Fate of a Sport: Review and Reactions

Before “reviewing” Fate of a Sport, I think it makes sense to give a little bit of context to my point of view. My background is relevant because it both establishes me as at least somewhat credible in the space, and also helps other lacrosse fans see things through my lens.

I started taking lacrosse “media” a bit more seriously around seven years ago. I tend to leave media in quotes when talking about myself because I am something of a man without a country. I try to offer the reality of what I see happening in the lacrosse world. Good, bad, indifferent. To me, independent coverage of sport is what makes a person a media member. If you say something is good all the time, even when it might not be good, then it’s tough to take you seriously, or to earn the respect of the people you’re trying to cover. If you try and cover it all, good and bad, then you’ll make fewer friends, but you’ll be respected by the people you’re trying to cover and your voice will be appreciated. That’s what I try to be.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to cover some games for Inside Lacrosse, and College Crosse gave me a weekly space to write about the sport I love. We’re going extremely quickly here, but in the interest of saving space, those opportunities along with my own network from my lacrosse days and a whole lot of work on my own time allowed me to meet and connect with incredible players, coaches, other media members, and at the time folks around the MLL.

I’ve always been a lover of lacrosse. I went to my first pro games when the MLL launched and put a team in Bridgeport. While that team was only in town for a few years, I went to games with my dad and had fun doing it. I followed the league, some seasons more closely than others, every summer. The Barrage would move to Philadelphia, I continued to loosely follow the MLL, and had a great appreciation for those who spent time trying to cover the pro level of the sport I loved. Around the same time I started taking my lacrosse “media” career more seriously, the PLL came to be. It all just sort of fit.

Turning to the doc itself. This is a movie about trying to build a business both as an employee and an owner. That’s the core of it. Lacrosse is in there, and there will be no shortage of ire directed at the MLL or other “haters” of the PLL as the film gets more viewership, but that should all be in the periphery. Deep down, when you strip out all the media deals, sports business jargon, and interviews with people like Jeffrey Wright, Joe Tsai and Adam Silver, this is just a movie about building something. What makes it compelling and entertaining is, as with any story, the overcoming of the obstacles along the way and dedication to the thing they were building. Paul Rabil has to manage to be a league executive and a great athlete at the same time. This thing being built happens to be the PLL, about which I’m particularly passionate, so my interest is heightened more than the non-lacrosse fan’s. That said, even for someone who heard of the PLL for the first time this morning and watches Fate of a Sport tonight, it will resonate because it tells that story very well, even if the story isn’t finished. It’s watching a league grow from nothing, while the person who serves at the face of it struggles with the best way to serve the league as an executive and as a player.

The first act breaks down the initial days of the MLL, its journey into the fringes as the late 2000s arrived, and then Paul Rabil’s career. The struggles faced by players through those years are well documented. The story of Ryan Flanagan being fined post game for tweeting that the team meal was, once again, pizza and Bud Light with no showers available is a story that’s well known to lacrosse fans, and a pretty solid encapsulation of what players had grown to dislike so strongly about the MLL. They weren’t treated all that well, the leadership seemed out of touch, the marketing was borderline non-existent, and depending on a where a player lived, compensation was bad enough that it might actually cost money to play. The film points out that most players have a full-time job and lacrosse is more of their side job. Rabil talks about getting ready for games and warming up in parking lots, buying ice from a CVS on his way home to deal with injuries that don’t get proper treatment, and other tribulations of being a player in a league that looked to be content just sort of existing. They also point to the poor TV deal the MLL had, which for a long time was a slate of streamed games on LSN, or basically an entire season paywalled on ESPN+. It was some of these games that launched the “lacrosse streams are always bad” jokes and a million punchlines on social media whenever a lacrosse stream so much as hiccups.

