Why Even People Who Hate Sports Should Be Watching ESPN's '30 For 30'

ESPN's series 30 For 30 is a fascinating look at sports stories. The most recent installment, "Muhammad And Larry," looks at the 1980 fight between Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes. (ESPN Films)

by Linda Holmes

I think of sports as having a lot in common with comics. Both have fans who behave in ways that turn off more casual consumers. Both invite overinvestment. And both suffer from a high percentage of people who unfortunately miss out because they have long ago flipped the "I Don't Care" switch. As in, "I don't care what you say about comics: I don't care about comics." "I don't care what you say about football: I don't care about football."

This is what makes it such a pleasure to heartily recommend ESPN's gripping, well-made series of documentary sports films, 30 For 30, which the network is producing in honor of its 30th anniversary. Whether you care about sports or not, they are excellent, insightful television.

Each of the 30 films in the series, which will run through 2010, studies a particular event or story in sports. Not necessarily the most famous things that have ever happened in sports, but instead the most interesting. Last night's offering, Muhammad And Larry, covered the 1980 fight in which Muhammad Ali, at 38 years old, was pummeled by a 30-year-old Larry Holmes. While I'm not an "I don't care about sports" person, it is hard to get me interested in boxing, but this film is fantastic, because it does what all four episodes I've seen so far have done: it approaches stories about sports as stories about people.

Seriously, this is a fantastic series. More about why you should really, really see it, after the jump.

The other three in the series so far have been about Wayne Gretzky's trade to the Los Angeles Kings; the marching band that supported the Baltimore Colts and stayed together even after the team left town; and the short life of the USFL, the briefly flickering football league that, at one point, seemed like a credible challenger to the NFL, featuring stars like Herschel Walker and Jim Kelly. They wound up being, really, stories of (1) hurt feelings; (2) devotion; and (3) greed, respectively.

"Muhammad And Larry" is essentially a study of how the precise quality that makes an athlete revered can both damage his legacy and cause him great personal harm. It is a near-consensus about Ali that by the time that fight happened, he should never, ever have done it. He was already slowing down, and he was in no kind of shape to take Holmes on.

But no one wanted to tell him that, and nobody even wanted to entirely believe it, because it was Ali's ability to pull off unlikely "miracles," as one interviewee puts it, that made people love him in the first place. His certainty was what made him great; it was also what put him in the position to be humiliated in a way so depressing that nobody even wanted to air the film about the fight that was shot at the time -- which has now been mixed with new material to become "Muhammad And Larry."

These are not stories about athletes as titans, really, except in the sense that they are done with a keen understanding that being a titan carries personal consequences. What is most important in "Muhammad And Larry" isn't what Ali meant to boxing, but what his position in boxing meant for the way he behaved and the decisions he made. And, too, it is the story of Larry Holmes, put in a position in which he said this, many years later: "I didn't want to hurt Ali. Just hit him enough to make him quit." And it's the truth, and you can tell it's the truth, and the way a career takes a man from revered to -- in that moment -- pitied by an opponent is a remarkable tale, whether you care about boxing itself or not.

The 30 For 30 films I've seen thus far are all aimed at answering seemingly perplexing questions -- "How did that happen?" questions. Why would the Edmonton Oilers trade Wayne Gretzky? Why would a band continue when the team have left? Why would a perfectly viable football league implode? And now, how does a fight happen that leaves everyone miserable when all the signs were there that this was exactly how it was going to end? These are questions about behavior -- about people and their choices. Peter Berg, who made the Gretzky film (and the movies Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom) doesn't really care that much about hockey, per se -- he cares about why a guy who is a local hero in a town that loves hockey winds up being traded to a town where nobody cares about hockey.

When you're asking great questions about why things happen, it doesn't really matter whether the background is politics or sports or romance or the military. Certainly, for sports fans, the films may be even more rewarding, but even if you have no interest in sports whatsoever, these hour-long documentaries from lots of great directors (Barry Levinson did the marching band film; Bull Durham director Ron Shelton will handle a piece later in the run about Michael Jordan's time in minor league baseball) are very much worth checking out.

The full schedule is here; note that "Muhammad And Larry" will rerun tomorrow night on ESPN2 and ESPN Classic. The next new offering, Without Bias, is about the death of college basketball star Len Bias, and will debut next Tuesday night. Here's the trailer for the series. Don't miss out.