Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

So I'm watching ESPN's new show "Playmakers," and I'm thinking, can't anyone come up with a sports-themed TV show that doesn't suck rocks? There are many, many beloved classic movies and books about sports — The Natural, Eight Men Out, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh — but the best TV has been able to do is "The White Shadow." The show, which ran on CBS in the late 1970s, had some great moments, but it did ask us to believe that Vincent Van Patten as the twerpy Salami was a welcome member of an inner-city Los Angeles high school basketball team. At least in "Playmakers," which focuses on an expansion team in the Fictional Football League — you know, how they can't or won't buy the rights to use real teams' logos — the actors look like they could play football. Those actors include Cuba Gooding Jr.'s brother Omar playing a running back who repeatedly says, "Jerry, Jerry Maguire!" and "Show me the money!"

OK, he doesn't do that, but it would be more entertaining if he did. "Playmakers" is serious soap opera-ville. In about the first 15 minutes of the first episode, we find out that Omar Gooding's character is a hotshot rookie who parties like Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden combined, and who smokes crack on the way to the game. His backup is a potentially wife-cheating, gimpy-kneed old back who can't figure out he's at the end of his career. That backup's best friend on the team is a linebacker who paralyzed an opposing wide receiver with a seemingly innocuous hit, thereby giving that linebacker flashbacks about his brother collapsing on the field, causing him to spend way too much time with a psychologist, and perhaps causing him to continue the way-passé look of white bald head and goatee. And the team's coach is pissing blood. I say the over/under is three episodes on someone coming down with amnesia.

The whole idea is that this a real, behind-the-scenes look at the game of football, real enough to include swearing and more moon shots than the Apollo mission. Like with most every trend, though, television is a little late to this game. After all, Peter Gent's fictionalized account of his Dallas Cowboys career, "North Dallas Forty," was a book in 1973 and a movie in 1979. Plus, ESPN's own SportsCenter is helpful enough to provide a police blotter when necessary. What's more exciting, fake struggles or the real story of Oakland Raider Bill Romanowski punching his own teammate so hard that the teammate's out for the season? (I'll add here that the most interesting sports TV series in recent memory was HBO's "Hard Knocks," which followed the Baltimore Ravens, then the Cowboys, through training camp. While I'm off on a tangent, I'd also like to add that the Google translation of the Dallas team's name in Spanish, Los Vaqueros, comes back in English as the Dallas Cattle Tenders. How 'bout them Cattle Tenders!)

Perhaps the episodic nature of television works against a TV series based on sports — in a book or a movie, you can always fall back on the Big Game as a natural climax. Perhaps the fact there's already 20 skidillion hours of sports on TV a week works against it. Perhaps the need or desire to appeal to a nonsports audience mucks things up. Or perhaps only hacks decide to do sports series.

Or maybe the problem is that most series tend to focus on stuff people already know. The daily life of football players is pretty well-chronicled. So instead of stuff like "Playmakers," ESPN could do shows like these:

"The Turk": The inside story of the assistant coach whose job it is to summon players who are about to learn they'll be cut. Big catchphrase potential in "Coach wants to see you. Oh, and bring your playbook."

"Touched by a Shot Doctor": This time moving to basketball, the story of a roving shooting instructor who not only teaches players about hitting jumpers, but also a little something about life. Guest-starring Shaquille O'Neal.

"Inside the Cheerleaders' Locker Room": A definite sweeps-month winner.

If anyone wants to use any of these concepts, feel free. Just remember to send the royalties to the e-mail address below.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.