Unbreakable: The Best That Never Was

By Jason Bellamy



In trying to recount the skill of running back Marcus Dupree, no one minces words. One of his high school teammates says Dupree was "awesome" and could score whenever he wanted, "literally." A Mississippi newspaper reporter says that watching Dupree running through and around his prep peers was like watching NFL great Jim Brown taking on teenagers. Oklahoma University legend Barry Switzer says that Dupree was the "most gifted player" he ever coached, "bar none." And Lucious Selmon, who recruited Dupree to Oklahoma, says Dupree was the best athlete he ever saw and had the talent to be the best running back of all time. But of all the effusive assessments we encounter in Jonathan Hock's documentary The Best That Never Was, the latest edition in ESPN Films' "30 for 30" series, perhaps the most accurate one is provided by one of Dupree's childhood friends, who matter-of-factly says, "We suspected he could do anything he wanted to do." Wrapped up in that seemingly simple statement is the measure of Dupree's enormous abilities and, ironically, the making of his downfall.

Marcus Dupree's mixed blessing was that everyone who watched him play came away convinced that he was without limits. That's why Dupree had his pick of any college in the country when he graduated from his high school in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and it's also why Dupree's college football career almost immediately became defined by all he didn't do and everything he didn't have. When Dupree set a still-standing Fiesta Bowl record by rushing for 239 yards (on just 17 carries!) in Oklahoma's losing effort to Arizona State, Switzer didn't praise his freshman running back, he threw him under the bus, reasoning that if Dupree had been in better shape he could have doubled his carries and doubled his yards and, in doing so, led the Sooners to victory. Dupree had been record-setting great and somehow not great enough. Not for Switzer, anyway, who was so determined to avoid giving Dupree anything he hadn't earned that he went out of his way not to recognize the dominance that came to Depree so naturally. So it was that Dupree began wondering why the program that was so desperate to sign him in the first place withheld not just praise but also the (illegal) perks that other Sooners players were rumored to be enjoying. Influenced by family and friends who assumed that the football player who could do whatever he wanted on the field should get anything he wanted off of it, Dupree, too, started to judge his college experience according to oversized expectations. And so it came to be that instead of winning a Heisman trophy or leading Oklahoma to a national title, Dupree dropped out of Oklahoma before the end of his sophomore season. A lucrative contract with the USFL soon followed and, alas, just as quickly a devastating knee injury followed that. At the age of 20, Dupree's football career was pronounced over.

Hock revives Dupree's impressive and too brief athletic career with clarity and balance, effortlessly blending talking head interviews, archival footage and shots of Dupree revisiting his Philadelphia roots. But The Best That Never Was ranks among the upper echelon of "30 for 30" films not because it reminds us of a player that time has forgot but because it delicately demonstrates how Dupree the person was forgotten within his prime. Here's a guy who was so sought after coming out of high school that college assistants hunkered down for the long haul in Mississippi hotels while other recruiters bribed Dupree's teammates with gifts, trying to buy their influence. So intense was the contest for Dupree's services that Willie Morris wrote a book about it: The Courting of Marcus Dupree. Yet once Dupree became a Sooner, the overwhelming interest that had been paid to him as a senior was gone. No one seemed to realize how unhappy he was, and if so, no one was concerned enough to do anything about it. Dupree was a teenager being treated like a professional, not because he was that mature but because he was that skilled, as if one correlates to the other. Hock allows us to spot this failure without aggressively pointing fingers. To watch this film is to be appalled by what we take for granted: recruiters spending heaps of money in an effort to land players who come from next to nothing; players being asked to live up to their impossible reputations, or else; athletes being coerced by advisors who greedily or foolishly assume that the dominance of an athlete at 18 is a guarantee of what's to come even two years later. No wonder Dupree felt "burned out" by his sophomore year. He was being handled according to an image of his unrealized endless potential, rather than according to what he was: still just a kid.

So if I tell you that in his brief USFL career Dupree was taken advantage of by a trusted advisor who "invested" his salary in such a way that Dupree's eventual legal fees eradicated his earnings, or that after his playing days Dupree's effort to find employment required him to seek out a former Mississippi police officer who had served jail time for his role in the notorious murder of three political activists in 1964, or that now Dupree works as a truck driver, you might suspect that The Best That Never Was is a depressing film. But it isn't. Because as it turns out, the same guy who failed to achieve the long and unrivaled professional football career that everyone thought was inevitable managed to rehabilitate himself en route to a short and pedestrian professional career that, after his knee injury, even Dupree thought was impossible. All these years later, in a position that would make so many of us feel defined by missed opportunities for glory and material wealth, Dupree stands tall, proud of all that he did achieve – both in his first short career, when everything came easily, and in his even shorter comeback stint with the Los Angeles Rams when Dupree truly earned every carry and every yard through incredible effort.

