Courtesy USA Today

(April 28, 2010) HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg won't talk about the two documentaries he has already "green-lighted" for 2011. Sometimes, he says, "you announce them to alert the competition, and hopefully you'll scare them away. Or you stay low and come out of the bushes."

HBO, which had the TV sports documentary category largely to itself for decades, didn't used to worry much about anybody else. But ESPN, in the midst of a series of 30 documentaries including director Ice Cube's Straight Outta L.A. debuting May 11, is flooding the category. Still, HBO on Monday picked up its third consecutive Sports Emmy for best documentary and, suggests Greenburg, offers a singular tack: "We know we're emotionally attacking the viewer. … And they know where they're watching these films. It's like walking into a gallery and seeing a David as opposed to something I chipped out when I was 10."

But HBO's Broad Street Bullies, about the famously pugnacious 1970s Philadelphia Flyers and debuting next Tuesday, would seem to have little in common with Michelangelo's sculpture. Bill Clement, one of those bullies and now a Versus analyst, recalls: "We were just ultimate fighters without the cage around us."

Greenburg says HBO only once faced a "dueling documentary," when NBC and HBO had films on the racehorse Barbaro in 2007. But HBO worried last year's buzz over the 30th anniversary of the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird NCAA title game might leave viewers not wanting more when HBO last month debuted its film on the pair. But HBO got Bird to open up in an interview and, says Greenburg, the arc of the pair's story was solid. "It was a battle that ended up as a love story," he says.

Greenburg says he's constantly looking to turn documentary ideas into movies with actors. He couldn't get any takers for one on the U.S. women's 1999 World Cup soccer team. But after HBO's documentary on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, he was executive producer on Disney's Miracle movie. In December, HBO debuts a Vince Lombardi documentary while Disney, separately, plans a Lombardi theatrical film in 2012. Says Greenburg: "Movies are the toughest part of this game. Lack of international revenue makes Hollywood skittish about sports movies."

But Greenburg insists he's not skittish about the new competition from ESPN: "They'll do what they'll do. We're always going to feel like we own this category."

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