ESPN may have produced the increasingly annoying Chris Berman, overemphasized the highlight in sport and overcovered nonsense (Breaking News: Brett Favre sighted in Waffle House bathroom!) But once in a while they come up with a really good idea like SportsCentury. This has a chance to be as good as that.
Starting tonight on ESPN:

Starting tonight with Peter Berg's (Friday Night Lights) film about Edmonton's trade of Wayne Gretzky to the LA Kings, King's Ransom.

I thought it was pretty cool stuff. I like the idea of a different director every week.

I love Peter Berg, but man... he needs to lay off the jump cuts once in a while. Also, he really, really loves Explosions in the Sky. Everything he does, I hear their music in the background.

Kings Ransom was a great documentary. Really nailed the impact of that colossal trade.

Tonight is Levinson's The Band That Wouldn't Die about the Baltimore Colts Marching Band, who continued to play even after their team left (in the middle of the night).

I think Levinson told a better story tonight than Berg did in the first film. Much more compelling figures, IMO--and that's despite the magnitude of Gretzky's fame.

I look forward to following this series each week.

The Band was nice, but it's really hard to feel all that sympathy for Baltimore given how they turned around and stabbed Cleveland in the back the exact same way. It's like if Brooklyn turned around and in 1965 stole the Cubs.

For me, the most interesting part was the short section about Irsay. Although anger is the first reaction I have with respect to the way he treated the people of Baltimore, the story they told of his alcoholism and how it affected his mental ability was kind of sad.

I have to agree. Watching footage of that press conference was uncomfortable at best. And watching his son talk about it was equally painful.

Crocktacularity, I think that Levinson did as well as he could with the situation, with the band members saying explicitly - "good God, I didn't want it like this, because of all people, we know how Cleveland feels."

However, I would also have to say that Modell's departure from Cleveland pales in comparison to Irsay's departure from Baltimore. Modell didn't have Mayflower trucks before dawn, didn't do drunken interviews where he flat out lied, and wasn't a complete bastard as Irsay apparently became.

I don't blame Cleveland for refusing to perform a huge wealth transfer just to keep the Browns in town - that's the one lesson learned by all owners from the Colts, and it's a shitty one if you're a taxpayer or a fan (Seattle Sonics fans, for one, can sympathize with Baltimore Colts fans).

Modell is, I think, rightfully hated by Cleveland (and apparently David Modell, who came off really well in this piece, was a completely useless rich boy who was best known for nose candy habits). But I can't blame Baltimore in this instance. I can blame Tagliabue for awarding franchises which are now floundering (seriously, how many blackouts does Jacksonville need to have before they move that damn team) to the wrong cities. I can blame Irsay. But I can't blame Colts fans.

ZeroForce I agree that Levinson did the best with what he had, and the band was a compelling story. The sort of glossing over the Cleveland thing was interesting. I was surprised by how Modell apparently welcomed the Colts band, which in light of what came later was weird foreshadowing. At the same time, I really felt it glossed over a few things about the Ravens saga. I didn't like the way it more or less painted the band as heroes for marching to the capital in support of subsidized municipal stadia for rich pro sports franchises over other necessary budget things. When thrown on top of the way they treated the Cleveland thing, it was just a hairs shade too close to hagiography for me. I do also agree that the NFL's expansion to Jacksonville was silly: Does Florida need three pro teams on top of three major college programs? There just aren't enough consumers there, and it shows.

Except in 1993, awarding the Carolina franchise made sense as Charlotte in those days was beginning to become much more of a major league market (and in fact, had the Panthers not gotten off to an 0-5 start in 1995, they might have actually made the playoffs in their first year of existance). What I think may have been why Jacksonville, and not Baltimore got the other expansion franchise may have had a lot to do with the same reason Washington didn't get another baseball team until MLB transferred the Expos from Montreal to where they became the Nationals: Territorial issues.

If you remember, Jack Kent Cooke still owned the Redskins at the time the 1995 expansion teams were announced. I'm thinking that behind the scenes, Cooke might have demanded too much from the NFL to give Baltimore an expansion franchise, and as I remember Cooke, as one of the "old guard" of NFL owners at the time may have had too much influence to allow Baltimore to get an expansion team.

