There are few great football movies and TV shows. Those that stand out of the lot do so because they perfectly depict the passion for the sport and have a charismatic and sometimes controversial coach in the leading role. But who is the coach that has managed to grab the adoration and admiration of its viewers?

Movie Coaches Inspired by Real People

Herman Boone

In the 2000 film Remember the Titans, Herman Ike Boone is played by none other than Denzel Washington. The actor portrays the coach as a firm but fair man who requires perfection from his players. Boone is placed in the unfavorable “lose one game and you’re fired” position and is surrounded by racism and heightened tensions. Despite all the adversity, he manages to build a winning team that almost becomes national champions.

Jack Lengyel

Matthew McConaughey portrays coach Jack Lengyel in the movie, We Are Marshall. The film recounts the aftermath of the 1970 plane crash, which killed the coaching staff, athletic trainers, athletic director, and 37 football players from the Marshall University football team. Lengyel takes a job that no one else wants because he isn’t focused on winning. He is focused on helping a town and a university heal while building the foundations of Marshall’s future football team.

Ben Schwartzwalder

A Hall of Fame football coach, Ben Schwartzwalder is played by Dennis Quaid in the 2008 sports drama, The Express: The Ernie Davis Story. The biopic is dedicated to the life of Ernie Davis, the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy. It also depicts the complicated dynamic between the coach and his star player during times of racial division. Both are faced with multiple challenges and difficult decisions in order to achieve their ultimate goal, victory.

Even a Fictional Coach Can Be Revered

Tony D’Amato

Al Pacino has played several astounding roles during his career, and Tony D’Amato in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday is one of them. He portrays a selfish and manipulative old-school coach who isn’t able to keep up with the league’s ever-changing environment. Despite his flaws, D’Amato manages to morph into a relatable player’s coach who will be eternalized in the cinematic industry due to Pacino’s uplifting “inches” speech.

Eric Taylor

Friday Night Lights is a story that has been told on both the big and small screen. It is the TV show’s coach that made our list because of his charisma, determination, and ambition. Kyle Chandler plays the role of Eric Taylor, the head coach of the Dillon Panthers. Taylor uses his leadership to unite players from different social classes and builds a championship-winning squad.

It is these amazing portrays that have allowed these productions to become classics and their coaches to become a benchmark for leadership.

Machu Picchu has long marveled historians and travelers with its grandeur, architecture, and the promise of past civilizations. Until now, researchers from around the globe had a somewhat similar idea about the age of the historic site. They estimated its age based on documents they discovered from the Spanish Conquest. However, recent evidence suggests that the picturesque ancient city may have been inhabited much earlier than previously thought, dating back to at least 1420.

Machu Picchu Is Still Holding Out a Few Secrets

It was previously believed that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the prominent Inca Emperor, Pachacuti (1438 – 1472), around 1450, and the Incas did their best to keep its location a secret for centuries. It turns out they had a few more secrets up their sleeves. Researchers from Yale found concrete evidence that Peru’s precious hidden city was occupied much earlier than historians and archaeologists previously believed. The Spanish conquest documents that initially led to the age estimate are not the most reliable of sources, but the Incas left no written documents behind, except for the knotted records, known as quipus, which scientists can’t read yet. So, how did this new find come to light?

Technology Played a Major Part in the Novel Discovery

Richard Burger, who led the study, focused on skeletons discovered at the royal palace of Machu Picchu back in a 1912 expedition. The team at Yale used advanced new technology that allowed them to date the ancient bones with greater accuracy through carbon-14 testing. What they found gave them hope. The findings dated the skeletons back to at least 1420 and earlier, suggesting that the city was already built around that time.

To Burger and his team, this finding is only the beginning. His hope is to revise the popular chronology of the Inca Empire and maybe even consider it started in the 14th century. Perhaps, he says, scientists may have been completely “off base” in terms of estimating Machu Picchu’s age.