The season finale felt like watching the epic love story “Titanic” and fast-forwarding to the part where everyone drowns. Just as we already know how Rose won’t make room on that floating door for Jack, we knew how this season of “Hard Knocks” would end. That the Colts would go down to Jacksonville and lose to a franchise that needed 11 months longer than the rest of the world to realize that Urban Meyer shouldn’t be an NFL coach. And that instead of punching their ticket to the playoffs, the stars of the show would walk off the field as the vanquished, their white jerseys gleaming under the sun but their despondent dispositions ready for the nearest golf course. Even while freezing in that ocean, Jack suffered less than the Colts fans who got camera time during the episode.
The mother of cornerback Kenny Moore II, that poor woman. As she sat in a small section of friendlies, wearing her son’s jersey, her agony helped move the story forward. If “Hard Knocks” wins any awards this year, she deserves her own Emmy nomination for the side-eye glance she shot her companion when he asked if the Colts had it in them to come back from a three-touchdown deficit.
The Colts surely didn’t expect the show would end like this. But maybe it’s for the best that an all-access sports docuseries ends unpredictably messily. Viewers are the winners when teams and leagues can’t control everything, especially the outcome.
The Colts had final say over what appeared in the show — which makes sense for those inside an NFL C-suite who are image-conscious. The team and players did allow boom mics inside the facility to catch insider talk, and cameras inside private spaces to capture wholesome family moments. Which is all good and nice, but well before the grimy ending, the show could’ve served up a dose of the cloud hovering over the franchise along with the steaming pile of puff.
We saw Wentz’s aversion to masks on “Hard Knocks” — seriously, would it kill him to pull up the cloth above his schnozzle every now and then? — but there was no scene in which he addressed the elephant in the room. Nothing from Wentz as to why he had to be away from the team during its week of preparation for the Raiders. A week he absolutely needed ahead of a game that could have ensured the Colts’ postseason berth.
Reporters, who aren’t paid by the team, had grilled Wentz about his vaccination status during training camp, but there wasn’t even a breakout, softball interview on the show for him to explain in his own words why he chose not to get vaccinated.
That wasn’t the story the Colts wanted to tell their viewers, but leagues and teams will always get to share their version of the truth because fans’ insatiable hunger demands access, even highly edited access.
The first season of the hit Netflix show on Formula One racing, “Drive To Survive,” has a 92 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. On the heels of this success, the streaming platform has announced partnerships with the PGA Tour and the ATP and WTA tours for upcoming shows. According to reports, a camera crew has been documenting the Novak Djokovic ordeal as it unfolds in Australia — though fans will have to wait until 2023 to see how Netflix portrays the vaccination drama centered on the world’s No. 1 male tennis player.
Still, no one should have to wait that long to deduce that Djokovic and his corporate tennis partners — much like the Colts in “Hard Knocks” — likely will have final approval on how those events are presented.
That’s why unforeseeable chaos should be the only way for these shows to end. No one could control a two-touchdown underdog denying the favored team a trip to the playoffs, but that’s what happened to the Colts during their star turn on HBO. Sports execs might demand the final say on shot lists and storyboards, but for creative excellence, they still can’t compete with the randomness and drama that can only be produced on the field.
January 16, 2022 at 03:39AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/01/15/hard-knocks-colts-hbo/
Hard Knocks with the Indianapolis Colts showed sports at their messy best - The Washington Post
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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