Tag Archives: espn

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The Announcement

I wonder how many people who watch him on TV even remember.  We see him yukking it up with Jon Barry on Awkward Laughing Weekly NBA Countdown on ESPN, reminiscing about days gone by with rival and close friend Larry Bird, but a mere 20 years ago, I thought he’d have been gone by now.  Look at me, saying a “mere” 20 years.  20 years is obviously barely a fart in cosmic terms, but it’s long enough for a child to have been born, develop an adolescent fixation on cigarettes, and be legally able to feed the addiction without having to resort to a fake ID.  But how it all rushes back when I saw Nelson George’s understated The Announcement, which chronicles the day that Magic Johnson revealed to the rest of us that he was HIV positive.  The movie lives up to the quality that ESPN Films has shown in its 30 for 30 series, but George aims a little deeper than most, and we don’t just get a retrospective on the announcement, but an interesting reflection on Magic Johnson’s poignant triumph, which in some ways might not have been a triumph for the battle against the disease.

I remember the day Magic said he had HIV vividly.  Really, it was hard to separate it from “Magic has AIDS”.  Yeah, I was a Celtics fan, but who could really hate Magic?  The smile, the gregariousness.  Even if it was a media image, he seemed like the friendliest guy on earth.  And for a night, we were pretty sure he only had very limited time here.  The footage of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather reporting it – the local media guy sitting waiting for Magic’s presser with his eyes watering, Larry Bird talking about not wanting to play that night – the gravity of the announcement came rushing back.  The entire thing now still is pretty amazing in retrospect.

However, what we knew less was what it did to Magic himself.  Well obviously he had HIV and that had to be spooky.  However, what about Magic having his Magicness pulled out from underneath him?  Magic himself in the film never really expresses it so starkly – George leaves those lines for us to fill – but as he recounts his actions and we see him speak, it all sort of came together.  Of course, Magic said he would be a spokesman, and then joined George Bush Sr’s panel.  What else could he do?  He was the world’s most famous HIV patient.  But that was not Magic’s gig – and so he drifted.  Being an activist/political flunky was not going to fill the hole.  When he went back and played the All Star Game though, THAT started to get there.  Of course from there, there was the talk show, and the failed comeback, and then the successful one – and only now has Magic seemed to settle into the life and profile that made the most sense for him.  He has raised money, but has been a hero to the cause of fighting HIV by simply rediscovering himself, and being Magic the entire time.

However, and this is the most interesting point in the film – was simply being famous enough for him to have done the HIV cause proud?  Chris Rock once posited that Bill Cosby did more for black comics by just being Bill Cosby than a more active dude like Dick Gregory.  Did that apply with Magic?  His journey and the advances in medicine have left him nearly HIV-free.  Does that mean, as Andrew Sullivan naively noted, that we are really safe from AIDS now?  Sure, HIV at this point is like many forms of cancer now – get it early, attack is sufficiently, you should be able to live a pretty normal life, but that ain’t “cured”.  Magic seems to get it – and laments that in his own journey he might have contributed to the false sense of security that folks like Andrew Sullivan can make such a weirdo claim.  It does not take much to veer into wacky African politician territory from there.  I was expecting a good story about a seminal event of my lifetime, but George has gone one better and provided a meditation on triumphing over HIV, both in a macro and micro way.

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Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

One thing that can be said about the hardcover version of Those Guys Have All the Fun is that it is a heck of a doorstop, clocking in at 750 pages or so.  Like Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball, it is attempting to cover an incredibly comprehensive topic – the history of ESPN.  The author James Miller, had success with this format before in his oral history of Saturday Night Live, so he took he same method to ESPN.  In a sense, Miller did not write the book so much as he edited numerous interviews with tons of people, on air, off, famous and less so, from all aspects of the industry.  You can’t say the book was not comprehensive.  However, when we are talking about comprehensive research and copious editing, we are still thinking textbook virtues – but is the book actually, you know … entertaining?  As an ESPN fan (or at least, observer), the book certainly was something I was looking forward to reading, but as the history of ESPN progressed, the story got progressively less compelling.  Murray’s editing choices here raise some question – and the latter half of the book ends up reading much like idolatry, without a ton of deep substance.

