The ESPN Films 30 for 30 series is like eating pizza or having sex- it’s very difficult to get it wrong. Most of the time, the experience is very enjoyable. That said “Believeland,” the latest 30 for 30 entry, is a very solid entertaining viewing experience, and I’d rather watch Believeland again than just about anything else on television, but…..
…it falls a bit short by 30 for 30’s lofty standards, and it does so because it adheres way too strongly to the corporate culture and ethos of ESPN.
Believeland commits two major sins that we’ve seen consistently permeate across ESPN programming over the years. We’ll get to the second one in a bit, but the first is the incessant incestual cross-promotion and self-promotion. Make no mistake, FOX, NBC, CBS, et al obnoxiously overdo the “synergy” bit, but when ESPN/ABC/Disney do it, it just seems all the more clumsy and annoying. I’ll let Cleveland sports site “Waiting For Next Year” take it from here.
WFNY is one of the pervasive themes in the film, so it makes sense that a site with that name would produce a must-read, spot on review of the film, entitled “Believeland: So Much Misery, So Little Time.”
An excerpt:
The overuse of the same ESPN-related scribes
Let me just start off by saying that I really enjoyed what ESPN 850’s Tony Rizzo brought to the documentary. His passion for the city and insights on the many sports tragedies we all endured were spot on. Tony Grossi, also of ESPN Cleveland, did nice work as well. Same goes with ESPN’s Brian Windhorst. See a pattern here? As much as I enjoyed Rizz, any particular reason he had more screen time than anyone other than Scott Raab (who produced of the flim)? Rizz was very effective, but completely overused. The same can be said for Raab, who I also really enjoyed.
You can’t tell a story of the sad history of Cleveland sports and leave out the town’s most respected and senior member of the media, Terry Pluto.
Another giant figure notably absent from the doc was Joe Tait, the greatest play by play man the city has ever seen. Tait was the voice of the Cavs for 40 years as well as calling Indians games for 15 years in the 70s and 80s. Knowing Tait, it wouldn’t shock me one bit if he was asked and told the producers that he had no interest in it (he’s only given one interview since he retired in 2011), but how do you not have any of Tait’s calls in the film at a minimum?
To really get an adequate reflection of what Believeland brings and doesn’t bring to the table, you need the opinion of both a local lifer and an outsider. As a lifer Chicagoan, I don’t have any kind of real affinity for Cleveland teams, or any true strong opinions on them. Thus, I can bring a more objective viewpoint to reviewing the film, complementing the entrenched, holistic viewpoint that TD Dery does over at WFNY.
The fact that Director Kris Billman got this Chicagoan to care so much Clevelanders and their plight is really an accomplishment, and I must applaud them for that.
The second major flaw in Believeland is the all too common “sports define the fortunes and misfortunes of an entire city” motif. This is sometimes manifested in the “sports define the economy/qualify of life in a city” narrative. Again all media outlets are guilty of this, with again ESPN being the most egregious offender.
Some of the prime examples of this include “Saints winning the Super Bowl rebuilt New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina” or “Michigan State reaching the Final Four in a year Detroit hosted it, helped the motor city recover from the economic meltdown of 2008.”
Now sure, the media didn’t explicitly say that that Saints saved New Orleans or that the Spartans revitalized the Motor City, but the endless stream of asinine, non-sensical puff pieces propagating this fallacy sure as hell IMPLIED it.
Do triumphant sports teams make you feel better about your life? Sure! Do they uplift the spirits of a downtrodden city? Yes, for a little while. Do they have a positive economic impact? A little bit, yes, but it’s very small in the big picture. Sports championships, or even the losses for that matter, do not determine the highs and lows of a civic economy, nor do they redefine a city that’s been ravaged by disaster.
The infamous and hilarious viral video on YouTube, “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video 2” says “our economy’s based on Lebron James” as a joke, but parts of Believeland make you think that’s actually partly true!
There were also plenty of omissions in this documentary, which WFNY covered in detail, but I agree with the author of that post in that the movie had so many positives as well. Making Art Modell’s moving the Cleveland Browns was the right thing to do, and I agree with TD in that they treated what happened there very well.
Overall, Believeland just would have worked better if someone other than ESPN had made it, because there was just way too much ESPN influence all over it.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram