Travis Freeman, a local football star, is an average high school junior. Living in the town of Corbin, Kentucky, his inner circle includes his supporting parents, girlfriend, and childhood best friend, Jerry Baker (Bram Hoover) Life is normal for Travis until one day he is stricken with a series of severe headaches and a bacterial meningitis infection. After being rushed to the hospital, Travis undergoes surgery to remove the infection and save his life. He comes out of the procedure alive, but he is now blind. After losing his sight, Travis experiences depression as he adjusts to life without sight. When forced to abandon football, Travis’ shallow, cheerleader girlfriend quits him, and he faces the decision of having to attend the school for the blind away from home. With the help of his parents, best friend, Jerry, another childhood friend, Ashley, and his mobility coach, Travis pulls through and is able to adapt to his new disability and starts his senior year at Corbin High School. Every day after school, Travis attends football practice, but watches, with help from his friend, Ashley, from the sidelines. His coach and mentor, Coach Farris, approaches him one day about joining the team again. Without much convincing, Travis rejoins the football team as a center and helps the team turn around their losing season advancing to the state playoffs.
Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) is a former NFL player disgraced for shaving points in a big game. One night, he gets drunk and goes joyriding in his girlfriend's Bentley, totals it, gets arrested, and is sentenced to three years in a Texas Federal Prison for violating his parole.
In the last game of the American Football Federation between the Boston Rebels and the New York Dukes, Rebels quarterback Joe Kingman (Dwayne Johnson) scores a touchdown after ignoring an open wide receiver, Travis Sanders (Morris Chestnut). The next morning, an 8-year-old girl named Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis) arrives on Kingman's doorstep saying that she is his biological daughter, and that his divorced wife sent her there to meet him. Kingman's agent, Stella Peck (Kyra Sedgwick), thinks this will be bad for his image and distracts him with the upcoming playoffs.
Danny O'Shea (Rick Moranis) has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, Kevin (Ed O'Neill), a Heisman Trophy winner and a local football hero. The brothers live in their hometown of Urbania, Ohio. Kevin coaches the local "Pee-Wee Cowboys" football team. Despite being the best player, Danny's tomboy daughter Becky (Shawna Waldron), nicknamed Icebox, is cut during try outs because she is a girl. Also cut are Becky's less-talented friends, Rasheed Hanon (who can't catch anything), Tad Simpson (who can't run) and Rudy Zolteck (who's overweight and quite flatuent). After being ridiculed by the other players who made the team, she convinces her dad to coach a new pee-wee team of their own.
High-school Nerd Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff) enters into a friendship with his neighbor, Ashby (Mickey Rourke), a retired CIA assassin who only has a few months to live.
State College football coach George Cooper (Fred MacMurray) has more than enough problems on the job without his teenage daughter Connie (Betty Lynn) complicating his life at home.
Star professional quarterback Pete Wilson (Victor Mature) thinks nothing of his future after football, not even after longtime teammate Bill "Holly" Holloran (Gordon Jones) is released by the team. Pete gets advance after advance on his salary from Anne (Lucille Ball), the secretary of team owner and coach Lenahan (Lloyd Nolan).
Steve Novak, a Polish-American immigrant from a small New Jersey mill town, decides to go to a college in Virginia to play football. He becomes a star player as a freshman, but hears stories of teammates receiving money for their play.
Injured and out of shape, "Hurricane" Harry Joplin is unhappy about not being accepted for World War II duty by the Navy and unhappier still when the New York Titans decline to offer him a new contract, suggesting he become a coach instead. Harry refuses to believe his football days are over.
George Plimpton, a writer for Sports Illustrated, has been indulging in a variety of Walter Mitty-like whims and stunts, trying his hand at being a professional athlete (such as briefly pitching in an exhibition game against All-Star baseball players or boxing a round with Sugar Ray Robinson), then writing about the experience.
Brandon Lang (McConaughey) is a former college football star who, after sustaining a career-ending injury, takes a job handicapping football games. His success at choosing winners catches the eye of Walter Abrams (Pacino), the slick head of one of the biggest sports consulting operations in the United States. Walter takes Brandon under his wing, and soon they are making tremendous amounts of money.