THE CANADIAN PRESS
Those with tender ears may want to brace themselves for “The Extra Yard: Inside the 2011 Argos” (premiering Sunday night at 10 p.m. E.T. on TSN). The four, hour-long episodes of the documentary will bring viewers up close and personal with the Toronto Argonauts football club as it prepares for the upcoming CFL season.
With athletes and coaches followed and recorded throughout a tough training camp, and this being the heated, competitive world of professional sports, there’s bound to be the odd F-word that slips out – and we don’t mean “football.”
Hockey fans had their ears singed last winter during HBO Canada’s broadcast of “24/7,” the documentary that examined the day-to-day lives of NHL players on the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals. Mired in a losing streak, Caps’ coach Bruce Boudreau swore a blue streak on that series, making HBO stars such as Tony Soprano sound like Mister Rogers.
Specialty network TSN plans to bleep any profanities, sparing Toronto Argonauts general manager and head coach Jim Barker from coming off as a potty-mouthed wiseguy.
“I probably will get bleeped out a few times,” says Barker. “I don’t swear a lot, but every now and then, and then for effect. Fortunately my family all live in the United States, my grandkids and my kids.”
The CFL’s Coach of the Year in 2010, Barker is credited with turning around the Argos – the oldest professional football team in North America – during his first year with the club as head coach. He has not seen “24/7,” but did watch HBO’s similar pro football documentary “Hard Knocks,” so he pretty much knew what he and the club were getting into.
“Basically, we let them into everything,” he says of the Aquila Productions camera crew. “They sat in when we cut players. They were there for every meeting. They caught things during practice that maybe we’re not always proud of.
“Just imagine waking up in the morning and all day long you have a camera and a microphone on everything you do. That’s pretty much what it was like at training camp.”
The intrusion is a bit jarring, he admits, but he gets why it is happening. “If nobody does it, then I think the league loses,” he says. “I think these kind of things are important for our fans to understand what the guy’s go through.”
He also appreciates that these kinds of up close and intimate sports documentaries are part of the new reality of television. Fans of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” “Big Brother” or “The Bachelor,” he suspects, will want to go “The Extra Yard.”
“I think it will be something that people who aren’t football people will enjoy,” he says. “It’s human drama. It’s watching a young man fight for his livelihood. Basically we bring 80 people to training camp and 53 of them are still here.”
His only request of the filmmakers was that “they wouldn’t embarrass our players or coaches.” With that assurance, the Argos granted TSN full access.
His suggestion to the team was that they forget about the cameras. “I told our players, be yourselves, don’t change anything.”
TSN took their cue on “The Extra Yard” from ESPN’s excellent “30 for 30” series of sports documentaries.
“We’ve shown all of those multiple times and received nothing but incredibly positive feedback from viewers,” says TSN vice president of programming Shawn Redmond. “It got us thinking about doing something that’s a little more Canadian.”
TSN’s broadcast deal with the CFL and “great characters like Coach Barker” made the Argos the team to follow, says Redmond.
The network is starting to make other ventures to bring fans “inside the huddle,” putting live mikes on quarterbacks during pre-season games and other innovations. Redmond sees “The Extra Yard” as a natural extension of that experience.
If the series scores a touchdown with viewers, Redmond says the network will definitely look at opportunities to get “behind the masks and helmets” of other sports.
As for players who are likely to jump out at viewers in “The Extra Yard,” Coach Barker expects offensive tackle Rob Murphy to get a little face time. “He’s a character,” says Barker.
As for his own performance, the coach says, “I’m just hoping when I look at myself, I won’t be saying, `Well, that was a really dumb thing to do.”’