Mad World
NFL Meets The Bold And The Beautiful
By Mark Madden

I almost didn't have time to write this column. I am far too busy watching and re-watching episodes of the greatest show in television history, ESPN's Playmakers.

No, I am not joking.

Exaggerating? Well, maybe a little. But only a little.

Soap operas are largely crap, but have produced great ratings on daytime TV for years. TV doesn't have to be good to keep you watching. It merely has to be episodic. As long as a TV show has ongoing unresolved plot twists, viewers will always overlook things like, say, poor acting, and keep tuning in again and again.

That's what makes The Bold and the Beautiful great, especially when Brooke wears a revealing top. That's what makes pro wrestling great, as long as they don't drag Hulk Hogan's old, crippled butt out there. And that's what makes Playmakers great.

I must admit, the first episode of Playmakers was a bit over the top. It featured D.H., the Cougars' star rookie running back, smoking crack 10 minutes before kickoff. What's he have to do to top the shock value of that, drop a baby from the upper deck?

But I forgot one thing: Playmakers, like any form of fine art, has real life available to imitate.

In Episode III that's how I identify episodes of Playmakers, by the way; I give them Roman numerals like they were Super Bowls - Playmakers revisited the Ray Lewis nightclub murder, Don Beebe slapping the ball out of Leon Lett's hand at the goal line, and Warren Moon beating his wife. All that in one episode!

Yes, Episode III was as memorable as Super Bowl III, the one where Joe Namath changed the football landscape.

Speaking of which, I expect Cougars' quarterback Derek McConnell to guarantee victory over a favored foe in a future Playmakers. By the time this series is done, it's going to copy everything that's ever happened in pro football.

Playmakers isn't afraid to pirate other dramatic depictions of football, either.

In Episode II, D.H. beat a drug test by having clean urine pumped into his bladder in shocking and disgusting fashion. This was IDENTICAL to the way some juiced-up dunceski beat a drug test in The Program, a college football flick starring James Caan, who depicted how Sonny Corleone might have turned out had he coached football and not been shot on the turnpike.

In Playmakers, however, the doctor applied a gel-like local anesthetic to a part of D.H.'s anatomy in a manner that saw D.H. suspect homoeroticism. Hey, why not stir in a little Queer as Folk? It is cable, after all.

Playmakers doesn't ignore the football clichˇs, either. McConnell is addicted to painkillers. Linebacker Eric Olczyk has a fractured relationship with his father, a hard-ass former high school football coach who literally ran his other son (Eric's brother) to death during a practice.

Olczyk is also under the care of a psychiatrist. Hey, they stole from The Sopranos, too! According to his ESPN.com bio, Olczyk played college football at Penn State. No wonder he's nuts. Joe Paterno drove Larry Johnson goofy, too.

My one criticism of Playmakers is this: It's totally devoid of a sense of humor. There's never a reason to laugh, not even for a second. A couple of yuks would make some of the over-the-top stuff a lot more palatable.

NFL players are complaining that Playmakers does not present a realistic portrait of life in pro football. However, over 30 players have called ESPN to ask if they can make cameos on the show. Deion Sanders, who played for the party-hearty Dallas Cowboys back in the day, says the show comes 'pretty close.'

If you like Playmakers, you would love Dream Team, a soap based on day-to-day life with an English Premier League soccer club that airs on Fox Sports World. The series is in its seventh season in the UK, but Fox Sports World just got done showing the second season over here.

The end-of-season cliffhanger went like this: As fictional Harchester United did a lap of honor around London's Wembley Stadium after winning the FA Cup, a sniper took aim at player-manager Luis Amor Rodriguez and fired a shot. Was Luis killed? Just as important, who was the sniper?

I bet it was D.H., and I bet he was high on crack.

Mark Madden hosts a sports talk show 3-7 p.m. weekdays on ESPN Radio 1250.