Both MLL commissioner Sandy Brown and Bayhawks owner Brendan Kelly appear in the doc, offering the perspective you’d expect. That it was wrong for Rabil to be starting another league, and to be trying to pull players from the MLL to his new league, while under contract with the MLL. You can imagine that to this day there is no love lost there. Legal action is threatened, although nothing comes of it. At the time, publicly, there was a lot of saying the right things. Brown would say that a rising tide lifts all boats, and if the PLL forced adaptation and improvement from the MLL, that it’s great for the sport. Both leagues would say they had the best players in the world, and both probably had a claim to it, with Rabil in the PLL and Lyle Thompson and Rob Pannell remaining in the MLL. This wasn’t really captured in the film, and I wish it had been, both to bolster the point of view of the PLL and to further explore the jockeying for position that was going on.

The split with MLL would cost Rabil his sponsorship deal with New Balance, which he says resulted in him losing around a million dollars. Not long after that, prior to the opening season, Rabil and his brother Mike get an offer from an MLL owner to purchase the PLL, setting the price at $35 million. Had they said yes, Mike and Paul would have made $6 million each. The Rabils turn this down, leaving more millions on the table. Mind you the thing that they were just offered $35 million for was a league that really hadn’t played a game yet. This moment was the first time that any viewer, not just a lacrosse fan who knows many of the parties involved, gets to see what this means to Rabil. Even as the first act of the film does explains what the professional environment of the lacrosse world is, it’s challenging to make it accessible to a new fan or someone not familiar with the history. Lacrosse might be tough to get your head around, but someone leaving a million dollars on the table to build something of their own isn’t. The weight of that is accessible to anyone. He and Mike leaving multimillions on the table, basically in the blink of an eye because they don’t even consider selling this thing they’re building, speaks to their belief in the product.

Shortly after that, you see Paul throw on his Atlas jersey, pull his helmet on, and take the field for his first PLL game. The film is so much about business owner Paul Rabil to that point. He’d been doing media, pitching to TV execs and investors, gathering the players, and all these other off field tasks as a league owner. There’s a “holy shit, I forgot he has to play in this thing too” thought that goes through your head as you start to put together just how tall a mountain he’s trying to summit. He doesn’t just have to play, he has to be the best player, the best seller of tickets, the best seller of merch, the best with the fans, the best of everything.

The second act really begins with a handful of moments that took me aback a little. The first was after the Atlas first game against Redwoods, once the final whistle blows, Rabil confronts Matt Landis for “pointing at him” and “staring him down”. Landis seems surprised by it. I was too. I don’t remember this incident being a major deal at all that season. Pointing it out on film felt a bit manufactured to play into a “Rabil is on an island as the president of the league” narrative. I’m sure there were moments that played into this storyline, but the one in the film just didn’t resonate with me. There are some other moments in the film that feel forced as well, as if they were storyboarded beforehand so they could be captured just so. Telling this story didn’t require that, it was clear enough what Rabil was dealing with.

It’s also pointed out, particularly during the bubble season in 2020, that there was a lot of “talking shit on social” when it came to Rabil. Comments are shown making fun of his shorts (famously short in the bubble year) and the fact that was having a very poor year on the field. Some of it seems fair to take issue with as just shit talk, like the shorts thing. Although to be fair, I did speak to players that season who couldn’t figure out why this one player got his own pair of small shorts for the summer that no one else had. Secondly, and maybe this is just me philosophically, but just saying what’s happening isn’t necessarily shit talking to me. Rabil was awful that summer, no other way to call it. It was his worst season as a pro. Showing comments on social saying he’s awful and calling it shit talking just doesn’t strike a chord with me. He was bad that summer, people said he was bad. Seems pretty fair. But if you want to call out more personal comments or things that have nothing to do with performance as shit talking, I get it.

