With the World Series over and no football on Tuesday, it will be a good to settle in for some excellent documentaries.

At 10 p.m. ET, HBO unveils “Kareem: Minority of One.”

At 9 p.m. ET, ESPN’s new 30 for 30 is “The Gospel according to Mac.” From ESPN:

The next documentary from ESPN Films’ Peabody and Emmy Award-winning 30 for 30 series will be “The Gospel According to Mac,” premiering Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN. Directed by Jim Podhoretz and produced by Jonathan Hock, the film is an exploration of Bill McCartney and his provocative approach running the University of Colorado football program on the way to a national championship. Podhoretz and Hock previously collaborated on the 30 for 30 film “Survive and Advance” featuring the extraordinary championship run of Jim Valvano and his NC State basketball team.

Football is a religion to many people, but few know the depths of both faiths as well as Bill McCartney, the former head football coach of the University of Colorado and the founder of a Christian men’s ministry called Promise Keepers. “The Gospel According to Mac” tells the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of Coach Mac’s controversial national championship run that followed several years of multiple arrests and strife between his mostly African-American players and the Boulder police.

The turmoil included McCartney’s daughter becoming pregnant by the team’s quarterback Sal Aunese, not long before Aunese would lose his life to cancer. McCartney’s passionate and often polarizing beliefs earned him both admirers and detractors, but it’s difficult to deny that he embodies some of the essential issues facing football in America to this day.

The sad picture on the Grantland site. More to come.

Wasn’t that fun to watch?

The Royals showed that baseball, executed in its purest form, can be a thing of beauty. It was quite a display: Putting the ball in play; moving runners over; taking the extra base; making the plays on defense; and a lights-out bullpen.

The Royals might not have a player you would take in the first three rounds of a fantasy draft, but the sum of their parts left no doubt they were the best team in baseball.

Now hopefully,after back-to-back World Series appearances, plus a title, the networks will pick up more on the Royals story next year. Despite having the best record in the American League, they still didn’t come close to matching the Yankees, Dodgers, Cardinals, and even the bumbling Red Sox when it came to national TV appearances in 2015. ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” would show 26 straight Yankees-Red Sox games if it could.

The small-market excuse has to be dismissed since the Royals’ Missouri cousins, the Cardinals, get their fair share of national coverage. St. Louis, though, has built its brand by being a consistent winner.

Maybe now that will happen with the Royals. One year might be considered a fluke. Two years definitely is a trend.

The Royals deserve the spotlight. And not just in October.

Move over George Brett’s Royals, Kansas City has another champion.

Meanwhile, in New York, the tabloids can be cruel.

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports media:

John Ourand of Sports Business Journal has an excellent breakdown of why ESPN had to make its cuts.

But last week’s layoffs offered the clearest sign yet that all is not well for the Worldwide Leader in Sports.
Many past and present employees place most of the blame for the layoffs on the company’s huge NFL, MLB and NBA rights deals. The most frequent criticism heard last week dealt with the NFL contract, which is worth a whopping $1.9 billion per year — $800 million more than the NFL’s next biggest deal. Second-guessers believe ESPN had the leverage to cut a better deal and question whether another media company was within $500 million of ESPN’s offer. There aren’t many other networks that could afford to pay close to $2 billion per year for the NFL’s least competitive package.
“It’s been a total mismanagement of rights fees, starting with the NFL renewal,” said one former employee. “We overpaid significantly when it did not need to be that way, and it set the template to overpay for MLB and the NBA.”
ESPN doubled its annual payment for MLB to an average $700 million per year — a deal that gives ESPN just one playoff game per year. And next year, ESPN’s NBA deal takes effect. That’s the one that will see its average annual payout triple in cost to an average of $1.4 billion per year.

“You can’t keep spending on rights at high levels when the business model and fundamentals have changed,” another former ESPN employee said.

Alex Rodriguez discusses working as a studio analyst for Fox Sports.

Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder gives his list of sport media rising stars for 2015

Congratulations to Gary D’Amato on being named sports columnist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Hey Gary, how about an analysis of the 2015 Writers Cup?

Sports Illustrated’s Greg Bishop details what it was like for him to leave the press box and watch a game in the stands.

An interview with Linda Robertson of the Miami Herald.

ESPN’s Sage Steele discusses the evolution of her career with Jeff Pearlman.

Praise for Steele’s work on NBA Countdown.

Kathy Connors, one of my favorite PR people, does a moving piece about lessons learned from taking care of her grandmother.

How New York Times writer wrote baseball game story in 1908 style.

Many media notes from Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News, including on the new HBO documentary on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

College football kicking legend Fred Mitchell has decided to call it a career at the Chicago Tribune. However, knowing my old pal, don’t say he is retiring. Fred loves to work. Among other things, I expect he will add to his total of producing 11 books.

It is hard to think of another member of sports media in Chicago who is more respected than Fred. He always has been the epitome of “show up and do your job well.” And he did it for more than 40 years at the Tribune.

From Robert Feder’s post:

Legendary sports reporter and columnist Fred Mitchell is stepping down after more than four decades at the Chicago Tribune.