The best parts of the book actually come fairly early.  At the outset, we read about the Rasmussens, a troubled family and Bill Rasmussen who was, for all intents and purposes, the founder of ESPN.  His vision of course was fairly limited, wanting to use this new cable tv to broadcast Connecticut sports.  However, when the dish salesman tells him that a satellite can transmit everywhere – one is reminded of Jed Clampett running into some Texas Tea.  The entire early history is fascinating – how slapdash the production was – the large promises of Rasmussen without any real delivery mechanism.  In a lot of ways in the early days, it was a miracle for the shows to get on the air.  And then with early deals with the NCAA and NFL things started to happen.

Murray tracks these sorts of developments through things he describes as “steps in ESPN’s rise to world domination”, which is a little smarmy sounding as a thesis, though understandable.  Murray does a good job tracking the changes in management and how different managers’ decisions at specific times were key.  The Rasmussens were key at their time with a big idea, but they did not know what to do next.  The next level involving identifying the dual revenue stream so crucial to cable was interesting, and how they were stuck in very bad deals and how to get out of them.  The behind the scenes drama here is fascinating.

However as the book trucks along, the challenges become more about what is happening on the air as the on-air product gets more refined.  Murray gets amazing access to all of the major anchors and personalities people know, and perspectives on everything, including dish on each other which seems rather not team-playery.  Bob Ley, Robin Roberts come off as pros.  Chris Berman – the most famous of them all – is portrayed as a deeply simple, rather dumb man.  Indeed he is quoted at one point saying “I’m a simple guy. I don’t watch TV. I don’t go on the Internet. So I never watched Playmakers, but I knew if the league was pissed, I probably should be pissed.” about the NFL, the sort of bowing to a master that a Brown University (among the most establishment-skeptic university cultures around) alumni might vomit at.  He becomes the organization’s biggest star, and his depiction as a lunkhead ends up matching quite nicely with the Ted Baxters of any newsroom.  The book’s most complicated and three dimensional personalities are Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann.  They have been inextricably linked with their tour together on Sportscenter – but in a lot of ways they represented the core battle in the organization, between personalities on air trying to grow in their profile, against a network that desperately wants to keep cost down (and by extension the fame of its participants).  Dan Patrick was a team player clearly, and seems like the nicest guy you’d want to meet there – the sort of guy who had the back of the working schlubs.  Olbermann by contrast, decidedly did not – the student who was smarter than the teachers and had trouble hiding it.  The book’s portrayal of Olbermann’s stormy time, his issues with Bristol, CT and the disaster that was Sportsnight on ESPN2 were among the best sections.  Sometimes it seemed like Murray was casting Olbermann as the villain – Keith seemed remarkably self aware about his tendencies.  He and Dan are easy to “get” even if it was not fun to be their bosses.

The guys who come across worst in the book are pretty clearly Mike Tirico – both in terms of being something of a lothario on the Bristol Campus, and in his lack of generosity to Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football – and interestingly enough Bill Simmons.  Simmons, long one of my favorite writers clearly, is also incapable of writing and editing – his writing has a lot of the long winded rants of Adam Carolla in them. (it makes sense they worked together)  His quotes, in the later section of the book, show a guy who is either deeply insecure, or just a prick about his own work – and deeply suspicious about other people’s opinions.  He observes that Olbermann is way “crazier than I am”, but it is hard to dispute that Simmons might be harder to work – though his 30 for 30 creation was excellent.

