"Swamp Kings" was bad -- and it's reflective of a larger, disheartening trend

Netflix's new four-part project on Urban Meyer's Florida Gators is, like many newer sports documentaries, a glossy piece of PR that's not interesting, compelling or revelatory

About three minutes into the first episode of “Swamp Kings”, Netflix’s four-part series on Florida football in the mid-to-late 2000s, former Gators coach Urban Meyer turns to the crew behind the rolling cameras and offers up a one-liner meant to excite the viewer for what awaits.

“This is going to be un-fucking-believable,” he said.

Sadly, what followed that proclamation was all-too-believable.

When it was revealed that Netflix’s “Untold” series was working on a project on Florida football under Meyer, those who follow college football were instantly intrigued. Those Gators squads hold a place in the national sporting consciousness not solely because of what they accomplished on the field – with two national championships in a four-year stretch – but, primarily, because of what some of their best players did off the field.

But when a trailer for the series dropped and Meyer (who, just in case it needs to be said, is not related to me) was shown sitting down for an interview, whatever hopes and expectations had built for it vanished. Any discerning viewer knew in that moment who this documentary was for – and it wasn’t for them.

It’s reflective of a larger trend in the sports documentary sphere. The genre has swelled in recent years as streaming services work tirelessly to stockpile inventory to appeal to as wide and varied of an audience as possible, which, as you might guess, includes sports fans. The renewed interest in kicking off an assembly line of films on high-interest sports subjects isn’t particularly new – ESPN’s 30 for 30 series debuted almost 15 years ago – but it has accelerated in recent years.

The results of it have been varied, though increasingly tilting in a less-than-ideal direction. Important, high-quality work like Athlete A has been birthed by this movement, but from a sheer numbers standpoint, it has too often been drowned out by shallower endeavors.

Look no further than two recent installments from “Untold” that focused on high-profile stories and figures from college football.

To its credit, “Johnny Football,” which documented Johnny Manziel’s meteoric and booze-filled rise at Texas A&M, was at least entertaining. Manziel’s perspective on his career and some of his later shortcomings was valuable. The footage of him jet-setting, partying and offering up a perpetual middle finger to the NCAA in the summer after his Heisman-winning season was fun to watch and re-live. It even provided some revelations, namely that the story of his family being extraordinarily wealthy because of oil money was contrived by his childhood friend/manager “Uncle Nate” to explain how an unpaid amateur athlete was able to fly on private planes, party with celebrities and sit courtside at NBA games.

Of course, it also had its share of holes. The domestic violence charge leveled against him by his former girlfriend Colleen Crowley was mentioned only in passing. Not nearly enough time was spent on his disastrous, short-lived career with the Cleveland Browns. The documentary failed to expand much on Manziel’s attempted suicide following his release from the Browns in 2016, when he blew through $5 million and tried to shoot himself only for the gun to malfunction. It might be the rare modern sports documentary that was too short.

The same can’t be said for “Swamp Kings.” The four-part series clocked in at 182 minutes, which makes it seven minutes longer than “The Godfather,” a cinematic masterpiece that actually delves into the criminality of some of its primary subjects. Only about five minutes of that time was spent on the lengthy arrest records compiled by some of Florida’s most prominent players during Meyer’s tenure – and nearly one-third of that time was spent on wide receiver Brandon James, who, along with a teammate, was busted for buying $20 worth of weed.

By spending only a small fraction on its bloated runtime on player malfeasance and some of the drama tied to the coach overseeing it all, the documentary failed to explore in-depth, or in some cases even mention:

• Virtually anything about Aaron Hernandez, the since-deceased star tight end who was later found guilty of first-degree murder. In fairness, Hernandez’s misdeeds have been chronicled extensively, including productions by Netflix, but his time at Florida is very much a part of his downward spiral. In 2007, he was accused of punching a bouncer at a popular Gainesville bar, which “Swamp Kings” touched on, and later that year, he was one of four Gator football players questioned in connection with a local shooting. Hernandez, then only 17, fit the description of the man who fired five shots into a car, wounding both passengers.

• Star defensive end Carlos Dunlap getting charged with a DUI four days before the SEC championship game in 2009, which Florida lost to Alabama.

• Percy Harvin reportedly grabbing wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales by his neck and throwing him to the ground. Harvin, the Gators’ most talented and important player outside of Tim Tebow, wasn’t among those interviewed for the documentary and, more unforgivably, was hardly talked about at all.

• Running back Chris Rainey being charged with felony stalking, which included texting a woman “Time to Die Bitch.” Unlike Harvin, Rainey is actually interviewed for “Swamp Kings,” which makes that exclusion even more baffling.

• A 911 call placed by Meyer’s wife, Shelley, the morning after the SEC championship loss to Alabama, when Meyer fell trying to get out of bed, experienced chest pains and would not wake up. That medical scare led to Meyer’s brief retirement after the 2009 season.

• Cam Newton stealing a laptop and being tied to three instances of academic cheating, which led to his decision to leave Florida after the 2008 season.

• Huntley Johnson, a local lawyer who served as the program’s fixer.

• Anything at all about twin brothers Mike and Maurkice Pouncey.

