Source: FREDERIC J. BROWN / Getty
Sterling K. Brown keeps winning. Fresh off season one of Hulu’s Paradise, which has already been renewed for a second season, he’s also still gaining new fans with reruns of NBC’s mega-hit This is Us. With his track record so far, he’s the perfect person to narrate a documentary about the evolution of Black coaches.
Director and Capacity Media founder Tarana Harris Mayes is behind Better Than They Found It: Black Coaches Who Shaped The Modern NFL. The story includes her own father, Chuck Harris, who coached in the league for four decades.
She announced the doc on a panel at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. The Play Gap: Women Behind the Camera in Sports also featured directors Deborah Riley Draper, actress and filmmaker “Shameless” Maya Washington, and two-time Emmy nominee Maeyen Bassey.
The doc is described as follows: “Go inside the high-stakes world of those who dare to lead the game they love to play. Pro football insiders take audiences behind the headlines on their thrilling American adventure in the coaching profession, where your calling is also your job, and the jobs at the pinnacle of sport are few. As with the elite athletes they mentor, teach, and train, opportunity is a linchpin that holds a decades-long career together or unravels dreams, even as they work to make the dreams of others come true.”
Coaches participating in the documentary include former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, the first Black coach to win a Super Bowl in 2007, former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, former New York Jets coach Herm Edwards, former Oakland Raiders coach Art Shell, and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians.
“I am grateful to Sterling K. Brown for championing this project and committing to narrate,” Mayes said.
Aside from his day job as an actor, Brown and his wife, actress Ryan Michelle Bathé, co-host a podcast, We Don’t Always Agree, which just won a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Podcast in the Lifestyle/Self-Help Category.