It culminates with him being traded to Cannons when the season ends. The phone call on which Ben Rubeor tells him he’s being traded is shown. After it ends, Rabil is told “he just never valued you”, which from what I’ve seen didn’t feel fair to Rubeor. The Atlas gave it a go with that roster for two years, Rubeor as head coach for one of them, and there were clear locker room issues that the film captures will. Rabil was in the lineup every week, on the top line every week, a part of the gameplan every week. That’s someone who’s valued. Ultimately, I don’t think the decision to trade him was a question of valuing Paul Rabil, it was a question of changing the course of a franchise. That’s pro sports handling Paul Rabil the player, but not Paul Rabil the executive. I think pivoting from that moment to him sort of refocusing when he joined the Cannons and got to play with Lyle was a better way to approach it, which they ultimately did.

Again, this is part of what this film is about. Building a league. Within that, separating Paul, the league builder, from Paul, the all-time great player, is really, really hard. For anyone. Especially Paul. The emotions of balancing the roles eats away at him over the course of the film, and you can see it growing as the PLL goes from year to year. The league is growing and expanding, but you’re being traded off of your worst year ever. That’s the stuff that is really compelling in the film. Those moments in the bubble took that up a notch from year one.

The film also explores the success of that bubble season in comparison to the MLL bubble. That summer there were a lot of eyes on the two leagues, wondering how this would all play out. The Rabils point out that the PLL bubble had no outbreaks or issues at all with COVID-19. Meanwhile the MLL had outbreaks, teams leaving early as a result, and a bubble set up that seemed destined to breach from the get go. On top of that, both teams dealt with a player base and league that was trying to figure out how to navigate the social justice movements of that summer. MLL had public issues with it, as stories came out of league owners and executives choosing not to show demonstrations from the league’s black players, ultimately leading to confrontation between their commissioner and players in the league.

While PLL kept their issues mostly internal, it’s clear that locker rooms struggled. The league stance was to put a BLM patch on every player’s jersey, and they were vocal in their support of the BLM movement and fighting racial injustice. As the bubble opens, Rabil says he’s heard of issues of “players and staff bad mouthing the league” and “pulling patches off their jerseys.” Rabil arrives at the bubble and is speaking with Michael Ehrhardt, known to be well respected and a leader among the players not just on the Whipsnakes but across the league as a whole. Ehrhardt tells Rabil he’s “managing the team’s response”, which is a diplomatic way of saying, “there are guys around the league who don’t like being forced to do something and we’re working together to figure this out.” While I have not seen the cut of the film that aired at the TriBeCa Film Festival, reportedly this segment more specifically calls out the Whipsnakes than in the ESPN+ release.

There is audible frustration from Rabil. It’s a moment that further separates Rabil the player, who needs to share a locker room and, in this case, an entire bubble environment, with players that have different views than his, and Rabil the league executive, who made a decision about how the league would handle this and has to be extremely concerned with the league’s perception during that time. The politics, anger, and emotions of that summer aside, it’s the moment in year two that, like the first game of year one, takes the pressures of trying to be excellent in two roles at the same time, and magnifies it.

The films third act begins before year three starts, andit becomes more clear how the balance of league executive and player is impossible to navigate. The league is growing, but Rabil’s on field play is suffering as he spends all his time pushing for league success. If he spent more time focusing as a player and less as an executive, his play likely improves, but the league growth likely slows. The viewer gets the sense that a choice between the two is coming.

As year three starts, Rabil begins by talking about trying to get his mind right for a new year, but struggling because of his obligations as a league executive. A Lyle Thompson voiceover begins that’s discusses the importance of being mindful, focused, and the ability experience joy in the moment. Listening to it offers the experience of listening to Thompson speak to Rabil rather than the camera. Rabil finding that focus as a player in year three allows him to have success with the Cannons, but the film continues to show just how much is happening for him off the field. His body is breaking down. He needs to keep building the league, and the ups and downs of the game can’t impact that. It’s a relationship between sport and business that has become unmanageable. If you are losing it on the field, you need to forget it because it’s time to expand the league. If you are crushing it on the field, you need to not enjoy it and leave it out there because it’s time to negotiate a new media rights deal. If this situation ever stops, it means the league isn’t growing. After year three, Rabil retires, although you can tell just from looking at him that he isn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. There’s even a moment in the closing where, after a knee surgery, Rabil jokes about returning in 2023. But it really doesn’t look like a joke.

