No, media mogul Tyler Perry did not buy BET. Contrary to reports, Perry has a 25 percent stake in the company which he acquired in 2019 through a production deal with Paramount. BET is a media network under the Paramount Global conglomerate. But if Perry does acquire majority shareholder percentage of BET at some point in the future, there are some sports properties we would like to see.
Negro Leagues Baseball TV Series
Yes, HBO made “Soul of the Game” in 1996. It was directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan and starred Blair Underwood and Delroy Lindo. It was a fine television movie, but budgets for TV properties have gone up exponentially since 1996.
Imagine a five season episodic series that dives into the characters of Frank Leland and Rube Foster. With a hefty budget BET could really tell the story of the “Golden Age” from 1920-1927 and its ultimate demise in 1932.
On the field, the brilliance of the Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson pitcher/catcher tandem. The role of number runner Gus Greenlee and other unscrupulous characters in the league’s success and downfall. All set against the backdrop of a country in between World War I and II, changing economic conditions, and stirring with racism.
That would be a compelling series.
But They Can’t Beat Us: Oscar Robertson and the Crispus Attucks Tigers
“Hoosiers” has long been seen by certain people as the greatest basketball movie ever made. Let’s just say we disagree, and leave it there.
The movie opens with the Tigers’ semifinal loss in the 1954 IHSAA Men’s Basketball Championship to eventual champions Milan High. The latter were the “heroes” of the aforementioned “Hoosiers.”
The story picks up next season when the Tigers, led by junior Oscar Robertson dominated the opposition, going 31–1, and winning the 1955 state championship, the first for any all-black school in the nation. The first state championship won by an Indianapolis team in the Hoosier tournament. In 1956, the team went undefeated with a 31–0 record and won a second straight IHSAA Men’s Basketball Championship, becoming the first team in Indiana to secure a perfect season and compiling a state-record 45 straight victories.
Of course Robertson would go on to star in college at Cincinnati and eventually the NBA, becoming one of the greatest players of all time.
The Rich Paul Biopic
This one is cheating a bit, as it is rumored to already be in the works with “Snowfall” actor Damson Idris set to play Paul.
“I am about to play Rich Paul,” Idris said on “The Breakfast Club” last year. “It is time we start cherishing black moguls, and Rich is someone people need to know. This guy has completely changed the game, and I am happy and fortunate to call him a big brother… I can’t wait to honor his story.”
Paul is the founder and CEO of KLUTCH Sports Group, a sports talent management agency with some of the most recognizable names in professional sports on its roster.
His rise to being the founder and head of a top 10 global sports agency is compelling when you consider he spent the early years of his life sleeping on floors and couches. He was running the streets as his mother dealt with the challenges of drug addiction. Paul does not have a college degree and is not a lawyer. Yet he sits across the table from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and gets deals done.
We haven’t heard much about the biopic since Idris mentioned it in 2022. Projects get started and shelved all the time in Hollywood for a variety of reasons. But if we could get the real story with all the truths behind his upbringing and how he became friends with LeBron James and began his empire, that would be a story worth telling.
