The grand finale is tonight in the excellent Nine for IX series. Branded airs at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.

An excerpt about Lolo Jones, who took it upon herself to do her own marketing.

The official rundown from ESPN:

Sports is supposed to be the ultimate level playing field, but in the media and on Madison Avenue, sometimes looks matter more than accomplishments. This film explores the double standard placed on female athletes to be the best players on the field and the sexiest off of it. Through stories of the women who have faced and tackled this question in very different ways, “Branded” explores the question: can women’s sports ever gain an equal footing with their male counterparts, or will sex appeal always override achievement?

Directors’ bios: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are Academy Award-nominated filmmakers who have been lauded for gaining unprecedented access into unknown worlds and for their intimate approach to subject matter.

In 2007, Ewing and Grady released “Jesus Camp,” a candid look at the new generation of the Christian right. It was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary film. Their new film “Detropia” is a cinematic tapestry that looks at Detroit as America’s “canary in the coal mine.” The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and won a best editing award. It opened nationwide in September 2012.

In 2010, they also debuted their Peabody Award-winning documentary “12th & Delaware” at Sundance. The work, a collaboration with HBO, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “the finest documentary film ever made about the abortion issue.” Previously, the team was nominated for an Emmy for “The Boys of Baraka,” a film about preteens struggling to make it in Baltimore. They recently co-directed an adaptation of “Freakonomics” for the big screen, as well as a rare documentary on Saudi Arabian teenagers for the MTV Network.

Ewing and Grady are the co-owners of Loki Films, based in New York City.

Ewing and Grady: Personal statement
When we were small girls growing up in Michigan and Washington, D.C., women’s sports would really come to our attention only every four years during Olympic coverage. During the Summer Games, women’s gymnastics were suddenly the rage, Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci bringing with them an intriguing aura of the severe Eastern-bloc training regime.

We were transfixed by their beautiful and muscular physiques, and often unsmiling faces. When it was the Winter Olympics’ turn, figure skating took over as the female sport du jour — briefly embraced by the American public who obsessed over Oksana Baiul and Katarina Witt as they dramatically stormed the Games, won gold and then faded away for another four years.

Today, a handful of women in sports loom large in our culture, and the marketing of these female athletes is big business. The Williams sisters are a powerhouse and veritable brand. Two of the most popular names in sports — tennis star Anna Kournikova and auto racer Danica Patrick — have worked in equal parts talent and sex appeal, and turned them into lucrative sponsorship opportunities.

Progress? Sure. But clearly, winning or being the best is not enough for a woman to rise to the top of the high-stakes world of sports marketing. We will take a look deep inside what it takes for a woman today to make it as an international sports icon.

Highlighting stories that go above and beyond:

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ESPN has been taking a pounding for the ESPN-Frontline fiasco. However, Don Van Natta Jr.’s story on Bobby Riggs shows the journalism the network is capable of producing.

The post includes a 14-minute report on ESPN’s Outside The Lines. It’s fascinating how a story could come alive 40 years later.

Van Natta writes:

Riggs relished playing the impish, gambling-mad chauvinistic court jester for enthralled members of the national media. On its cover, Time magazine called Riggs “The Happy Hustler.” Sports Illustrated warned, “Don’t Bet Against This Man.” A recording artist named Lyle “Slats” McPheeters recorded “The Ballad of Bobby Riggs,” for Artco Records. On “60 Minutes,” Riggs tossed playing cards at a wastebasket for money, played tennis with eight chairs on his side of the court and ran around Las Vegas looking for action on anything, from tennis and golf to backgammon and card tosses, with everyone he met.

“All of the running, all of the chasing, all of the betting, all of the playing — what’s it all about?” Mike Wallace asked Riggs. “Do you do it for money, Bobby?”

“No,” said Riggs with a smirk. “I do it for fun, the sport, it’s the thing to do. When I can’t play for big money, I play for little money. And if I can’t play for little money, I stay in bed that day.”

This wasn’t a midlife crisis. This was a midlife Mardi Gras.

Suspicions from those who knew him:

Across nearly 40 years, some of the men who knew Riggs best have wondered: Was “The Battle of the Sexes” nothing more than a cultural con job?

“A lot of my tennis friends immediately suspected something was up, and many of us still believe something was up,” says John Barrett, the longtime BBC tennis broadcaster. “It wasn’t so much that Bobby lost. It was that he looked as if he had almost capitulated. He just made it too easy for Billie Jean King. We all wondered if the old fox had done it again.”

“Everything was different,” says Adler. “If you were a tennis person that knew Bobby Riggs, the first thing that comes to your mind is he threw the match.”