These aren’t marginal players, either. These are athletes and coaches whose contributions were central to the Gators winning national championships in 2006 and 2008. Nor was it an insignificant number of athletes implicated. When added up, 41 members of Florida’s 2008 national championship team had been arrested at some point. Instead, less time is dedicated to them than Tebow’s “I Promise” press conference, a word salad of trite declarations that’s somehow less captivating than whatever ChatGPT would spit out if it had been fed a library’s worth of motivational speeches from bad sports movies.

Amazingly, these omissions appear to have been deliberate editorial decisions.

“There had been a lot of negative press about the team, and obviously not all of it would ring true with the players themselves,” “Swamp Kings” director Katharine English said to The Athletic. “And they didn’t really want, and nor did we, a rehashing of previous stories.”

Instead of rehashing a more compelling story, English rehashed a more conventional, well-known and, unless you’re a Florida fan, boring one. When stripped down, the Gators’ run from 2005 to 2009 isn’t particularly engrossing. The flagship school in the most talent-rich state in the country that won a national title nine years earlier hired a wildly successful coach who led them back to championship excellence.

If new information came to light, limiting the documentary’s scope to football would have been more understandable, but it doesn’t even offer that. On their way to titles, the Gators follow a familiar, well-worn path – a new coach comes in, implements his philosophy and regimen, the players train rigorously, the program brings in key recruits and, voila, they win. It’s a tale that could be told about Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Ohio State, Auburn, Clemson or any other title-winner from the past quarter-century that didn’t have nearly the same gripping narrative that Florida did.

Admittedly, at least some of this disappointment comes down to how the documentary was billed and advertised. The Gators’ off-field troubles are featured prominently in the trailer. Even the title itself, “Swamp Kings”, seems to insinuate something more nefarious than a by-the-numbers portrayal of a champion. If this were an SEC Network production titled something like “Urban Renewal,” the reception to it wouldn’t be nearly as negative as it has been. But when you put it on the largest streaming service in the world under the umbrella of a series evocatively dubbed “Untold,” it becomes fair to wonder why this film was made and who, exactly, it was for.

The participation of Meyer in the documentary was an early sign that it wouldn’t be the honest account of the Gators of that many outside of Florida would have hoped for. With these projects, there’s a conscious choice that’s made. In exchange for footage and an agreement to an interview, filmmakers give up at least some of their skepticism. Why would Meyer ever sit down for a full, honest appraisal of what he oversaw and how that reflects his own shortcomings as a man and coach? There’s no reason for him to do so, particularly since the sight of people like him and Tebow sitting down in a chair in front of the lights and camera is enough to entice many to watch the documentary over an overwhelming number of options elsewhere on the platform.

There’s another, more honest way this project could have been approached. Instead of relying on the commentary of Meyer, Tebow, Brandon Spikes and others as a crutch, along with the locker room footage that was shown throughout the film, interviews with Florida students, Gainesville residents, professors, journalists, local business owners and police detectives could have been more insightful about the Gators’ off-field transgressions and the outsized role football’s popularity plays in allowing that permissive culture to foment. But that might have gotten close to a greater truth the film’s creators seemingly had no interest in finding.

When assigning blame for how sports documentaries have morphed into self-interested vanity projects about a given athlete or team, “The Last Dance,” ESPN’s 2020 series on Michael Jordan and his final season with the Chicago Bulls, is an easy culprit. It makes sense. The central figure has some measure of control in the editorial process in these films, even if they’re not tied directly to its production or offered inducements like final cut. We know some of these are fundamentally glossy puff pieces, but if it’s an athlete we care enough about, we shove those better senses to the side and enjoy immersing ourselves in that mythology.

But the success of “The Last Dance” provided too many influential people with the wrong lessons. Instead of viewing it as Jordan being a singular cultural figure who still has an extraordinary hold on us nearly 20 years after his final game – and how much stronger that grip got when we were all stuck in our homes in the spring of 2020 – power-brokers at networks and streaming services have taken it as a sign that we need similar, multi-part series on athletically-excellent-but-deliberately-boring figures like Derek Jeter, Tom Brady and Steph Curry. For the greatest basketball player of all-time – and arguably the most recognizable figure in the history of American sports – that trade of journalistic comprehensiveness for access is justifiable. But is the sports entertainment industry really about to do that for the likes of Meyer? If so, it’s a damning indictment of where things are and where they’re headed.

Bryan Curtis of The Ringer recently made an excellent point and raised a crucial distinction about many of these retellings of notable teams and athletes. It’s best not to think of them as documentaries, but memoirs. 

Like a printed memoir, there’s selective vulnerability to be found within them that can be used to deflect criticisms of it being a hagiography. But even then, that transparency serves a purpose for the subject. Footage of practices and workouts that shows unorthodox, and perhaps dubious, tactics Meyer used to push his players is framed as a necessary ingredient for success, a method to his madness. In that way, Meyer was like Jordan in “The Last Dance.” Sure, I was a bit of an asshole, he’ll reason, but it unlocked greatness within my team that it otherwise wouldn’t have reached.

That level of self-reflection is better than nothing, I suppose, but it’s a depressingly low bar. 

If access is all it takes to celebrate Meyer’s compromised football machine rather than make him slightly uncomfortable when trying to reckon with what he built in Gainesville two decades ago, then undertakings like “Swamp Kings” aren’t terribly dissimilar to the hundreds of low-budget and low-brow offerings you quickly skip over on Netflix when trying to find something to mindlessly watch on a Tuesday night.

Increasingly, these aren’t documentaries or even memoirs. They’re just content.

(Photos: Netflix, AP)