Dupree's story compels because it is both unique and universal. No one followed quite the same path, yet so many athletes are stars one moment only to be forgotten the next. As Dupree looks through the dusty trophies on the mantle in his mother's home, or watches clips his high school highlights, we see not bitterness but joy – a contentment that comes from knowing that he did many things no one else ever could, even if he didn't do them for as long as people expected. Hock winds down his film with a parade of talking heads making wistful comments about all that Dupree could have been, but they reminisce without seeing all that Dupree is today. As foolish as it would be to ignore the tragedy of Dupree's football career – from his lack of a strong mentor to all that unrealized promise – it would also be a mistake overlook the beauty of Dupree's indomitable spirit almost 30 years later. When people watched Dupree play football in his prime, they saw a man who couldn't be brought down. Apparently they were right.

The Best That Never Was premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the "30 for 30" series upon its release.

30 for 30: The Best That Never Was

By Cynthia Fuchs

So Much More to Play

"He didn't look like he was hustling because he was so smooth," says Leon Baxtrum. "This was a young man that was unbelievable in just about every sense of the word." The Youth League coach is remembering Marcus Dupree, whose startling speed on the football field left most everyone who saw him dumbfounded. "I just remember looking at the field and seeing 21 high school football players and Jim Brown," says Billy Watkins, a reporter for the Meridian Star. "I had never seen anybody that big running that fast. It was indescribable." Now, as he first appears in The Best That Never Was, Dupree walks. Making his way through a muddy truck-yard, he climbs into a bulldozer and sets to work.

Airing this week in ESPN's 30 for 30 series, Jonathan Hock's compelling documentary charts Dupree's trajectory from prodigiously talented high school running back to part-time truck driver. It's a story of expectation and brilliance, disappointment and misfortune. It's also a story of youthful energies misdirected and self-interested adults, of history and hope.

Dupree was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964, just three weeks before James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered. For most of Marcus' life, notes the Neshoba Democrat‘s Sid Salter, "The whole county, the whole town, to a degree the whole state, bore the stain of what happened." Dupree, the film notes early on, earned the respect, and even the awe, of everyone who saw him play, including the deputy sheriff linked to the murders, Cecil Ray Price (in 1967, despite the state's best efforts not to bring charges in the case, he was convicted of violating their civil rights). "Daddy thought the world of Marcus," says Cecil Jr. Under a local newspaper headline, "Philadelphia Story: City once torn by racism unites behind black," the son recalls his own experience with his classmate, following the integration of Mississippi schools in 1970: "He would come to my house I would go to his house."

With this story and some footage of Martin Luther King Jr. (hoping that, "From the blood of those young men, our whole nation would be redeemed, that we would rise to higher heights of brotherhood and understanding"), The Best That Never Was sets a broad frame for Marcus Dupree's experience: he was never just a gifted kid. He was always carrying too many ambitions and dreams—for his family, his teammates and coaches, and a community in search of redemption.

At first, he appears so astoundingly gifted that you can see why so many people around him invested so much. Scratchy black-and-white footage of Dupree's high school games confirm what witnesses say: it does look "like everybody else was standing still and he was the only one running." His runs are so inspired and inspiring that you can see why Watkins sounds nearly rapturous: "I remember going back to the paper and thinking, ‘I have to tell them, I have to tell my readers what they have here, what they have an opportunity to see.'" Watching the film, you do feel lucky to see Dupree, and can only imagine what it must have been like to see him in person.

All that said and even if you don't know the story, the film's title indicates where Dupree is headed. Recruited by what he remembers as hundreds of colleges, he's swayed by bad advice and the sorts of "incentives" that used to be offered without much compunction. As Watkins puts it, "Players were being bought, players were being given things, it was dirty." The film includes interviews with recruiters and coaches who remember their determination to sign Dupree, how some moved to Philadelphia for months, offered cash and cars and housing for his mother Cella and younger brother Reggie (the film notes as well that Reggie suffered from cerebral palsy, which Dupree cites as a possible reason for his exceptional efforts, because "He couldn't play and run like I could run").

