Although professional football provides the action-packed backdrop of Any Given Sunday, the film takes a simultaneously epic and intimate look at the men and women who comprise the milieu of the film, from the modern-day gladiators of the gridiron, their coaches and often beleaguered families, to the moneyed team owners and business concerns who attempt to control the game as big business, to the hungry sports media, and hangers-on trying to get a taste of the glamour.