Steve Powers, who owned the guest house where Riggs stayed prior to the match, says “If Bobby had an opportunity to fix the match, he would have jumped at it. Ethics wouldn’t have stopped him.”

Tennis great Gene Mako, who died in June, had insisted for years that Riggs had thrown the match. “You have to know Bobby,” Mako told author Tom LeCompte in the 2003 Riggs biography, “The Last Sure Thing.” Mako believed Riggs was so vain that his play was just awful enough to demonstrate to smart tennis people that he had tanked the match.

Even from his son:

However, Larry Riggs did not dismiss Shaw’s story outright because, after all, his father knew and gambled with a lot of mob guys all over the country. Bobby Riggs was also a longtime member of the La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, Calif., a reputed mob-built country club where mob leader and Riggs’ acquaintance Moe Dalitz was a member. And Larry Riggs had never understood why those Chicago pals of hit man Jackie Cerone had visited his father several times prior to the King match.

“Did he know mafia guys? Absolutely,” Larry Riggs says. “Is it possible these guys were talking some s—? Yes, it is possible. They talked to him about doing it? Possible.” However, Riggs says, it was more likely his father purposefully lost with an eye toward setting up a bigger payday rematch — and a continuation of the national publicity that he so craved — than throw the match for mob money. Larry Riggs also says he remains baffled by the fact his father did not prepare for the King match — the only match in Bobby Riggs’ life for which he had failed to train. “Never understood it,” Larry Riggs says.

And there’s more. You make your own conclusion.

The ESPN-Frontline is generating considerable reaction. I thought I would try to provide a sample of what people are saying.

And for what it is worth, I have yet to find a single person who is buying that ESPN pulled out so late in the project because of “branding” reasons. And that includes journalists within ESPN.

From Dave Zirin at Edge of Sports:

I spoke to several of the biggest names in journalism at ESPN this weekend and their thoughts on ESPN’s official comments and reasoning for dropping out of the project ranged from “mystifying” to “deeply depressing” to “palpable bullshit.” No one I spoke to believes that ESPN looked up after 15 months and discovered to their collective shock that they didn’t have final editorial control of the League of Denial.

None of the ESPN journalists with whom I spoke wanted to go on the record, with several describing such an action with the same phrase: “career suicide”, but the fact that they wanted to talk at all tells a story of its own. The collective picture they paint is one of a disheartened newsroom that feels disrespected, dismissed, and demoralized

One leading columnist and television personality at the network said to me, “Generally, ESPN’s business interests will always be at odds with its journalism. It is not a journalism company. It’s an entertainment company. This is the age of journalism we live in, not just at ESPN, but everywhere. Journalism is increasingly more corporate. When you get in bed with the devil, sooner or later you start growing your own horns.”

Richard Deitsch at SI.com spoke with Raney Aronson-Rath, the film’s producer:

Aronson-Rath said there was no hint of discord between ESPN and Frontline. The two companies had worked together on multiple projects including a tough story on NFL doctor Elliot Pellman that was posted on ESPN.com on Aug. 18 and given collaboration language at both places. Frontline and ESPN had collaborated on nine different published projects prior to ESPN ending the marriage, according to Aronson.

Staffers at ESPN had let this column know over the past month that they were fearful something like this could happen with the Frontline-ESPN collaboration. They suggested pressure was being exerted by the NFL at levels well above Outside The Lines management. Said one ESPN staffer last week: “I’m hearing of stuff I never thought I’d see at our place.”

“We had collaboration credit in two different places in their broadcast,” Aronson-Rath said of the Pellman story. “My feeling is, and I can’t verify this, it appears to me that it was not their [OTL management’s] decision. Nobody confirmed that for me but clearly [ESPN senior coordinating producer] Dwayne Bray was with us at the press tour a couple of weeks ago. That is as public as you can go with the TV critics announcing this and being asked all these same questions that are emerging right now.”

Rick Morrissey in the Chicago Sun-Times draws a Watergate parallel:

It’s nice when journalists know they have the support of their bosses, the way Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did with the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham during the Watergate scandal. At one point, Bernstein told attorney general John Mitchell he had proof of Mitchell’s involvement in a fund used to obtain information about Democrats.

“Katie Graham’s going to get her [breast] caught in a big, fat wringer if that’s published,’’ Mitchell said.

Graham didn’t budge.

It sounds as if ESPN president John Skipper was concerned something of his was going to get caught in a big, fat wringer.

Viv Bernstein of Jersey Slant writes about her experiences during her short stay at ESPN:

So I have to admit I was a bit surprised when ESPN’s journalistic integrity was questioned last week after it pulled out of a collaboration with PBS’s “Frontline” on a critical look at the NFL’s handling of concussions. Why was there even a question? I thought most people understood that ESPN’s financial connection to sports leagues and dual role of promotion inevitably affected coverage decisions by the network. I even had a conversation about that with an ESPN.com writer. We both agreed that writing for ESPN was not like writing for a newspaper. It was an unspoken truth.