Ultimately though, the book peters out a bit after nearly 500 pages.  After Olbermann’s departure and the systematic marginalization of Dan Patrick, the coverage of the Mark Shapiro years where PTI, Around the Horn and other shows are introduced becomes sort of dull.  Partially this is because of the inherently inside baseball nature of such stuff, but also very little new is revealed compared to what we already knew.  In a sense, it was stuff that has been covered – it’s too recent to be interesting TV.  Even the coverage of the LeBron James TV show is flawed because ultimately, we know all the angles.  What’s the point?  While the latter half  of the book is well researched, it is deadly dull.  But for about 500 pages, Murray’s mission is a fascinating look at a TV network going from birth to wobbling up on its own two feet.

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King’s Ransom

Peter Berg’s King’s Ransom made sense as the first of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries – an accomplished filmmaker examining one of the era’s defining stories.  It is actually amazing to think that it has been twenty years since Wayne Gretzky got dealt.  It is even more amazing to ponder that he could have been.  How can the Bulls deal Michael Jordan – and not just Michael Jordan, but the Jordan AFTER winning the titles?  THAT was the magnitude of Edmonton dealing Wayne Gretzky.  That he was traded to Los Angeles added a spin – Gretzky as a true hockey ambassador, while Edmonton had to lose their boy, to a warm weather team!

Berg’s film spends equal time discussing the machinations that got the trade to happen – as well as examining the impact in California, turning the Kings from a local afterthought into THE glam entry in the NHL map.  But we start at the beginning – the idea of Gretzky and the Oilers changing how hockey was conceived.  Their 198x average of 5.9 goals per game is unfathomable.  Wayne Gretzky had seasons of 217 points, 92 goals … 92 goals is nearly twice what the elite guys score now.  The Oilers were a high flying act, but they won 5 titles – the substance was there with the sizzle.

Edmonton is also a small city.  Edmonton is a very small market.  At some point, Gretzky wanted to make a bit more money while Edmonton’s ownership became cash strapped.  He became more valuable as a trade asset to their franchise than as a player.  As such – what we get is them finding a deal for Gretzky and asking him to help.  Berg’s film is very strong here, assembling the documentary footage, showing what a phenomenon Gretzky was.  We see what a state event his marriage was (to some chick from the Police Academy movies), and how big a deal he was.  When Gretzky wipes tears away when announcing his move – the tears were real.

However, the hole in Berg’s movie is Gretzky himself.  I am not sure why Gretzky agreed to the deal.  He wipes the tears away.  In fact, he has chances to reverse things and stay with Edmonton once the trade rumors start.  However, he accedes.  Why did he do it?  In a lot of ways, Gretzky’s view of things is the angle that is the most fascinating – but Berg cannot really unpack that.  This is compounded by the fact that Berg and Gretzky are friends, and Berg interviews Gretzky on camera.  Alas, we just get some vague answers from Gretzky.  It does not prevent the story from being good documentary, but it prevents the film from rising up further.

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Muhammad and Larry

The hero falling is one of the harder sites to see.  Moreover, the star whom we remembered as great, now a shell of that figure.  It is sad.  Certainly none of us have a right to tell someone what to do, but we all have the right to shake our heads when he suffers the consequences.  Really, it is hard to watch the Muhammad Ali who Albert Maysles documents in his entry into ESPN’s 30 for 30 set, Muhammad and Larry without thinking about the beloved man as he is now.  Fortunately Ali is still sharp and vibrant, but his body has rebelled against him – and it would be dishonest to say that it doesn’t take away from what he should be.  Maysles’ film documents the fateful fight between Ali, coaxed out of retirement, and his former sparring partner and champion at the time Larry Holmes.  If the Oscar winning When We Were Kings successfully captures the feel of the “Rumble in the Jungle”, this smaller sized feature effectively captures the elegaic tone of Ali’s last shot.