That said, what I do think Tagliabue should have done in 1995 when the Browns moved to Baltimore was this: Demand the Irsays swap franchises with Modell, with the then-Browns moving to Indianpolis to replace a Colts team that would have, name and all, moved back to Baltimore (and this would have been if that had happened the second time an Irsay swapped a franchise, as back in the '70s Robert Irsay got the Colts from the late Carroll Rosenbloom in exchange for the Rams franchise Irsay had at the time (Rosenbloom died about a year after that happened, and his widow Georgia Frontierre took over the Rams, with of course the Rams ironically moving to another city that had previously lost an NFL franchise in St. Louis for the 1995 season). Short of the Irsays agreeing to swap the Colts for the Browns franchise (that would have in that scenario replaced the Colts in Indy), Tagliabue should have in retrospect demanded the Irsays give up the Colts name and allow that to go to Modell with the Browns to Baltimore, with the Indy franchise then given a new name in either instance (my choice would have been the Racers, with Indy Cars as the logo since of course the Indy 500 is probably what Indy is still best known for to many), and if necessary compensating the Irsays in some manner (whether it be extra draft picks or being guaranteed the #1 overall pick in the draft for a few years regardless of record and such picks being exempt from any salary cap and/or monetairly) to make it happen.

Given that even almost a decade and a half after the announcement of the old Browns moving to Baltimore that there are still a considerable number of old Colts fans, even with the Ravens winning a Super Bowl and making numerous playoff appearences that have never felt whole because it was not done as the Baltimore Colts, even now if I were Godell, I'd be trying to right what is still considered a wrong by some in Baltimore by working an arrangement that the Colts name goes back to Baltimore (with the Ravens in that scenario becoming the Baltimore Colts, and retroactively all records under the Ravens plus the pre-1984 Baltimore Colts history belonging to what would now be the Baltimore Colts once again) and the Indy franchise getting a new name, with its entire 26-year history in Indy (1984-present, including their Super Bowl win three seasons ago) going under whatever the new name the Indianapolis franchise got. That to me would give older Colts fans a true sense of closure.

Good God, Donald Trump is an asshat.

The funniest part of the show was listening to everyone talk about how big an asshat he is (including Burt Reynolds).

I enjoyed the movie. Lots of humor, a little bit of tragedy and as a bonus, I finally got to see game footage of a friend of mine who played for the Philadelphia team.

"Who killed the USFL? Donald Trump. NEXT!" He did look better back in the Eighties. Just a little bit, mind you.

Good series so far. It brings me to the tube every Tuesday. I can't wait for the Steve Bartman episode, just so I can see Mike Wilbon's head explode from rage.

At least we got reminded of what his real hair looked like. It really was rather impressive, no?

I was no secret Trump ruined the USFL in that regard, though I could see why he thought he could pull it off at the time (and I lived through that whole era when it actually happened, growing up in New York).

The one think Trump should have realized was had the USFL stayed a spring league, it may very well have continued to grow over time (though not as fast as some wanted). The quality of players in that league showed in the fact that you still had players who played in the USFL playing in the NFL as late as just a few years ago.

My dad is one of those fans.

I've asked him if the Browns had become the Colts would he be a fan (because he's not a fan of the Ravens or the Indianapolis Colts he's a fan of the Baltimore Colts). His answer, no. For him and, at least for the "old timers" I've met, the Colts ended when they left Baltimore. Any new team, even if they were called the Colts, wouldn't be "The Colts."

Tonight's installment, Muhammad and Larry, was very well done but it was just sad. Sad to see Ali at the start of his decline, clinging to his past. Sad to see Holmes' bitterness at never getting what he deemed was his due. Ferdie Pacheco was direct and entertaining as always.

Yeah, this one (and they've all been at least good if not awesome) was just so depressing.

I guess I see some bitterness in Holmes - but honestly, mostly what I see is a pretty well-adjusted guy who's still with the first woman he married, happy living in the town where he grew up. Unlike the other heavyweights who lived too damn large, Holmes (with the same questionable unretirements all fighters seem to do) is a decent guy that deserves far more respect than he gets.

If he's bitter, he's justifiably bitter, I think.

Another well done episode. As noted, really depressing. For me, outside of the actual fight, the thirty seconds they showed Ali fumbling with the speed bag was the worst part. Even discounting the benefit of hindsight, it's clear he shouldn't have been in the ring.

It's a really interesting counterpoint to When We Were Kings where an underdog Ali did manage to find the magic and win.

I actually thought Holmes' wife sounded more bitter than he did and agree that Holmes' came off as a decent guy.

Bad news . . . there are only three installments left for this year. "Without Bias" airs next week, followed by "The Legend Of Jimmy The Greek," and "The U" airs in December.

I'm really loving this series, even as different as the installments are; I'm just so late in getting to watch them, though, that it's hard to keep up with the comments here. In terms of what's coming up, I'm rather interested in The U, mainly because I know nearly nothing about the details of that.

This will be a very interesting box set.

(On a side note, I was a big fan of The Bronx is Burning, and I'm really pleasantly surprised that ESPN films decided to (continue) to make such a big commitment to sports documentaries. Can't imagine that the ratings are amazing, but the product is certainly excellent).