ESPN’s award-winning prime time newsmagazine E:60 will chronicle the story of a Ferguson, Mo., high school football team amid the recent events in that city in the episode airing Tuesday, Sept. 9, at 8 p.m. ET.
Sometimes the game is not as simple as you want it to be. Just ask the players on the McCluer South-Berkeley football team. Their high school, their home field, is just three miles from the spot in Ferguson, Mo., where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed on August 9.
Since that day, instead of focusing on the game they love, these young men and their coaches have been forced to deal with a much harsher reality. Their community has been engulfed by racial tensions. Protests have devolved into looting and riots, in the process making their town the center of a media storm.
Yet despite everything they have experienced, they have held on to football. It has become their oasis, even though they were literally locked out of their home field due to safety concerns. Even though their opening home game had to be moved outside of Ferguson. On the one-month anniversary of Brown’s shooting,E:60′s Jeffri Chadiha reports on the journey of the McCluer South-Berkeley Bulldogs. For four weeks they have navigated through chaos, tension and unrest, and now, finally, they return to Ferguson to play their first home game of the season. It hasn’t been simple.
E:60’s ninth season continues the program’s reputation of presenting the biggest names and the best stories in sports with innovative long-form storytelling, enterprise reporting and production technique. Tuesday night’s episode also will include a feature on the touching relationship between Buffalo Bills wide receiver Marquise Goodwin and his younger sister and an in-depth interview with running back LeSean McCoy of the Philadelphia Eagles