It is in no way a spoiler to say that Holmes crushed Ali on that night in 1980.  You can look it up, and Maysles starts his film with some of the disturbing highlights – the entire story has to be seen in context to these moments.  He intercuts it with footage that he has had for years (because of a documentary that he was to film that never got released) of behind the scenes in the training camp.  In the early moments, we get to visit Ali’s camp.  As is well known (and if you don’t the talking heads will tell you), Ali’s camps were always a cacaphony.  Unlike the secretive, manicured press management of today’s athletes, Ali ran his camps wide open.  It felt like anyone was invited and could get an audience with the champ.  Ali is forever on stage – no athlete since has been so magnetic.  But even in the early scenes, we can hear words slurring.  The charm is there – the old warhorse talking about riding again – but you see the slowing down, although it is subtle enough to not see – if you didn’t want to.

In contrast to the hoopla of the Ali camp, we see the much smaller scaled side of Larry Holmes.  Holmes had the bad luck of being the guy between Ali and Tyson.  He did not have the outsized personality of either and his skillset was more workmanlike than shock and awe.  Like almost every Ali opponent, Holmes was the straight man.  We see old interviews of Larry, as well as new footage and interviews.  The Holmes Maysles finds is a man at peace.  He has hit bitterness – like all fighters, he thinks he is the best who ever lived – but he laughs a lot, and is still close to his Easton, PA roots.  He had a thankless role tonight – as the guy to cut the hero down to size – but what can you do?  Larry seems to be handling it about as well as one can ask.

The movie is at its best tracking the camps.  You get a sense of the personalities involved – although I’m not sure even less familiar viewers will learn about the Ali persona.  He is slower.  He does the magic tricks for the children, he is still funny (although the movie’s one weakness is that we never get past the Ali persona – but it might be impossible to find time to see what the private man is thinking in his case).  But the sparring sessions – he can’t move – he’s being teed off on.  Even those who don’t know boxing could sense something was wrong – and Maysles does a nice job showing these things without laying on the schmaltz.  It’s a sad story – and some of Ali’s fans feared for him and the circumstance – but Maysles is not going for anger here, just sadness.  Even at the end Larry Holmes wants to spare him, but he would not go down, and the referee was not going to take Ali’s chance at history away – and that’s too bad.

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Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?

In a lot of ways, the big takeaway from Mike Tollin’s Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? is that Donald Trump has been a giant douchebag for a really really long time.  Also, his hair has largely been the same for 30 years – which is remarkable in its own right – I mean, even Jon Bon Jovi changed his look.  He may or may not have singularly responsible for the downfall of the USFL – Tollin does not exactly offer an impartial take – but he is such a juicy villain that I’m willing to go with it.

With a jerk like Trump bringing down the league, Tollin could have made a bitter screed about the death of an interesting concept.  Fortunately though, Small Potatoes is a loving look back at the three plus year history of the United States Football League and an excuse for Tollin to show all this footage he, as sort of the league’s Ed Sabol, had been sitting on for eons.  Really with the ubiquitous nature of the NFL, the idea that a semi-comparable football league could exist in the 1980s is almost inconceivable.  However there it was, a goofy league that had weird promotions, brought in a couple of innovations and brought us some really really talented dudes.

The USFL started as a 12 team league running in the springtime.  The markets had varying attitudes towards player acquisition.  New Jersey signed a Heisman winner in Herschel Walker taking advantage of his leaving after his junior year, while the Tampa Bay Bandits (introducing Steve Spurrier to the world) ran as much more of a “small market” outfit.  The league tried to fill a perceived market gap for football in the spring (considering how ESPN shows spring practices for college teams, this is not the leap one might think) while being more “fun” by allowing coordinated celebrations and serving as a laboratory for new concepts (indeed, the Houston Gamblers brought the run and shoot into the football vernacular).  The ratings with ABC and ESPN in the spring were shockingly good.  Granted, not all 12 markets were doing well at the same time, but that describes any sports league – but clearly it seemed like there was some substance there.

Tollin’s film luxuriates in the substance.  As viewers we are surprised at just how many guys we know were in the USFL.  Whether it be Charley Steiner on the radio, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Reggie White, Anthony Carter – all sorts of people fans have heard of, Burt Reynolds in the owner’s box, the innovation of instant replay – the USFL was clearly some sort of factor in the football landscape.  It looked like it was actually decent football.

