Sideline Cut:There will be no sports films on parade at this year's Oscar extravaganza over in Lotus Land. But as many of Paul Gascoigne's ex-England/party colleagues quietly bow their heads in guilt this weekend, it is notable that Hollywood has always been drawn to the more troubled lights that burned within their various sports. A pitch on the life of Paul Gascoigne, which was characterised by fleeting brilliance across England's football grounds and turbulent, often farcical behaviour away from them, will always get a more interested hearing in Hollywood than, say, a biographical picture about Gary Lineker.

Traditionally, boxing has turned out the most highly acclaimed films, with Raging Bull generally topping the best sports films lists and often featuring in the top 10 of regular cinematic endeavour also.

As Ireland waits up late tomorrow night to see if Daniel Day-Lewis can claim his second golden statue for his latest virtuoso performance, it's shocking to think a decade has passed since he laced up for his role as Danny in Jim Sheridan's 1997 film The Boxer. As Barry McGuigan, who coached the actor, has testified, his commitment and ethic was such that he spent over a year in training, cracked several ribs in the process and ended up competent enough to have turned professional.

The film never really lights up in the way we might have expected and is rarely listed now as among the actor's landmark roles. Still, the fight action is edgy and convincing and it is clear Day-Lewis transformed himself for the role.

And that triumph is a difficult one. Film/sports fans are notoriously sniffy about the quality of sporting action presented them on the big screen. It has to be either outrageously over the top - Sly Stallone's Balboa ought to have been declared legally dead in several bouts during the first three instalments of the endless Rocky series - or dark and realistic, like the claustrophobic football footage in Friday Night Lights.

Many actors are willing to try their hand at the sports footage, often an exercise in vanity as much as dedication. Hence, we saw Burt Reynolds suiting up for The Longest Yard, Kevin Costner chewing tobacco and slinging a baseball bat and Billy Crudup doing a decent turn as the doomed 1970s track darling Steve Prefontaine. Russell Crowe looked the part of Depression-era heavyweight champion Jim Braddock in Cinderella Man, and Hilary Swank strolled through to her second Oscar as the plucky contender with nothing in Clint Eastwood's boxing tear-jerker Million Dollar Baby.

That film was regarded immediately as a classic and, although it was superior in every way, it is no coincidence that it went for full operatic tragedy during the last few scenes.

Around the world people like their sports films to be hard as nails on the surface but with teary hearts of gold at the centre. That was maybe why Martin Scorcese's pool hall homage The Color of Money failed to fully engage the public, accused by one prominent review of having "no soul". Not only was it inferior to The Hustler, Scorcese later admitted he filmed it mainly to raise finance for The Last Temptation of Christ. Still, Tom Cruise, who played pool shark Vincent, did hit most of his own pool shots.

For different reasons, Any Given Sunday has failed to stick around as a modern sports classic: for all the colour and cheerfully violent football footage, there is only so much one can take of Al Pacino yelling.

It should be noted, though, that the film seemed to have a remarkable influence on the GAA fraternity in this country, and at one point it seemed no team would dare to take the field in Croke Park without having attentively listened to Al's pivotal "Inches" speech. That trend seems to have died away, and it will surely be only a matter of time before some other improvisational bainisteoir happens upon a late-night showing of Denis Hopper's hypnotic turn as the boozy basketball assistant in Hoosiers, or even of old Sly, bless his heart, running up and down the steps of City Hall in Philadelphia.

You have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Rocky, who makes it to the top of the world without ever uttering a single coherent sentence and wears a battered trilby that only a heavyweight-boxing champion could get away with. He ended the year with an Oscar for best actor and another for best picture and has been repeating the formula ever since with less success.

It is odd, though, that perhaps the most celebrated Hollywood sports quotation belongs to a film that was not a sports film in the truest sense. On the Waterfront was scripted by boxing enthusiast Budd Schulberg, but Marlon Brando's character Terry Molloy has already hung up his gloves and the film portrays his stand-off against the corrupt union bosses. But in probably the most famous scene, it is to the promise of his boxing life that the docker returns, uttering the classic lines: "You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of just a bum, which is what I am."

George Kimball of this parish a couple of years ago recounted the fascinating origins of that quotation dreamed up by Schulberg: "On the set one day, the screenwriter, Budd Schulberg, asked Roger if he could have been a champion had he pursued his pro career. 'Well,' Donoghue replied after giving the matter some thought. 'I could have been a contender'. Incorporated into Schulberg's Academy Award-winning script, 'I could have been a contender' not only became the most memorable line of the film, but arguably the most famous of Brando's career."

And they were, of course, uttered some quarter of a century later to haunting effect by a bloated, boozed up Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. The words hold a resonance that are universal and apply to so many sports figures who have flared briefly throughout the ages before succumbing to a less glorious mortal reality. Just as professional sport relentlessly and aggressively celebrates the victors and the frequently glib stories of triumph, it is to fallen heroes and bittersweet redemption that Hollywood constantly turns to for inspiration. It is highly unlikely that the story of Paul Gascoigne's long decline will ever receive the glitzy treatment, because his life has been too dark and bleak for that.

But as the newspapers and television reports recall the days when he was a force of irrepressible instinct on a football field, that famous Hollywood line holds as true. He coulda been a contender.