And the best sports tale told by Nielsen numbers is about Tiger Woods.
It is the classic underdog sports tale: it depicts an over-enthusiastic janitor's attempt to transform misfit students into Nebraska State tennis champions".
The resurrection of Vermont football is a modern-day club sports tale because it used the Internet — a Web site, Facebook, e-mail — and because it revolved around the irrepressible force of one committed individual.
Whatever it is, it flows from the screen like the Rio Grande during McFarland, USA, a feelgood underdog sports tale starring Kevin Costner, a bunch of kids who will not quit and a Walt Disney Company logo.
Jackman, who coincidentally has a new movie opening Oscar weekend -- the feel-good sports tale "Eddie the Eagle" -- has been working the road circuit himself on behalf of the movie, criss-crossing the country to promote the film.
We watch a football match: Knype vs Manchester Rovers in Arnold Bennett's tale of sporting talent in crisis, "The Matador of the Five Towns".
As natural recreation in America gave way to luxury resorts, adventure travel and extreme sports, tales of Chongo grew outsize.
We love folksy sports tales, even about those we have ignored or been indifferent to for years, until they've reach advanced athletic age and it's almost time for them to go away.
The story of an underdog high school football team in Memphis, whose coach takes in a star player, it has echoes of other popular sports tales – like "The Blind Side" and "Friday Night Lights" – and has been praised for being both true and intimately observed.
After one of the cabana boys ferried them back in an inner tube (I had earlier bonded with the guy, having been a cabana boy myself and sporting the tell-tale shin lacerations to prove it), we reconvened by the pool.
