3 ways that Bring It On is different from most tournament movies

Tournament movies - whether sports, dance, singing, videogame etc. - tend to have three cliches:

1) The protagonist - individual or team - is the biggest underdog.
2) Their biggest rival is a villain or at least is overly vain.
3) The protagonist wins.

None of those are the case in Bring It On. However, the biggest rival is the biggest underdog and they do win. (If it had been told from the point of view of The Clovers it would have been a typical sports/contest movie.)

More importantly, Bring It On's message is that winning - or losing - a tournament is not the same thing as winning or losing at life. Good sportsmanship, good judgment, etc. is winning at life.

Despite its flaws, BIO deserves credit for that.