I pretty much hate sports movies, and football movies are a big part of the problem. (Just behind boxing movies, I’d say.) I have never seen a football film that correctly conveys game action, and that lack of verisimilitude kills football movies in the cradle. That, and casting teeny Al Pacino as an NFL coach or Warren Beatty as a Rams quarterback.

So, perhaps the competition, inside my head, isn’t very tough for the title of “best football film I’ve seen” … but that honor now goes to Draft Day, the Kevin Costner movie that finally made its way over to the UAE.

And it isn’t hard for me figure out what I like about the movie.

It has almost no game action in it.

Can’t mess up reality if you don’t attempt to replicate it.

Draft Day has a teeny bit of college football action in it, mostly involving Ohio State and Purdue, and it looks as if the producers created their own faux highlights from a game involving those two, perhaps even staging them. Which would be fairly difficult — having to get the colleges to agree.

Overwhelmingly, the movie is about the behind-the-scenes NFL, and in particular the 18 or so hours leading up to the start of the 2014 NFL draft, and its first few hours. A fictional version of it, of course, though some scenes were filmed at the 2013 draft, in New York, and several NFL people can be seen in it, including Roger Goodell, the commissioner.

Costner plays the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, and he is under pressure from his owner to make a splash in the draft, while holding the No. 7 pick.

That leads to Costner feeling obliged to trade for the No. 1 pick, and in negotiations with the Seattle Seahawks, who hold the pick as the movie begins — and he pays the high price of three first-round draft picks.

Then comes a day in which Costner and his “war room” crew attempt to find out all there is to know about the Purdue quarterback, a Heisman winner, whom they never thought they would have a chance to take. He is the consensus No. 1.

Costner, however, has a gut feeling about the guy, and he’s not sure he likes him. Which leads to lots more to-ing and fro-ing before and into the draft, with at least two huge deals.

Pretty much, the two young guys who wrote the original script said they were out to create the most bizarre (yet credible) Draft Day scenario, and what they come up with pretty much is plausible.

(And poor Ryan Leaf comes up, as an example of the can’t-miss quarterback who missed quite badly. Just about all he will be remembered for. He apparently is in jail, at the moment.)

Several “real life” events also are pressing, on the Costner character, as he tries to makeover the Browns in one draft. Much of that is not necessary, but it doesn’t ruin the flick, which ultimately is about the mental game surrounding the draft.

Costner happens to be in several of my favorite sports films — including my favorite, period. Which would be Field of Dreams. Which is fiction all the way, aside from referring to the actual 1919 Chicago Black Sox. And I liked Bull Durham well enough, with Costner as the career minor-league catcher.

Costner is a sports fan, of course, and played more than a little baseball in his youth. He is 59, but aging fairly well, as male movie actors sometimes do. He is believable as an NFL GM, anyway.

I liked it.

Not everyone did.

The New York Times gave a fairly kind review, focusing on Costner’s ability to make us believe what he is selling (this film) has value. Grantland didn’t like it and Slate hate-hate-hated it. The critics looked at broader stuff than I did, sitting in the theater at Abu Dhabi Mall. I didn’t come in thinking about concussions, for example.

Grantland did a long piece on the making of the film, focusing on the two NYU alums who co-wrote it. Which is illuminating if you know less about how films are made than how the NFL draft goes down — which would include me. (I covered a half-dozen NFL drafts, in a previous life, and mostly they are dull-dull-dull.)

I’m glad I saw it. It is showing in one theater in Abu Dhabi, three months after it premiered in the U.S., and American football is a tough sell over here. I imagine it will be gone by next week. My favorite NFL movie, come and gone, just like that.