awake, we’ve got to get on the same page,'" he remembered telling the team.

The former pro said he then sent the players to watch Vacation, The Jerk, Caddyshack, Stripes and Fletch.

"And that was the homework — don’t watch any [Indianapolis] Colts film, this is your film study. They all came back…And they didn’t think they were that funny. I think it definitely depends on the age, but those are my classics," he said.