{"id":733731,"date":"2026-06-16T19:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T16:41:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-06-16T19:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T16:41:16","slug":"these-sports-shows-arent-playing-the-game-you-think-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/these-sports-shows-arent-playing-the-game-you-think-they-are\/","title":{"rendered":"These Sports Shows Aren\u2019t Playing the Game You Think They Are"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tAbout a decade ago, when I was interviewing True Detective <\/em>creator Nic Pizzolatto, he said something that perked up my ear: \u201cI don\u2019t really care about cop shows. It\u2019s just an easy way to sneak in all the other things I want to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe philosophy-minded writer, apart from being general<\/a>ly (and characteristically) misanthropic, was making a profound point. TV formats (or at least TV executives) have rigid requirements. But if you pick the right genre at the right time and are smart about it, you can expand a show in all kinds of ways without most people even realizing you\u2019ve done it.<\/p>\n

\n\tI thought about that this Emmys season when watching\u00a0Stick<\/em>, a show about golf that isn\u2019t really about golf, and again when watching The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,<\/em> a show about football that isn\u2019t really about football, and then when watching Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles<\/em>, a show about a retired wrestler (and OnlyFans entrepreneur) that isn\u2019t really about wrestling (or OnlyFans entrepreneurship), and yet one more time when watching Off Campus<\/em>, a show about hockey that isn\u2019t really about hockey.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll these shows are nominally about sports. And yet it\u2019s an easy way to sneak in all the other things their writers want to say. (I would have thought about it when watching Heated Rivalry<\/em>, but I\u2019m on an Emmys-eligible-only viewing diet this time of year.)<\/p>\n

\n\tI started to realize something else, too. Sports has become the perfect embodiment of what should now be called the Pizzolatto Rule: choosing the best genre conduit at any given moment for all the other life stuff. The kind of\u00a0life stuff that\u2019s humorous and heartbreaking. The kind of unflashy, true-life stuff network TV did well for so many decades, and then indie film did even better for so many more decades.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis should come as no surprise when some of the shows are littered with personalities from those worlds. Viewers of Stick<\/em> will find the names Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris in the credits of every episode as executive producers and sometime-directors; Dayton and Faris are behind Little Miss Sunshine <\/em>and Ruby Sparks<\/em>, two of the ultimate indie films of the 2000s that traffic in exactly this sort of endearing melancholia. Creator Jason Keller is a stage and film veteran himself.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s just a matter of auspices. Something about the forum of sports, specifically at this moment, lends itself to these kinds of lived-in moments. Perhaps it\u2019s the healthy outlet of team mentality that unhealthily pervades politics and all other parts of life; perhaps it\u2019s that now sports are the only universal language we have, cutting across gender and ethnic lines, with more leagues and varieties than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOr maybe it\u2019s just that sports is one of the few optional activities that involve leaving the house and interacting with people in real time, something our tech age increasingly discourages us from doing. Whatever it is, it has become an impeccable demonstration of the Pizzolatto Rule.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s more, the category didn\u2019t need to be invented from scratch. Hollywood has been exploring its underdog theme<\/a>s for years, with Hoosiers<\/em>, Miracle<\/em>, The Blind Side<\/em> and Moneyball<\/em>. Streaming shows \u2014 with their more leisurely pace and longer arcs \u2014 have simply been able to come by and iterate.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo now there isn\u2019t just one archetype of the Rocky<\/em> underdog character sort. There isn\u2019t just one main character at all. Stick<\/em> is about the journeys of at least a half-dozen people: fathers, sons, divorcees, widowers and struggling Gen Zers.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven these shows\u2019 main characters are not what you\u2019d expect. Stick<\/em> and Dinkins<\/em> (and Margo<\/em>) may seem like series<\/a> about washed-up ex-athletes looking for redemption. But their thematic concerns actually vary widely. Owen Wilson\u2019s character in Stick<\/em> is a study in how to (or not to) process grief, Tracy Morgan\u2019s title antihero in Dinkins<\/em> is about living with your own bad choices, and Nick Offerman\u2019s retired wrestler in Margo<\/em> is about how to (maybe) fashion a new life. And Off Campus<\/em>, while looking and feeling like a youthful romance, is also really about identity and the kinds of partners we do (or don\u2019t) see ourselves with.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlus it\u2019s just some damn effective television. If you haven\u2019t seen Stick<\/em> since it dropped on Apple TV last summer, there\u2019s an episode late in the season, \u201cDreams Never Remembered,\u201d that gets inside the mind of a grieving parent in a way I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen onscreen.<\/p>\n

\n\tTed Lasso<\/em> started this wave, as Bill Lawrence realized just how perfect sports were at this moment to tell larger human stories. These shows this season have taken his baton and run. (Although what is Scrubs<\/em> but a sports show with surgeons vs. residents instead of Richmond vs. Manchester City?)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sports drama may yet return to the big screen, with a number of new projects in the pipeline. And that\u2019s a good thing. But I\u2019m not sure a 90-minute feature can contain all the messy multitudes these series do. When you settle down to watch a show, you want a piece that a marketing executive \u2014 OK, streaming algorithm \u2014 told you was perfect for your interests. And then you blissfully want to find out it\u2019s about something completely different.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a decade ago, when I was interviewing True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, he said something that perked up my ear: \u201cI don\u2019t really care about cop shows. It\u2019s just an easy way to sneak in all the other things I want to say.\u201d The philosophy-minded writer, apart from being generally (and characteristically) misanthropic, was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-mediaa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}