There are two moments I found myself looking back at in my own time trying to cover the PLL after watching Fate of a Sport. First, way back before the league launched, I had heard these rumors of a new league starting. Paul Rabil was in on it, along with all sorts of stars, a new pro league. Confirming it was true took a number of conversations that weren’t easy to arrange, because it was all so tight lipped. Ultimately, when I found it to be true, I wasn’t sure what to think. I connected with Rabil, and arranged for another conversation and an interview upon the league launch.

I remember asking Rabil if he considered the possibility that if this league didn’t work, he’d be killing pro lacrosse. From the looks of it, PLL was taking aim at being the only pro league in the summer, and if launching it ended the MLL, and then PLL failed, that’s it. Nobody would put up the money to take another chance on lacrosse if two leagues failed. I still remember hearing him answer the question over the phone with a yes, he’d thought about that, but he spoke with remarkable certainty that this wouldn’t happen. I didn’t know as much then about their funding, how far along they were on the media deal, but I’m able to place the conversation in time when I watch the film. It’s a level of confidence and trust in partners that comes through as you watch. There was a clear vision, and reaching it was going to happen. It was intense, sincere certainty that this thing was going to be built, and this goal achieved. Rabil points out that in the film that his brother Mike is fueled by doubt. I heard none from Paul. Most of us have something in our lives we want to change for the better. We want to be healthier, we want a better job, we want stronger relationships with friends and loved ones. Changing things about ourselves just in those pursuits, that boil down to improving our own life experience, is difficult. Imagine having the conviction to want to better something in your life, but you’re not just changing careers, you’re launching a reimagined version of a pro sports league.

The second was after Rabil’s last game. I tweeted that retirement shouldn’t be an option for him. I was sold on him having another year in the tank after 2021. He could still separate from defenders; he had an all-pro season playing for the Cannons and with Lyle Thompson. He had just hit a split dodge coming out of the box to blow by his man and step into a two point goal. If you can still do that, you can still play in the PLL. But what the film showed is just how little his playing ability had to do with that retirement decision. His body was battered, and it was clear that it was time to focus again, on this thing that the film was all about. Building. After that last game in 2021, building the mythology of Paul Rabil the player felt over. It clearly was time to do just one job.

I would have liked to see a stronger nod to the future, in terms of the work to be done. The film has a positive send off, but it’s not like the challenges laid out in the opening have been solved. The media deal bemoaned early in the film, where the MLL had a few games on ESPN2 and the rest paywalled, is similar to the deal now. This new deal is better — The PLL has games on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 — but the majority of games are still paywalled. Nearly every player in the league still has a regular job because they have to; player compensation still isn’t close to enough to eliminate that. Facilities are better, but a PLL team still used an auditorium with the curtain closed as a locker room this season. I’d bet a player tweeting that out would be reprimanded, as Flanagan was back with MLL. I hear occasional travel horror stories from players that do conjure memories of the MLL days.

Still, now it’s all a bit better and more valuable, and can make for a better player experience. The media deal has games on ABC, which makes it better. Player comp is much better than it was for the MLL, although I’ve spoken to several players who feel like there is plenty of room for improvement. If you aren’t chosen for a gameday roster spot, you don’t get a full game check, which is still like the MLL. Players have equity, but the league never shares how much a player gets, its value, or what happens to it every time new investments happen. Players have health insurance, but have to file for workman’s comp for injuries and lose out on compensation in the process. The player experience is improved, but it’s a long cry from the leagues the PLL wants to stand alongside. It does seem a little unfair for the league to lay out all of these problems or slights to the players that the MLL was guilty of, and then leave them unaddressed in the ending of the film. Lay them out as challenges for the near future if needed, but no acknowledgement at all felt empty. If the viewer is meant to assume that they’ve all been solved, it’s disingenuous.

Ultimately, that’s just part of the point. Building something is what this movie is about, and it’s still being built.