Mitchell, 67, confirmed Wednesday that he has applied for a buyout under the voluntary staff reduction plan offered by Tribune Publishing. He may be the best-known personality among dozens of Tribune editorial employees who are believed to have opted for buyouts.

“My decision is totally voluntary and I plan to pursue other options,” Mitchell said. “It has been a terrific run at the Tribune — over 41 years — and I believe I am the longest-tenured sportswriter in Chicago, covering practically every sport imaginable during my career.

“I have had the opportunity to work with and cover some real pros, as well as some real characters. The experience has been a true blessing.”

And a story I have heard from Fred many times:

As a pioneering African-American sportswriter, Mitchell recalled in a 2012 interview: “I remember sitting around the copy desk my first year on the job and the late sportswriter John Husar walked over and said half-jokingly in his booming voice: ‘The Chicago Tribune has hired a black sportswriter. What is the world coming to?’ ”

Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News had a story on the reaction in the Fox trucks when disaster struck last night.

Were you cursing at the TV in the fourth inning of Mets-Royals when it went all black?

This couldn’t be happening, right? This was the World Series after all. The picture is not supposed to disappear during a huge event with millions of eyeballs tuned into Fox.

Well, how do you think Mike Davies was feeling? He is Fox Sports’ senior VP/Field and Technical Operations. This was all happening on his watch.

“When something like this happens there is complete darkness in the production truck,” Davies said late Tuesday night over the telephone (which was obviously working). “Then you see all the monitors are dark. No pictures. It’s terrifying.”

Naturally, the Internet erupted and there were plenty of jokes at Fox’s expense. But if you ever met the people who work on the technical side of a telecast, you had to feel for Fox’s crew. The armies of tech folks literally put their hearts and souls into their jobs. Dedication isn’t a strong enough word.

Listen, nothing is perfect in life, but these people are as close to perfect as it gets. Here’s hoping nobody notices them for a long, long time.

A few World Series notes:

As I wrote, yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the greatest day ever: The White Sox winning the 2005 World Series.

Here’s one more important note: The ’05 Series ended on Oct. 26. I know, it was a sweep. Nevertheless, this year’s World Series will start tonight, which is Oct. 27.

If this year’s World Series goes the distance, the seventh game will be on Nov. 4. That is way too late.

The addition of the wildcard round has pushed back the schedule, but that isn’t the only culprit. The season didn’t start until Sunday, April 5, with the bulk of the openers on Monday, April 6.

MLB needs to push up its openers to near April 1 and find a way to condense the 162-game schedule to produce an earlier finish to the regular season. A few doubleheaders should do the trick.

The weather looks favorable in Kansas City and New York, so MLB might be fortunate this year. But if baseball keeps rolling the dice, they  will have snow on them one of their years. Given the Cubs luck, they finally get to the World Series only to have the Wrigley Field games snowed out by a early November blizzard.

Even beyond the weather, by going so late, the World Series now goes up against the start of the NBA season. LeBron James will take away eyeballs from Game 1 tonight. Surely, Fox could do without the additional sports competition.

We live in a short attention span era, and it is asking a lot for sports viewers to remain interested in baseball into November. Going forward, MLB needs to make sure the Fall Classic doesn’t become the Winter Classic.

******

This tidbit comes compliments of old Tribune colleague Richard Rothschild:

The last time Kansas City won the World Series in 1985, all seven games were played in three hours or less; 5 of the games were under 2:50.

Game 1: 2:48

Game 2: 2:44

Game 3: 2:59

Game 4: 2:19 (!!!)

Game 5:  2:52

Game 6: 2:47

Game 7: 2:46

Just saying. It shows how much the game has changed in the last 30 years.

The start of the NBA season couldn’t come fast enough for Craig Sager.

After returning briefly last spring, Sager had to endure another bout with cancer. Sager, though, is optimistic the treatments went well and that he will be able to put in a full season on the NBA for TNT.

From Richard Deitsch at SI.com:

After 82 days of a 100-day maintenance program, his doctors at MD Anderson released him to go home to Atlanta. Sager is still seeing Houston doctors for aftercare maintenance and he recently had his blood work done, which checked out great. “All my numbers are good, my body is developing its own white blood cells, my platelets are high,” Sager said.

That sets up an exciting return to work for Sager, who will be on the sidelines Tuesday for the second game of TNT’s opening night NBA doubleheader, New Orleans at Golden State (10:30 p.m. ET). After his assignment in Golden State, Sager will work NBATV’s regular-season debut on Oct. 31 (Warriors at Hornets.) He will then be in Chicago for Thunder-Bulls on Nov. 5 for TNT, followed by Nov. 19 (Bucks at Cavs on TNT) and Celtics at Hawks (TNT), where Sager has purchased a suite for his local friends to watch him at the game. He’s also assigned to San Antonio at Memphis on Dec. 3.

Doctors said Sager is free to travel and he also has designs on working for NBC as a basketball reporter at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. “I have no restrictions as of now,” Sager said.