E-Mailing It In

Each week, Dan Rubenstein, Ty Hildenbrandt and Jacob Osterhout will jump on e-mail and riff about various subjects in the news offered up by SI.com's Jimmy Traina

Traina: ESPN is producing a documentary on Steve Bartman. If you could have a sports documentary made about an under-the-radar figure in sports history, a la Bartman, who would it be?

Rubenstein: I've always wanted to see a good documentary done about Sam Gilbert, a UCLA basketball booster during the 1960s whose close relationship with Bruins players precisely parallels the team's overwhelmingly dominant seasons. Some are quick to accuse Gilbert of paying players/recruits, but nothing concrete has ever come out. I'm all about great booster stories, and I feel like this is the great untold story of the best college basketball run in the history of the game.

Osterhout: Being from D.C., I'd love to see a documentary on Robin Ficker, the heckler who used to sit behind the opposing team's bench at USAir Arena but was "relocated" when the Wizards moved to the Verizon Center. In a very Ficker-esque move, he publicly gave up his tickets in response to his relocation. The guy is a weird combination of stand-up citizen (he went to the U.S. Military Academy and is a lawyer) and lunatic political activist. He is currently petitioning Montgomery County in Maryland to reinstate his son's roadside fruit stand. I'm telling you, this documentary has potential.

Rubenstein: I would watch this. Immediately. How many NBA championships have the Bullets/Wizards won since they moved Ficker? Some may say there's a "Ficker Curse" at work here. How many knees has Gilbert Arenas blown out? Another underrated thing about Ficker (as I have just learned myself) is how many times his name was involuntarily mistyped as an expletive due to standard keyboard layout. Always funny.

Hildenbrandt: Without a doubt, I'd love to see a documentary on the shadowy figures involved in the conspiracy to bust up Nancy Kerrigan. There were three idiots involved after Tonya Harding gave the operation a green light: her husband, her bodyguard and a hitman who actually did the dirty work. The reenactment of the planning process would be comedic gold. I'm envisioning a dimly lit basement where one guy is smoking cigars and blowing rings of smoke; another man is searching a dark corner for a last piece of pizza; and another guy is drawing up the master plan with a crayon on a napkin. Just that scene alone would be TiVo-worthy. It'd have the sinister aura of a mafia movie combined with the jolly giggles you get from reading about a bank robber foiled by exploding money bags.

Rubenstein: On another note, I'd love to see a follow-up on where Edwina "Eddie" Franklin ended up after she improbably rose from limo driver to the head coach of the Knicks. Hands down, Eddie is one of the most riveting documentaries ever produced.

Osterhout: Agreed, Eddie was a classic, mostly because of Mark Jackson's role as the preacher, but also because Whoopi Goldberg could do what Isiah Thomas couldn't.

Rubenstein: To be fair, though, a focused eighth-grader with a working calculator and knowledge of the NBA salary cap could do what Isiah couldn't.

Traina: Florida's Urban Meyer just got a raise, to $4 million a year. Do you have a problem with a college coach making that much while the players get nothing?