When, after months of back-and-forthing over where to go, he finally signs with the University of Oklahoma, Dupree is almost immediately disappointed once he arrives in Norman. Or, at least this is the story told by one of his advisors, Reverend Ken Fairley, who had been pushing him to go to the University of Southern Mississippi. While the film suggests Fairley has his own interests in Dupree's career (and indeed, he ends up with some unspecified sort of control over Dupree's money once he signs with the USFL's New Orleans Breakers in 1984), it also makes clear that none of the adults in the process was looking out for Dupree per se. He had an Uncle Curlee who pressed for one decision or another (and whom Salter describes as "shadowy"), and a coach at Oklahoma, Barry Switzer, who's introduced in his trophy room in Norman. The camera pans over prizes and awards as he notes of the team's 1985 national championship, "Marcus would have been on that team."

But he wasn't. As the film goes on to tell, Marcus was unhappy with the coaching at Oklahoma ("He wanted to move me to tight end, you know, I'm the number one running back in the country") and Switzer now says he had something like a protocol. Even though, he says, "Within the first week of practice, we know he's he best player we've got," Switzer says he decided not to use him because other players had been waiting to "get in the huddle."

This makes sense for a college team, of course, but Dupree was 19 years old, and mystified by the coaches' decisions. The documentary doesn't explain exactly how the relationships went wrong, as each interview subject has his own version of events, but the upshot is that this astonishing player was not playing, and when the team did change its offense (from a wishbone to an I formation), Dupree was again remarkable. "In every game he was busting a long run," remembers radio reporter Mick Cornett, ""A freshman putting together run after run after run. He immediately became the most popular person in Oklahoma outside of his head coach." Again, footage of Dupree—this time in color—reveals how astounding he was, and why people who saw him were so moved.

Football, as everyone knows, is a brutal game. And it is at least partly premised on luck, as this can ordain which players play, which adults counsel them, where they play and how healthy they are or stay. The Best That Never Was leaves a lot of its story off-screen, focused less on who might be responsible for what or how Marcus ended up at any particular step of his journey, than on his brilliance, however short-lived. He's injured more than once, he's confused, and he's prone to accept less than helpful recommendations. As Switzer sums up, "There was so much more to play and so much more to see we didn't get to." The question the film asks is most pertinent: who made up this "we" and where were they when Marcus Dupree needed them?

The Greatest Football Player That Never Was

by Buzz Bissinger Marcus Dupree was pegged to win three Heismans before he got chewed up in the college system. How did the high-school sensation make peace with life after football? Buzz Bissinger reports.

Marcus Dupree watched the Super Bowl last Sunday in the place where he grew up, the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. If there was anyone in the history of football who I thought would be glued to the television, playing the athlete's lament of could-have-should-have, it would have been him.

Marcus Dupree, 1982. Credit: Newscom

Because it should have been him. But it wasn't. Because of the college meat grinder that mangles so many players. Because of too much attention for a simple homespun kid whose world revolved around his mother and grandmother and younger brother Reggie, born with cerebral palsy. Because of the pressure of becoming, at 17, the black and white hope who would finally heal the gaping racism of a town in which three young civil-rights workers had been murdered in 1964. Because of recruiters for the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas who moved into a motel in Philadelphia for weeks to gain any extra edge. Because of Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer, who after willfully destroying the very essence of Marcus Dupree, now leans back in his oversize chair in his tricked-out study and admits with a shit-eating little smirk that his greatest regret in coaching was the handling of Marcus Dupree. Which nearly 30 years later is not only absolutely meaningless but amoral.

I grew up in the era of Marcus Dupree in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Of all the players I have ever watched in 56 years, no one, no one, has made more of an impression. He was the best high-school football player ever. He was 6-3 and 230 pounds. He could run the 100-yard dash in 9.5 seconds. He set the high-school record for touchdowns with 87 when he played for Philadelphia High. He gained 7,355 yards.

I had forgotten about Marcus Dupree. Until roughly a month ago, when I watched a brilliant documentary on ESPN that was conceived, written, and directed by Jonathan Hock. The title was The Best That Never Was, the moniker forever a noose around Dupree's neck. It all returned as I watched—the speed and power and poetry of the way he ran; the willful puncturing of that by Barry Switzer in the early 1980s; the shift, like so many thousands of athletes coming out of high school, from folk hero to the forgotten. Those very same feelings hit me as I watched the Super Bowl. I truly thought that at some point in Marcus Dupree's 46-year-old life, it would have been him with the MVP trophy and the car and the trip to Disneyland.

He loved playing football. Thanks to remarkable footage Hock discovered from Dupree's high school days, you could see it in the abandon and freedom. Until he went to Oklahoma in 1982.

