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If ESPN’s venture into “Hard Knocks” territory lives up to expectations, we’ll be able to glimpse Tua Tagovailoa’s bid to secure the starting quarterback job at No. 1 Alabama next month from 4,315 miles away.
“Hard Knocks” is HBO’s highly acclaimed, soon-to-be-18-year-old inside look at the NFL — one team, one revealing week at a time. ESPN announced on Monday its college version, a weekly, four-part series — “Training Days: Rolling with the Tide” — to debut Aug. 9 on ESPN2.
Hour-long episodes are scheduled Aug. 9, 15, 22 and 29 leading up to the Sept. 1 season opener with Louisville, the network said.
The “all access” series, ESPN trumpeted, will “follow positional battles that emerge during training camp as players make their case for playing time, including at key positions.”
And, as the national championship game victory over Georgia six months ago demonstrated, there is no position more “key” — or being more closely watched nationally — than the one for the starting quarterback job being waged by Tagovailoa, a Saint Louis School graduate, and Jalen Hurts.
ESPN promises, “Head coach Nick Saban and a variety of personalities around the program will be mic’d up during practices throughout the month.” Moreover, ESPN pledges a look “inside team and coaches’ meetings, providing a glimpse of the program’s preparation beyond the practice field.”
How much “all access” there really will be remains to be seen, of course. Alabama in particular and SEC teams in general are known for keeping a hermetically sealed lid on things when it comes to inner workings and outsiders. So, whatever ends up on the screen will likely still be plenty more than all but true insiders get to see.
It is an interesting gambit by ESPN, which has done some close-up looks at teams, including Alabama, before, but not as comprehensively as this one purports.
“Alabama football is one of the premier programs in all of sports,” said ESPN Vice President of Production Lee Fitting. “The intrigue behind their championship-filled decade and the fans’ appetite for unique access continues to escalate. This series will provide a unique perspective of the Crimson Tide as they build upon a foundation for what they hope is another championship campaign.”
It makes a lot of sense on several levels, including the fact that the Crimson Tide’s first three games — Louisville, Arkansas State and Ole Miss — will all be shown across the ESPN and ABC platforms of parent company Disney.
And showing off some top-of-the-food chain facilities (I mean, a new, $15 million dining hall appointed with 50 flat-screen TVs?) to impressionable potential future recruits doesn’t hurt the Crimson Tide, either.
The importance of who emerges as Alabama’s starting quarterback has been underlined in recent months in statements by Tagovailoa, the hero of the overtime national championship victory, and Averion Hurts, the father of Jalen Hurts, the two-year starter with a 26-2 record.
Tagovailoa, in a return home in April, said he had contemplated transferring from Alabama if he didn’t see action in the championship game after being used in mostly mop-up roles during the regular season.
Averion Hurts, a high school coach, told Bleacher Report this spring, “Coach Saban’s job is to do what’s best for his team. I have no problem with that. My job is to do what’s best for Jalen — and make no mistake, Jalen is a quarterback, and he wants to play quarterback. He loves Alabama, loves Coach Saban and everything about that place. But he wants to play, and he will play. …Well, he’d be the biggest free agent in college football history.”
New NCAA-massaged redshirt rules could come into play, with players allowed to appear in up to four games before losing a redshirt opportunity.
The much-anticipated showdown for the job didn’t quite materialize in the spring, with Tagovailoa suffering a broken bone in his throwing hand that sidelined him for a while. Hurts’ inconsistency kept him from putting distance between them.
So, the winner of the quarterback sweepstakes, as Saban put it last week at SEC Media Days, is, “still to be determined.”
And viewers, not to mention ESPN, figure to love that.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
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