From left: 'Friday Night Lights,' 'Shorsey,' 'Pitch,' 'GLOW,' 'Survivors Remorse' and 'Brockmire.' Layer Ø Often, these ranked lists take shape as you go along, leading to debate and even fierce disagreement on what will take the top spot.
That is not the case with our list of the Best Sports TV Shows of All Time. You will not be surprised when you get to our No.1 pick, because the only reason to pick anything else is sheer, unabashed contrarianism. There’s one choice. It’s the correct choice.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t room for dispute and contention. We went back and forth on shows like Ted Lasso (tremendous peaks, but more recent frustrations) and Heated Rivalry (steamy and emotional, but very rarely about sports). We fought — in dignified fashion — over shows featuring pastimes that may or may not count as “sports,” especially when lacking a competitive context.
We stuck with English-language shows — sorry, Club de Cuervos, Olympo and Hot Stove League.
We stuck with scripted shows — wait for your own list, 30 for 30, Pardon the Interruption, Last Chance U, Hard Knocks and other unscripted triumphs.
And here’s what we came up with …
This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s August 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.
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‘Pitch’ (Fox, 2017)
Image Credit: Ray Mickshaw/Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection Dan Fogelman and Rick Singer’s drama, about the first woman to play Major League Baseball, should have been a star-making vehicle for Kylie Bunbury as screwball-throwing Ginny Baker, as well as a career-pivoting turn for a never-better Mark-Paul Gosselaar as wise, bearded catcher Mike Lawson. But Fox couldn’t get eyeballs on Pitch, which was smart, topical and capitalized on the participation of MLB to look fully authentic without feeling overly sanitized. The series’ hasty cancellation was a tremendous disappointment, but it saved the creative team from having to resolve a cliffhanger that felt like it could go wrong in a dozen different ways. For lists like this, we agree with Neil Young that it’s better to burn out than to fade away.