Almost immediately, Switzer said that Dupree was out of shape, lazy, lacking in intensity. The transition from small-town Mississippi to big-time college football, with the nation watching, was difficult enough. "I was overwhelmed," he recently told me. But it was never a fair fight, Switzer a grown man paid to deal with young athletes and Dupree a teenager who, until a recruiting trip the year before, had never been on an airplane. He needed encouragement to overcome his alienation and moodiness, not vicious swipes.

But Switzer, one of college football's finest hacksaw butchers, still knew a good cut of meat. He knew Dupree was the best running back on the team even if he was a lowly freshman. He knew he had to finally start him. Dupree finished the season with 1,144 yards. In the Fiesta Bowl against Arizona State, he gained 239 yards on 17 carries despite playing roughly half the game because of a hamstring that had never properly healed after he'd torn it in high school. Switzer congratulated the effort by publicly criticizing Dupree for being out of shape because he was caught twice from behind. He said the kid should have gained 400 yards.

He has even made his peace with Barry Switzer, who in another worthless piece of performance art, once turned to Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith when he coached there and told him, "You're not the best No. 22 I ever saw."

Before Dupree's sophomore year, Sports Illustrated said he had the possibility of winning the Heisman Trophy the next three seasons. But the relationship between Switzer and Dupree had soured into outright hate. Midway through his sophomore season, Dupree quit the team and never returned to Norman. He went on to play in the old United States Football League. He signed a $6 million contract, almost none of which he actually saw. But in his second season he suffered a horrifying knee injury that left him in a cast for five months.

He went back to Philadelphia. He sat by himself in a darkened room and refused to see anyone. He looked like an old man and weighed almost 300 pounds. Reluctantly he was coaxed into going to a New Orleans Saints game. He got a sideline pass. He looked up in wonderment and heard the ceaseless noise of frenzy. He remembered.

In a makeshift gym in his grandmother's house, using ancient equipment, he worked himself back into shape. His work ethic, contrary to Switzer's endless derision, reflected a savage intensity. Miraculously, after a five-and-a-half year absence, he made the Los Angeles Rams. He played two seasons and he only scored one touchdown. But it proved that nobody could ever call him a quitter—except a coach who, regardless of the mea culpas he gave in the documentary, obviously didn't like him and didn't want him, a piece of meat in college football that could always be replaced by another one fresh and dangling on the hook.

Marcus Dupree has worked as a truck driver. Most recently he was the foreman of a crew in Mississippi that helped to clean up the BP oil spill. It was not the life he ever envisioned, the beauty of his running in high school so tinged by the bittersweet.

Most athletes would be bitter and angry until the end of their days. But Dupree has never done that. He is proud that he made it to the National Football League. He has even made his peace with Barry Switzer, who in another worthless piece of performance art, once turned to Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith when he coached there and told him, "You're not the best No. 22 I ever saw."

When Marcus Dupree is given a compliment, the first thing he does is laugh from the heart. Then he offers thanks. "You don't know in life what you're going to be," he said. "There's life after football. I just thank God I grew up."

He barely watched last Sunday's Super Bowl, simply because he had other priorities. It was his grandson's 7th birthday and there was a party at the new Depot bowling alley in Philadelphia. He did catch the last five minutes of the game, and he was impressed by the poise of Green Bay Packers' quarterback Aaron Rodgers. But there was no jealousy. There was no regret. With 15 wired-up kids on his hands, he had a lot more to worry about.

Which is the truest definition of greatness anyway.

Marcus Dupree's doc

by Richard Deitsch



It is a phrase that conjures up missed opportunity, even sadness, but Marcus Dupree is at peace with the title of his documentary: The Best That Never Was. "There ain't no doubt that it's a good title for my story," said Dupree, arguably the greatest high school running back and the subject of a superb ESPN 30 For 30 documentary airing Tuesday night at 8 pm ET. "Everybody you talk to before or even now said I could have been the best."

Emerging out of Philadelphia, Miss., a city bathed in infamy two decades earlier after the brutal slaying of three civil rights workers, Dupree rushed for 5,283 yards and broke Herschel Walker's high school record for touchdowns (87). As a senior in 1981, he was the subject of an epic recruiting battle before he signed with Oklahoma, then coached by Barry Switzer. After initially being relegated to the bench, Dupree exploded onto the national scene, finishing his freshman year with 13 touchdowns and a 7.8 yard per carry average. His Fiesta Bowl record of 239 yards on 17 carries still stands.