Tollin also luxuriates in Trump’s acquisiton of the New Jersey Generals, and his entry into the league.  He started throwing more money at the team – getting people to cross over from the NFL.  He wanted to be THE face of the league – and his signing of NFL guys helped accelerate an arms race that precipitated a spectacularly fast expansion to 22 teams.  The sheer number of teams started to create a lot of rinky dink outfits – the story Rick Neuheisel tells of the San Antonio team’s ability to make payroll was right out of the worst stories of the American Basketball Association.  Trump, in an interview with Tollin, seems to have put this in a box the way neocons now might have put their incorrect opinions about war in some dark recess.  His Donaldness in stark contrast with the other owners makes for clear protagonists and villains.

The main protagonist becomes John Bassett, the principal partner of the Tampa Bay team, who has run the team in a smaller manner – who resists the Trumpification of the league.  He is trying to do things organically and wants the league to stay a spring option and grow.  The tug of war between Bassett and Trump, especially as the league wants to try to compete directly with the NFL, becomes where Tollin’s film is its angriest.  When Trump swoops in and gains stature in the league, it is as Bassett starts to succumb to a brain tumor.  Tollin lays it on a bit thick here – but the Donald is such an asshole!

Ultimately, Tollin tells the story of the USFL with a light touch.  He still holds Trump responsible, but the film seems over the whole thing.  The movie is more of a comedy than a parable or a morality tale.  A fun league with a fun history – and yeah, it might have been fun to still have it around.

 

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The LeBachelor

It could not be more damaging to the career of Andrew Dice Clay if it had been made as a documentary by someone who hated him.

- Roger Ebert on Dice Rules

He could have just as easily had been describing LeBron James’ portrayal of LeBron James in ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary “LeBron James: Decision”.  Wait?  It’s not a 30 for 30?  My bad.  I will admit – I watched.  As an NBA fan and a self proclaimed pop culture aficionado, how could I not?  Besides getting the news story – that he is going to the Heat, making them the favorites in the East even if they get 9 cab drivers to occupy the remaining roster spots – the special was reality TV at its worst and most inevitable.

Indeed, this could not have done more to hurt James’ image than an expose by somebody who despised him.  That this production was devised by his management team and midwifed by ESPN makes it utterly flabbergasting.  If the World Cup was ESPN at its best, this is the Worldwide Leader might have been rock bottom.  Given that they were the network behind “Who’s Hot?” and Dick Vitale’s xenophobic rants on the NBA draftcast, that’s saying something.

Now, the first thing TS mentioned to me was that all he wants to do is win – isn’t that like other ath-a-letes?  After all, as a Celtics fan, isn’t this the same as what happened in 2008 when the Celtics landed Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen?  If one wants to make that argument, I can see it to a degree.  However, Kevin Garnett was one of the 5 best players of the 2000s, and was on a team that was below .500.  So was Ray Allen and Pierce.  They were in pretty horrendous situations – and all past their primes.  The strategy employed by Boston was VERY high risk – that it has gotten a title and a runner up is the high end outcome.  On the other hand, LeBron, at the height of his powers, is leaving a contender (for all the bashing the Cavaliers deservedly get as an organization, this team won 128 games in 2 seasons and only lost to teams that were arguably at least as good as they were) to form a super team.  Bill Simmons posited that this was all decided as early as 2007.  ”A few weeks after the 2008 Summer Olympics, Someone Who Knows Things told me the following rumor: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Chris Paul became such good friends during the 2007 Olympic trials, and then during their 2008 Olympics excursion in Beijing, that they actually made a pact in China to play together.”  In other words, the best basketball player in the world might be a fifteen year old girl.  Futhermore, where is the urge to beat the best?  At their peak, I reckon Bird wanted to beat Magic, not join him.  This whole thing reveals the sort of competitor he actually is.  In other words – not what we thought.

