September 6, 2007

In Bristol, Vince Lombardi Still Lives

ESPN holds on tight to a legendary coach and says professional sports leagues only like dramas on the field of play.

By Seth Arenstein

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW?: The Bronx is Burning won't be ESPN's final drama.

A long-discussed Vince Lombardi drama isn’t dead, ESPN content czar John Skipper says.

ESPN has been trying to mount a Lombardi-related scripted project for several years. Originally, it was going to be a film about the so-called Ice Bowl, the 1967 NFL championship game between Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, coached by Tom Landry. The game was played in sub-zero conditions in Green Bay. The official game-time temperature was -13°F, with a wind chill around -48°F.

At TCA in July 2004, ESPN said the project had shifted, and would concentrate more on Lombardi than on the Ice Bowl since ESPN had acquired rights to the David Maraniss bio of Lombardi, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi. The film was to run on ESPN in Dec ’05, ESPN said then. Fast forward to last week, when Bristol’s content chief confirmed that a project based on the book is still possible.

Switching gears, Skipper added, “I’d also love to do something animated.” He also spoke of a 30-minute comedy in the style of Larry David’s HBO semi-improvisational series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. All this in service of what he sees as one of his core needs. “We don’t need to get more people to watch [ESPN], we have to get them to watch longer.” The average ESPN viewer watches the network about 18 minutes per day, said SVP Mark Gross.

While Skipper and ESPN are seeking pitches for a variety of sports-related entertainment vehicles, he admits scripted series are not “the first things you’ll see” on the network. The immediate push is to increase the number of documentaries. On deck, a look at Japanese baseball through the eyes of former Mets manager Bobby Valentine, who’s managed there before and manages there now; and a Dan Klores doc about sports at the Historically Black Colleges before civil rights called Black Magic.

It’s probably not a coincidence that scripted series aren’t on the fast track. “The leagues get that we have to report on news, on [Michael] Vick, and do documentaries. They’ve been very understanding,” he says. “They say we don’t have to do fictional series.” 

Referring to the now-cancelled ESPN fictional series Playmakers, he says, “the NFL didn’t like us doing a fictional series that portrayed [the league’s players] in that light,” he says. The well-received drama about fictional football players’ personal lives, which showed players using illicit drugs, drinking and being sexually promiscuous, garnered strong ratings. But the NFL “felt we didn’t have to do that,” Skipper says. 

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