Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel ends 29-year run tonight
The show never had a feature on piracy, or comedians who accidentally dressed like pirates. That didn't make HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel any less impactful.
The show ends a 29-year run tonight. Gumbel addressed the end of an era in an interview with Ben Strauss of the Washington Post.
The most important question is whether there will ever be another show that applies such aggressive and excellent journalism to the sports world.
"You never say never, but I don’t foresee it," Gumbel said. "First, it was a very expensive show to do. Second, most outlets have some kind of a contractual relationship with a sports league that would prevent them from doing an honest kind of show. I also think the public appetite has changed. We did long-form video pieces. . . . The public is conditioned to expect things to be brief."
He's right, but 60 Minutes continues to thrive. That's what Real Sports really was: 60 Minutes focused only on the sports world. Without it, many important sports-world stories might never be told.
"It puts a lot of onus on the fan, the viewer, the reader to satisfy their own curiosity," Gumbel said of a world without Real Sports and ESPN's Outside The Lines. "Because, quite frankly, I grew up in a time when if a guy ran afoul of something or had a problem, his only way out of it was to be seen sitting for a serious interview with somebody who was equally serious. Now that’s no longer the case. Now if a guy gets a DUI or gets in trouble with his team, he goes on . . . the league’s network, answers a couple of softball questions, and next time he’s asked about it, he says he addressed it. I’m not saying there’s a bad guy in this, but times have changed."
He's right, on all counts. It's difficult for ESPN to turn a spotlight on the sports leagues with which it does business; those sports leagues have become worse, not better, when it comes to expecting broadcast partners to act like partners in all respects. The fact that every sports league has built its own in-house news division makes it worse, not better. They get kid-gloves treatment from the journalists they employ; they expect kid-gloves treatment from the journalists employed by the media outlets they regard as partners.
That said, HBO wasn't fully immune from NFL tentacles. Hard Knocks has been a staple for more than 20 years, with an in-season version debuting in 2021. But HBO found a way to balance genuflecting to the king with telling the truth to the masses.
Gumbel hints around at the notion that HBO didn't want the show to continue without him, and that he didn't want to commit to three more years. Frankly, why is Gumbel indispensable to the show? If it had been 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace, it would have survived without him. Real Sports could have a post-Gumbel future, too.
Gumbel provides the superficial gravitas, but the reporting carried the show. Gumbel was the point guard. There are plenty of other potential point guards with enough credibility to allow the show to continue, if HBO truly wanted it to.
I'm not saying that to take issue with Gumbel's explanation, or to undermine his value. I'm saying that because it's a shame the show is going away. It's important, and it should continue.
Hopefully, it will — either on HBO or somewhere else.