That’s not meant as a criticism of the network, merely an observation. And it’s one I’ve made before about all media outlets that have a financial connection to the sports leagues and athletes they cover. It’s inevitable that the connection will alter the tone of coverage.

Jason McIntyre of Big Lead had a few thoughts:

*So Skipper was cool with 15 months of joint work, but then, as soon as the trailer came out, he got skittish A few images from a trailer were more moving to him than a 15-month body of work?
* How did Lipsyte not ask the ESPN President, “why didn’t you just go to PBS and see if you could work things out?”
* Here’s how bad of a PR disaster this was for ESPN – first, a statement from PR. Then, as the story gets worse, Skipper trots out a weak statement that didn’t mention the NFL. Now, the Ombudsman’s column will have people talking about this again today.

Marc Tracy of New Republic believes it isn’t case of black and white:

It seems hard to believe that ESPN simply decided this was an unacceptable disservice to its partner league and therefore was shutting it down—even speaking of the massive company as a single agent betrays the oversimplified nature of this theory. The Pellman story and the others can still be viewed on ESPN’s website. The Fainuru brothers are still ESPN employees.

But it is equally hard to believe that a media organization with the kind of commitment to no-matter-where-it-goes journalism that ESPN professes to have would let the question of editorial control trip up such a fruitful partnership, particularly when their “brand” (however important that would even be) would be in the hands of “Frontline,” whose unimpeachable credentials ESPN was the first to brag about. The fact that ESPN did not even try (if futilely) to seek some sort of arrangement with “Frontline” in order to protect itself suggests an extreme abundance of caution.

In other words, I do not sense flagrantly foul play. What I sense is more morally benign, but also more practically worrying, because more systemic: A general overcarefulness at the media outlet sports fans depend upon the most.

Kalyn Kahler of the Chicago Sun-Times writes about documentary filmmaker who alleges ESPN also withdrew support for his new film about concussions and football:

ESPN originally supported the film, but Pamphilon said it withdrew support because of pressure from the NFL.

“When they saw the final cut, they wouldn’t endorse it,” Pamphilon said. “They told us they were concerned about what the NFL would say. They didn’t give a [bleep] about what the NFL Players Association said.”

Robert Lipsyte has filed a must-read column on this fiasco involving ESPN’s last-minute decision to bail on the PBS Frontline film on the NFL and concussions.

The ESPN ombudsman raises the pertinent questions, and eye brows, and gets more of the back story of what happened within the hierarchy of the network. ESPN president John Skipper didn’t start to express concerns until after a preview of the film was released earlier this month in Los Angeles.

Lipsyte writes:

That event, Skipper told me, was for him “the catalyst or starting episode” of what ultimately resulted in ESPN’s decision to part ways with “Frontline.” Skipper didn’t attend the event, and said he was “startled” when he read about a promotional trailer for the documentary which was screened at the news conference. He hadn’t seen the trailer or approved its content, which included the ESPN logo and a collaboration credit. He thought it was “odd for me not to get a heads up,” and said it made him “quite unhappy” to discover that ESPN had no editorial control over the trailer.

Upon screening it, Skipper said he found the trailer to be “sensational.” He particularly objected to the tagline — “Get ready to change the way you see the game” — and to the final sound bite in the piece, from neuropathologist Ann McKee. Referring to brain injuries, she says, “I’m really wondering if every single football player doesn’t have this.”

Skipper said he found that comment to be “over the top.”

And there is this.

He denied that anyone at Disney or the NFL demanded the action. Said Skipper, “I am the only one at ESPN who has to balance the conflict between journalism and programming.”

Lipsyte seems a bit skeptical here:

Which takes us back to the challenge of ESPN’s “dueling journalism and profit motives.” What exactly happened here, and how should we feel about it?

If, as Skipper told me, the ESPN-“Frontline” association was “a loose arrangement,” it seems an unusually sloppy execution for ESPN, an organization that is usually much more buttoned-up. (Raney Aronson, the deputy executive producer for “Frontline,” told me the arrangement was more of an “editorial exchange” and that “we were working on a piece of paper” — meaning some legal memorialization of the partnership.)

Was attention not being paid at ESPN? Too much time spent acquiring tennis rights, the SEC, Keith Olbermann, Nate Silver and Jason Whitlock, and not enough on journalism?

