If you find yourself missing sitting in stadiums and arenas, or even in front of the TV, with your best friends and some nachos and a cold beer or six (or is that just me … ?), consider turning or returning to one of these five – make that six – outstanding, inspiring sports films from 1981 to 1996. Advance apologies to those looking for golf movies. Might I suggest that you instead get outdoors and golf?

As a change of pace from recent articles showcasing five similarly-themed offerings that debuted when I was between three and 26, allow me to present a compromise of 77 winners from the period of 1995-99: my official-in-print 10-favorites lists from the ends of those years, and what those lists would now look like after 20-plus years of consideration and reconsideration.

The following home-viewing options are five works that, for whatever reason, scared the bejeezus out of me as a child and now make me almost nothing but happy. The Towering Inferno ain't among them. Some phobias are eternal.

In honor of my Augustana College friends who are graduating this weekend yet were denied the opportunity to enjoy a proper on-campus send-off before entering the cold, cruel workplace world, here are five titles under the collective blanket of “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up” – home-viewing options from 1976 to 1990 featuring excellent examples of pros at their inspiring peaks of performance. Consider it my cinematic commencement address. I don't know why I've never been asked to give a real one. Probably because they'd anticipate my being crude. Those jackasses.