Sports documentaries have become worthless

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A football coaching god, cast out of the NFL, decides to give up a well-earned retirement to prove one last time he still has what it takes.

A 73-year-old curmudgeon, often private and secretive, suddenly becomes tabloid fodder with his 24-year-old pageant girlfriend-manager-publicist.

A university desperate to ensure its college football program keeps up with the powerhouses and survives the next round of realignment makes an unconventional hire.

An offseason of hype and excitement comes crashing down, thanks to a 2-3 start, where it becomes apparent that this won’t be the cakewalk some thought it would be.

Rumors, reports, and leaks suggest that the program is in disarray, with legal challenges and investigations underway, and speculation about a coach buyout begins to circulate.

Drop all of that in a pot, stir it up, and you have the makings of a fantastic documentary chronicling what may end up being Bill Belichick’s disasterously short stint at North Carolina. The fact that a documentary crew was actually filming behind the scenes at UNC means there must be all kinds of footage that captures the real moments and human stories at the heart of this redemption tale, which quickly becomes a modern Greek tragedy.

Of course, that will never happen. The planned season-long docuseries with Hulu was scrapped at some point when it became clear things were not going to go according to plan.

We don’t know precisely how the docuseries fell apart. However, we can assume that Belichick’s program decided it was no longer in its best interest and told Hulu it wouldn’t provide further access.

Excited to showcase our program this fall on @hulu.

More information to come. pic.twitter.com/7BFtjCAL7B

— Carolina Football (@UNCFootball) August 24, 2025

If that were the case, given what they already presumably had in the can, it would have made sense for Hulu to keep filming anyway. Although they lost direct access, they could still have obtained plenty of footage from games, press conferences, and interviews. They could have shifted their focus from covering the season as a partner to covering it as an objective observer of the downfall. Getting locked out would have made for a fascinating turning point that the docuseries could have pivoted on, like Bryan Fogel’s Icarus.

Of course, you and I know there was never any chance of that happening. Because we know Hulu didn’t get into this deal to get their hands dirty or do any capital-J journalism.

This was a puff piece. This was PR. This was carefully controlled messaging intended to act as a recruiting tool for North Carolina football and help rehab Bill Belichick’s image (and probably give Jordon Hudson some airtime as well).

And as soon as it could no longer be any of that, presumably, Hulu was happy to pull the plug, perhaps on a handshake promise that they might try again next year.

We can feel reasonably confident because this is how sports documentaries and docuseries typically work now. Anyone who’s watched Netflix’s Untold films knows this. If you’ve watched any documentaries or docuseries produced by WWE, LeBron James, or Steph Curry, you know they exist to tell a specific story, not to dig at the scab on the heart of truth. Even the 30 for 30 series, once the paragon of sports documentaries, is barely trying as it limps along (the recent New York Sack Exchange entry never justifies why it exists).

It’s no surprise that the one genuinely fascinating moment to happen in a Hard Knocks series in years —the infamous New York Giants front-office meeting where they decide they’re going to let Saquon Barkley go —is also likely to be why the franchise dies. It was too real, too honest, and too insightful for the way our modern media landscape works. The recent Buffalo Bills edition was so uninteresting and bland that it was indistinguishable from a team production.

Even the most well-regarded sports docuseries in recent memory, like The Last Dance, arrive pre-loaded with authorial intent. And facsimiles of that, like Dynasty and America’s Team, learned all the wrong lessons.

Ezra Edelman, the award-winning director of O.J.: Made in America, laid it out succinctly in a 2024 Pablo Torre Finds Out interview.

“The types of documentaries that are more popular, more prevalent, are increasingly things that are shown by streamers that are sometimes about famous people, artists, singers, whomever, and that are sort of like bordering a little bit on branded content because they’re done in sort of connection with the subjects themselves who often are producers,” he said. “And this idea of documentary filmmaking as journalism is being pushed by the wayside a little bit… I do think there happens to be a glut of documentaries that are now being done in participation with the subject. If the subject has any creative control, I have a problem.”

It’s safe to say that Edelman would have hated whatever the Hulu UNC docuseries ultimately became. The world did not lose a fascinating insight into a very public disaster. The entire ordeal was, indeed, creatively controlled by its subjects and would therefore have produced something of little value to anyone other than Belichick, Hudson, and their compatriots. Perhaps, in some small way, the fact that this docuseries will never exist is a blessing to any of us who might have tried to watch it.

Unfortunately, there are many more pointless puff pieces to come. As corporate entities acquire media companies and enter into incestuous deals with one another to fill the #CONTENT coffers, sports documentaries have been stripped of meaning to fill space on a schedule. Getting the A-lister to appear is now more important than trying to tell an interesting or truthful story.

We don’t know how it will end yet, but Bill Belichick’s tenure at UNC is prime material for an excellent documentary. It just feels so unlikely we’ll ever get that version, if we ever get one at all.

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