Ultimately, Lipsyte has only serious questions, not answers:

So what just happened? Beats me. At best we’ve seen some clumsy shuffling to cover a lack of due diligence. At worst, a promising relationship between two journalism powerhouses that could have done more good together has been sacrificed to mollify a league under siege. The best isn’t very good, but if the worst turns out to be true, it’s a chilling reminder how often the profit motive wins the duel.

Lipsyte says he will continue to stay on the story. That’s good news for people who want accountability from ESPN.

Update: ESPN just released a new statement this morning:

“The decision to remove our branding was not a result of concerns about our separate business relationship with the NFL. As we have in the past including as recently as Sunday, we will continue to cover the concussion story aggressively through our own reporting.”

However, as I say below, all of ESPN’s spinning won’t change the perception issue.

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If it indeed went down this way, ESPN just gave itself a severe blow to its journalistic integrity.

Here are the details from James Andrews Miller’s story that was posted this morning in the New York Times.

He writes:

Pressure from the National Football League led to ESPN’s decision on Thursday to pull out of an investigative project with “Frontline” regarding head injuries in the N.F.L., according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Miller wrote the league turned up the heat on ESPN after a trailer of the film ran in early August.

Last week, several high-ranking officials convened a lunch meeting at Patroon, near the league’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, according to the two people, who requested anonymity because they were prohibited by their superiors from discussing the matter publicly. It was a table for four: Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L.; Steve Bornstein, president of the NFL Network; ESPN’s president, John Skipper; and John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president for production.

At the combative meeting, the people said, league officials conveyed their displeasure with the direction of the documentary, which is expected to describe a narrative that has been captured in various news reports over the past decade: the league turning a blind eye to evidence that players were sustaining brain trauma on the field that could lead to profound, long-term cognitive disability.

Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L., said the league had no involvement in ESPN’s decision.

Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman, said Thursday that ESPN’s decision was not based on any concerns about hurting its contractual relationship with the N.F.L. Rather, the network said in a statement, it was ending its official association with “Frontline” because it did not have editorial control of what appeared on the public television public affairs series.

However, as the story points out, and as everyone else is pointing out, ESPN knew of the conditions for a long, long time.

“We’re obviously disappointed because the partnership has been a phenomenal one and we don’t totally understand what happened,” Fainaru-Wada said. Referring to ESPN, he added, “Nothing we’ve been told by anybody suggests that they’re backing off on the journalism.”

Aronson-Rath said that until last Friday, there had been no hint of trouble between “Frontline” and ESPN. She said that “Frontline” had worked “in lock step” with Vince Doria, ESPN’s senior vice president and director of news, and Dwayne Bray, senior coordinating producer in ESPN’s news-gathering unit.

But in conversations last Friday and Monday with Doria and Bray, she was first told that ESPN did not want its logo to be connected to the films.

“It didn’t appear that it was their decision,” she said.

This morning, the ESPN PR crew continues to maintain it was a “branding issue” and not an editorial decision due to pressure from the NFL.

Here is the statement from last night.

Because ESPN is neither producing nor exercising editorial control over the Frontline documentaries, there will be no co-branding involving ESPN on the documentaries or their marketing materials. The use of ESPN’s marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control. As we have in the past, we will continue to cover the concussion story through our own reporting.

The PR staff continues to maintain, “in hindsight, we should have reached this conclusion much sooner.”

The PR staff also has compiled a list of its coverage of the concussion issue. Outside The Lines did another report last Sunday. This occurred after Skipper’s meeting with Goodell.

“As far back as 2006, ESPN has taken a leading role in reporting on the effects of concussions on athletes.”

However, ESPN can spin all it wants. It won’t wash away the perception that ESPN caved in to the NFL. Miller is the author of the bestselling book about ESPN, and his story appeared in the New York Times. Both carry considerable weight in the credibility department.

Also, the fact that Skipper recently had lunch with Goodell is a smoking gun, so to speak. I don’t care if they were talking about Goodell’s flower garden. The timing of ESPN’s withdrawal makes it seem like it was tied to that lunch.

And to compound matters, the film’s producer and the Fainaru brothers seem confused about what happened. It appeared as if everything was proceeding on track.

You can reach the logical step that ESPN concocted “the branding issue” as an escape route to pull out of the film. And let’s for a minute believe that branding was indeed the real motivation here. What a colossal mistake coming to that decision so late in such an important game.

Yes, ESPN can spin all its wants, and it will. This so-called “branding issue” will result in the perception that the network has compromised its journalistic integrity in the name of avoiding a fracture in its relationship with the NFL.

I’m sure this is not a good day for the many fine journalists who work at ESPN.

At 10,000 square feet, it will be bigger. Steve Levy has a preview of ESPN’s new playground, which will debut in 2014.