With Heisman Trophy anticipation in the air, Dupree was featured on the June 20, 1983 cover of Sports Illustrated, but continuing conflicts with the Oklahoma coaching staff prompted him to quit the team midway through his sophomore year. In March '84 he signed a five-year, $6 million contract with the USFL's New Orleans Breakers and had a respectable, though not spectacular, first season. The next year he injured his left knee, ending his USFL career. Out of football for five years, Dupree rehabbed his knee back in Philadelphia and ended up making the Los Angeles Rams as a journeyman running back. He retired after two seasons, and then faded from the national scene and into the workaday world.

Documentary filmmaker Jonathan Hock, who at 46 is the same age as Dupree, had long been interested in Dupree's story after reading The Courting of Marcus Dupree, a look at sports and race in the South via the recruiting of Dupree by the late Mississippi novelist, Willie Morris. An eight-time Emmy Award winner and the writer and director of the critically-acclaimed documentary The Lost Son of Havana, Hock knew he wanted to tell Dupree's story when ESPN approached him in 2008 to be part of its documentary series.

Finding Dupree was not easy, though. Hock spent a couple of months searching for him to little avail. Finally, he hired a private investigator who found court records on Dupree's ex-wife that led to a church in Tallahassee. The filmmaker left his name and number at the church and the next morning he got a phone call: "Is this Jon Hock? This is Marcus Dupree." At the time Hock was on train back from Boston after a meeting with the Farrelly Brothers on Havana, which follows baseball great Luis Tiant on his first trip to Cuba in 40 years. "I said, 'Marcus you don't know how happy I am to hear your voice,'" Hock said. "He said, 'Hey, I'm happy to hear your voice, too.'"

Dupree had been driving a truck out of Tallahassee, one of a number of careers he'd held since retiring from football including casino greeter, B-level pro wrestler, CFL and NFL scout, and his current job working in Pascagoula, Miss. as part of the cleanup on the BP oil spill. "I didn't know what to expect," Dupree said upon meeting Hock in early 2009 to discuss the project. "I hadn't talked about stuff in a long time but I thought it was a way to tell my story and finally get the truth out."

Hock traveled to Mississippi in March 2009, Sept. 2009 and last summer for filming. Among those in Philadelphia he interviewed was Cecil Price Jr., a high school teammate of Dupree's who reflects for the first time on film about his father, the late Cecil R. Price, who as a deputy sheriff arrested the civil rights workers in 1964 and was eventually found guilty of delivering them into the hands of their killers.

As word traveled around Philadelphia that a filmmaker was doing a story on Dupree, Hock was eventually able to track down 16 millimeter black and white footage of Dupree playing at Philadelphia High. "This was our Holy Grail, because if you don't have the footage, you are just sort of going on everybody's word how good he was," Hock said. "When we saw the film and it was like: 'Son of a bitch, he was that good.' I was like, 'Boys, we have our ourselves a movie.'"

One of the film's memorable interview subjects is Switzer, who called his handling of Dupree his greatest coaching regret. "The only thing that hurts so bad was the stuff that Coach Switzer said in the film about how he didn't want the upperclassman to get jealous of me," Dupree said. "All he had to do was pull me into his office and tell me that. It kind of hurts that I might have missed three Heisman Trophy's and a national championship because of a lack of communication."

Dupree has three sons -- Marquez, 28, Landon, 25, and Rashad, 18 -- and says he tries to go back to Philadelphia once a month to see his six-year-old grandson's Little League games. Neither Dupree's children nor his ex-wife, Katrina Rush, chose to participate in the film, and Hock focuses little on Dupree's personal life after his football career ended. "I made the decision that this film couldn't be a comprehensive, in-depth story of Marcus's history," Hock said. "Rather, it had to be the story of his football life and its impact on the very special town that he comes from. The kind of dad or husband that he is or was is definitely part of his history, but ultimately I had to decide that it wasn't a core part of his story as a football player or his town's racial history."

Dupree harbors no regrets about what could have been and seems mostly content with his life's journey. "My life could be a little better, I mean, it wouldn't hurt to have $10 million in the bank," Dupree said. "I saw a lot at a young age and I'm glad this is happening now. This film is something my Mom (who died in 2004) wanted and I do think God has blessed me."

"I think it's complicated to be Marcus Dupree," Hock said. "He was not in hiding but I'm not sure how comfortable it is to be an honest, hardworking guy making a living when so many people you meet hear your name and expect you to be something else. The idea of truly great promise unfulfilled is very sad, but Marcus is not a sad person and that makes this story hopeful in the end. After the doctors told him he would never be able to play football again, for him to turn his life and body around and to end up making the NFL, that's a redemptive tale."

