30 for 30 on ESPN

ESPN celebrated their 30-year anniversary in 2009. One of the things they did to commemorate the occassion was to kick off a series of documentaries. Filmmakers were commissioned to produce 30 films on different topics of the past 30 years. This was a win-win for me as I like sports and also like history.

Unfortunately, ESPN has not been very generous with actually putting these on the air. They are really hard to catch unless you have a DVR and they are frequently pre-empted if boxing or baseball or whatever run over the allotted time.

I have enjoyed several of these that I have been able to watch:

Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? Involves a lot of reminiscing about the short-lived spring football league which played from 1983 to 1985, as well as an examination of the guy who killed it by forcing a move to a fall schedule - Donald Trump.

The U Talks about the University of Miami football dynasty of the 1980s and the fact that they weren't exactly choirboys, even by college football standards.

Winnning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks One of my favorite sports moments of the nineties was a 1994 playoff game at Madison Square Garden when Reggie Miller scored 25 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Indiana Pacers to victory - while talking trash to Knicks fan Spike Lee, who was sitting courtside. It was fun to relive that series of events.

Guru of Go Tells the story of basketball coach Paul Westhead, who brought his run and gun style to Loyola Marymount University in the late eighties and shattered scoring records before the tragic death of star player Hank Gathers.

I've seen a few others that have been slightly boring - one about Wayne Gretzky, one about the Balitmore Colts marching band, one about Len Bias. One that recently came out is "The Two Escobars" which deals with the convergence of the Columbian national soccer team and the drug trade. It is interesting, but uses a lot of subtitles, so it is somewhat tedious and we haven't finished it yet.

I have so far missed a few that I wanted to see - one about Jimmy the Greek, another about the invention of Rotisserie Baseball, and one about O.J.'s ride in the white Bronco. Plus there are several which have yet to premiere which look interesting.

Fortunately, Elizabeth is usually willing to watch these with me because as she says, "I always love a documentary."

So I think these are really good even if you aren't necessarily a sports fan. But then, I wouldn't know because I am a sports fan.