Playmakers

Gunny asked me what I'd thought of ESPN's show Playmakers.

I'm of two minds on the subject.

I'm a big believer that ESPN should stick to sports and sports news. I didn't much like it when they made that a movie out of Season on the Brink, about Bobby Knight starring Brian Dennehy. (Especially since that one was such a turd). But they kept on, making a movie about Bear Bryant, and then things went completely batty when they made an entire season of stuff.

If I ran the world and, to date, I don't, I'd have ESPN stick a little more closely to the stuff that's kept them around for the past 25 years: just do whatever they can to be the most comprehensive and ubiquitous presence in the sports world that they can.

If they want to make fiction, why not make a channel just for that? Or show it on ESPN2, or something like that. I guess what keeps coming to mind is the fact that if you want to see a music video on MTV, you need to watch at 3 AM, or get their second network.

But there's room for everything, I guess. I guess they can make fiction if they don't go the MTV route and show nothing but fiction.

I haven't been watching Playmakers, to answer your question, Gunny. I saw most of an early episode, and thought it was little more than a clone of Any Given Sunday, only without the odd camera angles and abrupt scene-cuts. That combined with what I'd talked about above didn't give me a lot of reason to go back and try again.

Since then, I've heard a few good things. Enough to make me want to maybe watch another episode and give it another chance, anyway.