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4. Knightstown, Ind.: 'Hoosiers'
No professional sporting event ever made better movie fodder than Indiana's high school basketball championship in 1954, when tiny Milan High School — with just 161 students — beat powerhouse Muncie High, a school 10 times its size. Hollywood has yet to top "Hoosiers," and Gene Hackman may have set the standard for hard-driving big-screen coaches.

But if you want to see the "Miracle of Milan" as it was portrayed on screen, you'll have to head 50 miles north, to Knightstown's Hoosier Gym, which is now the home of several middle school teams. The movie has turned the sports facility into a veritable shrine to Hoosier hysteria, making it a magnet for after-school programs, church basketball leagues — and, of course, movie junkies.

5. Johnstown, Pa.: 'Slap Shot'
Perhaps no town has embraced a sports movie as much as Johnstown, which renamed its local team the Chiefs, after Paul Newman's thuggish hockey team in 1977's "Slap Shot."

Three of the movie's surprise stars — Dave Hanson and Steve and Jeff Carlson — were players on the Johnstown team when they were cast in the film. They soon became known to the world as Newman's most notorious goons, the Hanson Brothers, famous for their horn-rimmed eyeglasses and savagery.

Informal tours that highlighted the movie's on- and off-ice cavorting still draws thousands of tourists each year, and the Johnstown Jets soon became the Chiefs, if only to cash in on the growing sale of "Slap Shot" movie memorabilia.

Unfortunately, the town was bitterly disappointed a few years ago, when shooting for the "Slap Shot" sequel, "Breaking the Ice," was moved to Vancouver, British Colombia. But Johnstown got the last laugh. That film went straight to video.

Buck Wolf is entertainment producer at ABCNEWS.com. "The Wolf Files" is published Tuesdays.