But enough of the competitive ramifications – the Heat will be good, period.  What one marvels at is the utter tone deafness of LeBron’s team during the entire run.  For instance, there is the very real possibility that LeBron has been sitting on this news for a long time.  But instead of a presscon and full paged ad to Cleveland fans, like a normal player might do (ok, maybe even a tweet) – LeBron’s team put together a one hour show – hired noted hack Jim Gray to interview him, and sold it to ESPN.  ESPN of course, got exactly what it wanted.  He set it at the Greenwich, Connecticut Boys and Girls Club – the noted trick of surrounding him with kids so no really inflammatory questions can be asked (not that Gray, on LeBron’s payroll, would do that) – leaving open the possibility of Vince McMahon showing up.

But alas no Vince McMahon, Shawn Michaels, Brett Michaels or any other possibility of actual entertainment or insight followed.  The studio show had league partner Stuart Scott and the ABC NBA crew of John Barry, Wilbon etc.  The possibility of asking him why he chose a national TV forum to publicly urinate on the people of Cleveland was basically zero.  They made empty headed happy talk – they had correspondents at all the relvant NBA cities.  I remember thinking how absurd the depiction of the chase for Jesus Shuttlesworth was in He Got Game – it turns out that Spike Lee was 12 years too early.

Anyway then, Jim Gray started with his questions – idiotic small talk, and it took a FULL 25 MINUTES before LeBron made the announcement.  He confessed he did not tell any of the other pursuing teams until now.  He announced his departure “I am taking my skills to South Beach” and that was that – except there were 30 more minutes of air time to fill.  The only satisfactory moment was his uncomfortable look throughout the interview and especially at a burning jersey shown to him from Cleveland.

Now, Cleveland fans should not be burning jerseys, and Dan Gilbert is a spectacular hypocrite.  After all LeBron changed basketball teams – he didn’t flood Lake Erie with crude oil or anything.  He has the right to change employers – as we all do.  HOWEVER, the choice to go on national television and publicly embarass his fans by leaving them (in other words, he turned heel, he broke up on the jumbotron … that is a bit less forgiveable.  How did his team think it was a good idea?  It was the greatest emasculation a city’s sports fans could ever have – and for no reason.  What was LeBron thinking?  We’ll never know.

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ESPN’s Greatest Achievement?

Oh, is it ever easy to make fun of ESPN.  Whether it be the urban legend of You’re With Me Leather, virtually anything Stuart Scott says, the network’s hypersaturation of NFL coverage, its fairly lousy cliche-ridden NBA coverage (seriously, how does Tim Legler have a job) or a baseball announcer so ignorant he became a web sensation, ESPN has been a mixed bag since it’s charming mid 90s peak.  Really, it hasn’t been the same since Charley Steiner died (oh, wait …):

But don’t look now – but the Worldwide Leader the last month might have been spinning its greatest achievement – and it has been by a marked lack of the excess that has riddled so much of its other programming, from Sportscenter on down.  Of course I am talking about ESPN’s remarkable World Cup coverage.  The tournament, as is often the case, has provided drama on its own, but ESPN in its coverage has hit homeruns with several of the decisions they have made – and most notable, some of the things they chose NOT to do:

sticking with the pros: Instead of making the mistake they had made in the past of casting ESPN lifers (Bob Ley, Dave O’Brien) into play by play roles, they took the best of soccer today.  Ian Darke I had not heard of before, but he has been excellent – and Martin Tyler of course is a great of the field.  They have been terrific play by play men, not missing action, providing appropriate drama commiserate with what is going on.  They also supply some of their own strong opinions on diving and terrible calls.  I’d like to see the next non-Collinsworth NFL announcer who rips a blatantly incorrect call with the bluntness it warrants.  ESPN has put its pros in the studio, where Tirico, Fowler, Ley have all kept the studio shows going deftly.

