For those of you that don’t know, ESPN is celebrating their 30th anniversary with a series of 30 sports documentaries about a variety of sports people/events/etc. from the last 30 years. They are calling this project, 30 for 30. What is unique about it, is that every documentary is being done by a different filmmaker, so they all have a different perspective and style.

King’s Ransom by Peter Berg (screenplay/director Friday Night Lights)

The first one was about the trade that sent Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings. As someone who essentially grew up in the 90s, I didn’t know much about Gretzky with the Oilers. I didn’t realize that he had won EIGHT straight MVP awards before being traded to the Kings. I always assumed he was a solid player who got traded and then became a megastar. In retrospect, it would have been the equivalent of the Bulls trading Michael Jordan after the first three titles. It’s really unbelievable looking back. The film as a whole was pretty solid. It gave some background on why they made the trade and the damage it did to the Oilers and their fans. It flowed pretty well and was overall solid. Since I didn’t know much about the event and Gretzky is so well known I liked it.

The Band that Wouldn’t Die by Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man, The Natural)

The second doc was about the Baltimore Colts marching band (you read that right) and the impact on them, and the impact they made, when the Colts moved to Indianapolis. I knew that the Colts were in Baltimore for a long time and I knew they famously moved in the middle of the night and left their fans in the lurch. The Colts marching band apparently found hard for over 10 years to bring football back to Baltimore and at least played a small role in them getting the Browns. I didn’t like this film as much. It focused to much on the band and not enough on the abrupt departure of the team. Plus it’s hard to feel bad for  these people when in the end they basically poached the Browns from their passionate fan base.

Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL by Mike Tollin (Radio)

This is by far my favorite so far. The United States Football League (USFL) was started in the 80s as a spring football league. I didn’t know much about it other than the fact that Herschel Walker was their marquee guy before he went to the NFL. I knew the league was a failure but I had no idea why. I also never realized that they lured 3 straight Heisman winners and they had Steve Young and Jim Kelly as budding stars before they became NFL Hall of Famers. The league was mostly in cities that didn’t have NFL teams and as I said played in the spring. They used a young ESPN to show games and the league was about having fun. Donald Trump, who was pretty much denied access to buy an NFL team, bought a USFL team. Before long, unsurprisingly, Trump tried to take over. He basically pushed the USFL to try and move to the fall in year 3 to directly compete with the NFL. Clearly the USFL had potential, but they weren’t at that level yet. Tollin did an amazing job including a great interview with Trump. When it was all said and done, everyone blamed Trump.

Muhammad and Larry by Albert Maysles

The best part about this one is that it was comprised mostly of an unfinished (?) documentary from the 80s about the Muhammad Ali vs. Larry Holmes fight in 1980. After Ali lost to Leon Spinks a couple of years earlier, he retired. But Ali decided to come back and try to beat Holmes for the heavyweight title. Ali was already starting to have health problems and had no business fighting Holmes who was at the height of his game. Holmes used Ali as a punching bag (at least from the footage they showed) and at times Ali was just standing there. It seemed that the feeling was that this fight (and the training leading up to it) are largely responsible for Ali being in the state he is in. I don’t know that much about boxing, and definitely wish I had seen more of Ali’s fights, so it was hard to get a lot of context watching this, but it was still really good. The fact that most of it was actual documentary footage from the 80s is probably what makes it so good. You definitely get the feeling for why this was so significant of an event.

As a whole, the 30 for 30 documentaries have been good, but not great. The fact that they are being done by different filmmakers is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because if you don’t like one that doesn’t mean you won’t like others. But it also means that some of them end up being disappointing. I would still give it a try if you haven’t yet.