The Legend of Jimmy the Greek: A Great Story, Well Told

I loved Jimmy the Greek. I was 4 or 5 when I became obsessed with football and saw in Jimmy the Greek -- whom I watched each Sunday on The NFL Today -- a fellow obsessive. I was 11 when he was fired in 1988 after a bizarre, rambling television interview in which he assuredly explained that "The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way."

ESPN's new documentary, The Legend of Jimmy the Greek, doesn't dwell on those infamous comments. Instead, the documentary, which debuts Tuesday, offers a full picture of the man, for better or for worse.

The documentary tells us how Jimmy -- who was born Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1919 -- became a gambling success story, picking underdogs, making money, and always being sure to let everyone know just how much big a winner he was. It was a stroke of genius for CBS to hire him to pick football games, even though it was also a controversial decision, as not everyone was ready to come home from church on Sunday morning and hear a gambler -- a gambler once convicted on a felony gambling charge -- offer his picks on the day's games.

The Legend of Jimmy the Greek is at its best when it simply reflects on that great NFL Today pregame show. All three of Jimmy's co-hosts -- Brent Musberger, Irv Cross and Phyllis George -- gave interviews for the documentary, and all three seem to have some affection for him, even as they recall him as a man who so alienated his co-workers that they eventually had to tape his segments separately.

Where the documentary goes wrong is in hiring an actor to narrate the piece as if it's being narrated by Jimmy himself. The intent of the narration is to make us feel like Jimmy himself is a part of the film, but the effect is the exact opposite: We're all too aware that we're hearing someone trying to mimic The Greek's famous voice, and it takes us out of the story.

Fortunately, that misstep isn't enough to sink the film. When we're not hearing the actor's voice, we're hearing from Jimmy's family, friends, colleagues, and many clips of Jimmy himself. We see, of course, that painful moment when he made a fool of himself and got fired for it, but we see much more than that. We see a full picture of a self-made man who achieved huge success and threw it all away. The story of Jimmy the Greek is a great one, and in The Legend of Jimmy the Greek, it's well told.