'The Best That Never Was' examines the rise and fall of Marcus Dupree

By Reid Cherner




For of all sad words of tongue or pen....The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

We are a nation obsessed with untapped potential. That is never more apparent than our fascination with running back Marcus Dupree.

Three decades after his star burned out, when he was barely out of his teens, we are still talking about him.

"The Best That Never Was" a new documentary about Dupree by writer-director Jonathan Hock will be shown on ESPN tonight (8 p.m. ET) as part of their 30 for 30 series.

Hock spoke to Game On! about the documentary.

Why the fascination with Dupree?

I think true greatness at the level of Marcus Dupree happens once a generation. And the idea that his generation, which is my generation, missed out on the one is hard to let go of. As sports fans we wait and wait for a guy like this to show up and when he does… it takes your breath away. And it keeps you coming back every Saturday, and every Sunday, to hope it happens again. What he showed in high school and college promised something that nobody had witnessed before in the NFL and we never got to taste it. You fall in love when you are a kid and its hard to let go of that.

Is this a happy or sad story?

I think it's a sad story about a person who is not sad. I think Marcus has genuine grace about himself. He does not harbor bitterness towards anyone who may have given him good or bad advice. He doesn't bemoan his bad luck. He acknowledges his own bad decisions without dwelling or them or wallowing in remorse. He feels blessed to have enjoyed the moments he was able to enjoy. That is a rare thing. What is so uplifting about the story is that so many of us dwell on what might have been.

When Dupree gets cut by the Rams during his comeback he seems to accept it and we believe him don't we?

That is what makes a very sad story ultimately a very uplifting film to watch. To see the perspective that he has its remarkable. It is as unique as his talent. To find life's blessings and enjoy those rather than dwell on what might have been.

Did you find it jarring that Dupree ended up to be friends with the son of the sheriff entangled in one of the ugliest racial incidents in our history?

I think Marcus led the town of Philadelphia, Miss., a town with a horrible past on its first steps toward reconciliation and leading to a better future. Today, Philadelphia has a black mayor. It is clearly not the town it was in 1964 when Marcus was born. I think it would be naïve to believe that he single-handed made this happen. But I do think it would be missing the point if you didn't acknowledge what this guy did was so extraordinary. What he did on the football field was so powerful, on a level that speaks across politics and beyond politics, and beyond hate and everything else that had brought Philadelphia down, that Marcus Dupree become the point at which black people and white people began to connect in a different way in the public arena. I think that is another thing that is so fascinating about him. It shows that the power of sports to reach across fences. The vagaries of race relations in the South are very deep and very hard to untangle. It is a very complicated situation….things are complicated and I think that the town's awful history, and the many great strides that have been made there, and Marcus's role in that, is something that is too important to ignore. One man's athletic greatness can be a point where people who would otherwise have no place to connect can begin to connect. T

Are there villains in this story?

Marcus story is the anti-Blind Side. Here is a guy who needed just one person who had the wherewithal to take hold of the situation in his best interests. And nobody did. I don't see it as villains but everybody in his life acted in their best interests and not in Marcus' interest. I think that's what people in college athletics do. Everybody is protecting everybody's interests. Who is looking out for the athletes? I think people try, I don't think anybody said in a pernicious way that 'I'm gonna cash in on Marcus and I don't care what happens to him.' Nobody in his life from Barry Switzer to Ken Fairly wanted bad things to happen to Marcus. Everybody loved Marcus. I think everybody in their minds were trying to do the best things for him. But the stakes are so high, and the money so big, and everyone stands to lose so much if it doesn't play out a particular way, you see people begin to act in their own self-interest.

Dupree didn't seem to want to be an NFL lifer did he?

You are talking about a guy whose career was really shipwrecked. ...All he does is go out and play football better than anyone else in the country. Then these forces take over his life. Forces that have lots of money and lots of power behind them. We would like to think he could steer the ships through the rocks…without losing his enthusiasm. I think that because there wasn't anybody to help him steer the ship I think its hard not to wreck and he got wrecked. I think if he had been handled differently and somebody take the wheel with him I don't think he would have gotten burned out. I don't think it would have felt like a curse to him. When he wrecked, I don't think its fair to say he wasn't going anywhere anyway. I think he was just lost so much early than anyone realized…I don't agree that he didn't have it in him to be a lifer in the NFL.

But he was tired of THE game if not the game. Fair?

Then I agree with you. He burned out on the game within the game. But it didn't rob him of his inner grace.