not pandering to casual fans: The analysis has been solid and technical, with minimal amounts of “teaching” to a new soccer audience.  The network has bet that its viewers would figure it out.  The analysts have been roundly sound, and unsentimental – ripping stars where appropriate.  Was there a pro-American bias?  Absolutely, but it was never unfair.  John Harkes and Alexi Lalas have stood quite nicely next to the cavalcade of worldwide voices ESPN has used.  Among those Ruud Gullit, Steve McManaman and Roberto Martinez have been particularly excellent.  Ruud Gullit’s own refusal to believe what the Netherlands pull off was particularly charming.

a lack of hoo-haa: I’ll let Bill Simmons words carry this:

I love the Cup because it stripped away all the things about professional sports that I’ve come to despise. No sideline reporters. No JumboTron. No TV timeouts. No onslaught of replays after every half-decent play. No gimmicky team names like the “Heat” or the “Thunder.” (You know what the announcers call Germany? The Germans. I love this.) No announcers breathlessly overhyping everything or saying crazy things to get noticed. We don’t have to watch 82 mostly half-assed games to get to the playoffs. We don’t have 10 graphics on the screen at all times. We don’t have to sit there for four hours waiting for a winner because pitchers are taking 25 seconds to deliver a baseball.

The World Cup just bangs it out: Two cool national anthems, two 45-minute halves, a few minutes of extra time and usually we’re done. Everything flies by. Everything means something. It’s the single best sporting event we have by these four measures: efficiency, significance, historical context and truly meaningful/memorable/exciting moments. You know … as long as you like soccer.

I’ll even take it a step further.  Even if you don’t like soccer – the event supplies its own logic.  Frankly, considering how the games zip along it’s a good proposition.  Sure 1/3 of the games might stink, but that describes every sport – and we can suffer it pretty easily.

It is always a question as to whether soccer will make it in America.  I’d submit that it has – when an elite level international tournament is being shown like this.  ESPN has stepped up its coverage and dialed back the fuzzy feature pieces – it has bet that the soccer itself is enough.  That ESPN can do the World Cup without introductory pieces, or creating a need for pieces on Xavi’s family, shows that soccer is here.

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The Band that Wouldn’t Die

(another part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series)

I think THIS, moreover is what ESPN’s documentary series was meant to accomplish.  Bill Coudurie’s The Guru of Go and Fritz Mitchell’s The Legend of the Jimmy the Greek, for instance, were both fairly routine docs, covering cool subjects, but without necessarily an angle that we have not seen before.  But Barry Levinson’s The Band that Wouldn’t Die, is just a better documentary, and the quality of the filmmaker behind it shows.  Levinson is hardly unknown – indeed he is one of the most accomplished filmmakers in recent Hollywood whether it be Wag the Dog or Rain Man. However, at least as much as John Waters, Levinson also is a native of Baltimore, and that has been seen in works as varied as Avalon, a couple episodes of the legendary Homicide: Life on the Street, and most famously in the movie that put him (and many others) on the map, Diner.

Knowing this attention to Baltimore, it is not a mystery that like many of his contemporaries, he grew up a huge Baltimore Colts fan, and so for him to make his ESPN piece on the subject of the Colts’ departure to Indianapolis prior to the 1984 season was hardly a stretch.  However, that story arc makes for a fairly routine story – and Levinson elevates it through the use of the Baltimore Colts band.  The Colts band of course performed at halftime of their games and whatnot … given how it’s 2010, these scenes were almost touchingly retro.  I mean, seriously, how often do you see NFL halftime bands?  (well the Baltimore Ravens do, but that’s for later)  The Colts band moreover had been around since 1947 – essentially the history of the franchise, including being on the sideline when the Colts beat the Giants in the 1958 NFL Title game (the famous “Greatest Game Ever Played”).

Levinson deftly tracks the band’s history in the area (made up of local denizens of course), talking to original band members whenever possible.  We learn of the troubled Irsay stewardship of the franchise, Robert Irsay’s own alcoholism and boorishness (including not at all unsympathetic interviews with Irsay’s family – to his credit, his son does not run from the worst), and the ensuing attempts to move without a new stadium.  When the big day to move occured (the Colts famously leaving in the middle of the night), the band had to steal the uniforms and hide them, and this is revealed in an entertaining story.  Levinson, in having real subjects and a human story, make the connection to the loss of the team real.

