The ‘Ballers’ premiere shows again that Hollywood can’t get football right
Every sport has a Hollywood classic. Even hockey has one, with “Slap Shot.” Every sport except football, that is.
As HBO trotted out the cliched “Ballers” series premiere, we were all reminded again that even though football has been America’s most popular sport for decades now, Hollywood has never gotten big-time football quite right.
“Ballers” touched on the tried-and-true Players Behaving Badly stories that I guess still have some appeal to the masses. Everyone seems to have spent all their money as soon as it comes in, it was easy to recognize the story lines of family and friends bleeding a player dry, there was sex at the club, fights at the club, fast talking agents, extravagant purchases (Steven Jackson has a cameo and brags about buying an elephant for about a quarter of a million bucks) … you’ve seen this all before. If you expected stereotypes A through E from “Ballers,” you got them all in one episode. It didn’t seem funny enough to be a comedy (though there were some humorous moments, none better than Don Shula’s single not-for-family-websites line), dramatic enough to be a drama or even outlandish enough to be a follow-up to the infamous “Playmakers” series on ESPN. It was just kind of a cookie-cutter football production.
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The only thing about the show that seemed to veer from the formula was the character of Charles Greane, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive lineman who finds himself without much to do after his football career dries up, to the chagrin of his wife. As a former offensive lineman, he has no fame to cash in on. He finds a job at a Chevy dealership. At least it seemed real.
The movies and television shows that depict football rarely do it well (television’s “Friday Night Lights” might be the closest exception) mostly because it’s the same script of outlandish acts off the field and the same in-your-face camera shots of unrealistic plays on the field. I’m one of the few who liked “Any Given Sunday,” but I still have motion sickness from the game action. It just never finds the right tone. The sport doesn’t need to be embellished to death to be entertaining, but that’s typically what we get: Over-the-top nonsense.
I don’t think “Ballers” really will cover much new ground, based on the pilot. I’m sure receiver Ricky Jerret, who was was cut by the Green Bay Packers in Sunday night’s episode after having sex in a club bathroom and punching a guy afterward, will find more titillating trouble. And we’ll see more about the over-spending of rookie Vernon Littlefield who has already spent his $12 million rookie deal and needs a loan. And there will be more goofy antics by the sleazy financial manager played by Rob Corddry, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character will tie it all together as the former linebacker looking to be an agent/adviser now that his career is done. It was fine for a mindless half hour of entertainment, but I’m not sure this is the show that will change the genre.
We’ve only seen one episode and maybe we’ll get more than just the predictable surface characters as the series goes on. But it seems like “Ballers” will be empty-calories television on a Sunday night rather than anything we recall fondly as Hollywood figuring out football. So we’ll continue to wait.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