Why do sports stories resonate with us?

It's an interesting question, because this story and the (Luis) Tiant story are human stories first in a sports setting. I don't think of the stories I tell as sports stories. They're human stories about family, about loss and redemption. Marcus was just a guy trying to make his family proud, just like all of us. But sports are an all-or-nothing proposition - being a football player is not like being an accountant or a shopkeeper in that way. So when a small, personal, human story plays out in the world of sports, the stakes become so high and the drama so big because it's all-or-nothing. It's like we're watching the little dramas of our own lives played out on a stage more spectacular than almost any of us will ever personally experience. So that's a very compelling thing to watch.

THE BEST THAT NEVER WAS

by Michael Tully

(The Best That Never Was premieres on ESPN on Tuesday, November 9, 2010, at 8pm)

Considering the recent string of 30 For 30 documentaries, I was understandably worried to learn that Jonathan Hock's entry, The Best That Never Was, was of the feature-length variety. Could the story of Marcus Dupree, a boundlessly talented running back who never reached his true potential, sustain itself for 100 minutes? Thanks to Dupree, the answer is a resounding yes. In looking back on the events that led to his disappointingly unfulfilled career, Dupree reveals himself to be a quiet, humble hero filled with humility and grace. Aspiring athletes—especially those of you with the biggest of heads—should be forced to watch The Best That Never Was immediately.

For those viewers who don't remember the Marcus Dupree phenomenon, which didn't officially sweep the nation until Dupree burst onto the scene as an overnight sensation at the University of Oklahoma in 1982, Hock digs into the vaults to present a highlight reel of Dupree's high school exploits in late 1970s that is truly astonishing. As one interviewee recalls watching an underclass Dupree playing on the varsity squad, it was like Jim Brown had stepped onto the field of a high school game. Not only was Dupree an intimidating physical specimen at 6'2" and over 200 pounds of sheer muscle and brute force, but he was fast (he could run the 100 in 9.5 seconds). It was a combination that no one had ever seen up to that point, and hasn't since.

Dupree was born and raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, home of one of the worst acts of violence during the Civil Rights movement. And while the emergence of Dupree didn't single-handedly solve the problem, the community nonetheless united in the stands every Friday night to watch their golden child score touchdown after touchdown. Unfortunately, this level of admiration helped to create an atmosphere of expectation that would contribute to Dupree's troubles when it came time to pick a college. After a heated battle between Texas, Oklahoma, and Southern Mississippi, Dupree settled on Oklahoma (thanks to a weekend spent with Heisman Trophy winner Billy Sims), where he immediately displayed his extraordinary talent but couldn't ever seem to please his coach Barry Switzer. This led to the first dramatic decision that would forever alter Dupree's future.

Watching The Best That Never Was, it's hard to believe Dupree wasn't cursed by some higher power, since his misfortune represented itself in so many different forms: poor guidance, twisted rules and regulations, debilitating injuries, etc. That simmering hunch is what makes this film so quietly crushing, for as we get to spend time with Dupree today, who pays the bills by driving trucks, it's impossible not to admire him. A much lesser individual would spend those silent highway hours bemoaning his fate, making bitter lists of the ways in which he was manipulated, but Marcus Dupree won't stoop to that level. He accepts his fate and has no regrets; he's thankful for the life that he has. Marcus Dupree is an American everyman who has nothing to show for his exploits except some bittersweet memories, a roomful of trophies, and the most amazing highlight reel you've ever seen.

'The Best That Never Was': Where have you gone, Marcus Dupree? By ALAN SEPINWALL

A week after arguably the weakest "30 for 30" film yet, we got one of the series' strongest installments with "The Best That Never Was." A few quick thoughts coming up just as soon as I give you my power of attorney...

It's been a while since a "30 for 30" film got a two-hour running time (most had to come in at an hour, and a handful got an hour and a half to two hours), and "The Best That Never Was" absolutely merited the longer slot. Jonathan Hock took a story I knew nothing about (as someone who doesn't follow college football, and was a little kid during Marcus' brief but brilliant Oklahoma career) and told the hell out of it. He got access to virtually all the major players, got tremendous candor from nearly all of them (Barry Switzer in particular, I thought), uncovered tons of great archival footage of Marcus' genius on the field, and covered all the angles. We got Marcus' story itself - which isn't exactly like any other college football story, but has parts in common with so many that it served as a stand-in for a lot of them - but also the story of Philadelphia, MS, and how the despicable villain of one true story (Cecil Price) can be a positive figure in another.