Furthermore, as it turns out, the band decides after the team leaves – that they want to stay together.  The Colts, in 1983-1984 NFL did not take the band with them.  The band stays formed without a team, and still plays.  They essentially become barnstormers, playing at NFL venues, being invited by other teams.  The symbolism is obvious and Levinson wrings all he can from it.  They want football back in Baltimore, and the band is the best ambassador they have.

Of course the band still exists – but how they exist is a bit ironic, given how they took a team.  To his credit, Levinson does not shy away from this, and the band members are not callous.  But business is business I suppose, and so just be grateful to be a beneficiary.  But the band has survived, long after the Baltimore Colts are a memory.

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The Guru of Go

(Note: Part of ESPN’s 30 f0r 30 series of films)

Could you imagine a football team playing a season without punting?    Or a basketball offense with all one on one dribbling?  The idea of a tiny school, unable to compete with large programs staring them in the face – having to devise a way around it.  Smaller colleges and high schools have been incubators for some seriously alternative thinking – there is the low risk and lower according fear of a coach getting fired.  These alternative paradigms have introduced excitement into sports, especially the higher levels – where innovation and courage are generally frowned upon (indeed look at how much Mike D’Antoni’s Phoenix teams were pilloried when they only were winning 60 games a year).  I am forever fascinated by them, from Paul Johnson’s work at Georgia Tech to even LaVell Edwards of the past at Brigham Young … alternative systems allow teams to overcome systemic disadvantage (i.e. recruiting) to legitimately “overachieve”.

As such, the 1990 Loyola Marymount University basketball team is a fascinating study.  First of all, there is the school itself, a small Jesuit Catholic school in Los Angeles, California – member of the tiny West Coast Conference.  Second, there was its coach, Paul Westhead – who had developed this running scoring system after being cast off from the NBA (even after winning the title in 1980 with the Lakers).  Third, there was the team itself, with USC transfers Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers – and the amazing dramatic arc of the 1990 season itself.  Really there is probably more than an hour’s material here – and as admirably as director Bill Couturie tries, The Guru of Go is ultimately held back from greatness by its inability to juggle these three major threads over the course of a one hour documentary.

One of the weaknesses is Couturie’s awkward device of separating chapters with Shakespeare quotes.  In between the chapters, we bounce between parallel stories line which both go from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.  The first is of Paul Westhead, who had come from Philadelphia, played for Jack Ramsay and crafted his own extreme up tempo notion of how basketball should be played.  He had coached the 1980 Lakers and then was famously run out of town after clashing with Magic Johnson.  After another NBA failure with the Chicago Bulls, Westhead went to Loyola Marymount as a place to have someone take a chance on him.  The second is the story of Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble, friends from Philadelphia – Gathers becoming a legendary player in the city – growing up determined to lead their families out of the slums.  They were playing for community, and end up going to the University of Southern California.  Couturie ping pongs between these two threads, and their eventual intersection, but it is distracting, and we do not get to dive in depth on either of them.  Eventually, once Kimble and Gathers transfer to LMU, we focus on the 1990 season, with the spectacular highlights only a 122 point per game team can hang up.  And when Gathers drops dead, the documentary footage is staggering.  However, both stories – about the kids, and the coach – are both compelling enough for their own features.  Couturie is unable to juggle the two stories enough for that narrative engine to really get going.

Ultimately the movie has some amazing highlights and interviews of a fascinating little supernova in the history of college basketball.  However, it is hard not to feel like the pace was rushed, and that a lot was glossed over and both stories were thus a bit shortchanged.  It is a disappointment, especially given how compelling both figures are … its title suggest that it is about the zany basketball quest of Paul Westhead – but really the film can never fully settle on what it wants to be about.