In sports, we talk about tiny fractions all the time as we look up the ladder of success: how only a tiny fraction of star high school athletes will go on to play big-time college ball, and how a tiny fraction of that group will do well in the pros. Marcus Dupree should have been one of those, but one thing after another went wrong. Maybe if he'd committed to Southern Miss to begin with, or if Switzer's staff had recognized that Marcus didn't need to be pushed in practice to be brilliant on game day, he'd have played three or four years in college, and gone on to the NFL. Maybe he'd have been in better shape throughout his pro career. Maybe he wouldn't have suffered that devastating knee injury. Maybe he'd have wound up with a legitimate agent who didn't leave him broke. But he made the decisions he made, others around him made theirs, and he had the life he had. Not a tragedy, exactly - how many get to shine as brightly as he did on the national stage, even if it was only for a season? - but not the triumph everyone expected from him.

Damn good film, and I'm glad after some recent shaky entries one of our closing movies was so terrific. Only one film left in the initial run of the series (Thaddeus D. Matula's "Pony Excess" on Dec. 11), followed by a handful of films next year (including Alex Gibney's delayed Steve Bartman film) that will air under the imprint. Though "30 for 30" has had its ups and downs, for the most part its impact on the sports documentary medium has been really impressive, and I hope ESPN keeps trying to make movies like this one when they have a story worth telling, and a filmmaker who can tell it with the style Dan Klores brought to "Winning Time," or the passion Barry Levinson gave "The Band That Wouldn't Die," or the scope that the Zimablist brothers gave to "The Two Escobars."

What did everybody else think?

The Stories Of Their Time

By Richard Deitsch

The drug baron Pablo Escobar explodes onto the screen six minutes into The Two Escobars. The thrilling documentary from ESPN's 30 for 30 series explores the rise and fall of Colombian soccer during its era of narco-fútbol, the deadly marriage of the country's cocaine cartels and soccer clubs that contributed to the death of Andrés Escobar, a defender for the 1994 Colombian World Cup team (and no relation to Pablo). Pablo arrives in the film as a larger-than-life figure: speeding on his motorcycle through the grounds of Hacienda Napoles, his opulent playground ranch in Puerto Triunfo, in a scene that promises a ride unlike any sports documentary the viewer has ever seen.

In the same year that ESPN broadcast The Decision, the self-aggrandizing shamathon featuring LeBron James, the network also produced some of its finest content since its inception in 1979. ESPN debuted 23 documentaries this year as part of 30 for 30, including arguably the four best documentaries of the series (The Two Escobars, Once Brothers, The Best That Never Was and June 17th, 1994). "We wanted to tell interesting stories that stood on their own," says Connor Schell, an ESPN Films executive producer and one of the men behind 30 for 30. "But we also wanted to tell a larger story collectively of what sports meant to the era, and where sports intersected with the era."

What started as a one-paragraph e-mail from ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons to his bosses three years ago about making documentaries on some of the iconic sports moments of ESPN's history has morphed into a critically praised franchise. The network tapped three groups of filmmakers for the project: those who had made significant sports films (such as Barry Levinson and Ron Shelton); accomplished documentarians with a built-in audience (Alex Gibney, Barbara Kopple, Steve James, Albert Maysles); and fresh voices, including Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, the codirectors of The Two Escobars, and Jonathan Hock, whose The Best That Never Was brilliantly chronicles the life of Oklahoma schoolboy football legend Marcus Dupree. The mix of directors provided a fascinating mélange of subjects and storytelling.

While 30 for 30 had misses (Marion Jones: Press Pause, The House of Steinbrenner and Silly Little Game were all muddled), collectively the series helped legitimize ESPN within the film industry. So impressive was The Two Escobars that it screened as an official selection at the film festivals of Cannes, Los Angeles and Tribeca, and at Amsterdam's documentary festival, the biggest in the world. ESPN executives say they are committed to long-form storytelling and want to be a player in the genre along with HBO Sports. "Documentaries are not medicine," said Schell. "They can be entertaining, interesting, informative, thoughtful and innovative in form."

Carrying on the 30 for 30 ethos, ESPN Films will debut documentaries next year on the University of Michigan basketball's famed Fab Five and on Olympic speedskating champion and celebrated humanitarian Johann Olav Koss.

"I think the main legacy of the 30 for 30 project [will be] the affirmation that there is still meaning to be found in sports, beyond the clatter of sports radio and argument-based talk shows," says Hock. "There's an audience grateful for programming representing a deeper level of thinking and feeling about sports."