Review: HBO’s ‘Hard Knocks’ Needs More Football

When I heard HBO was doing a season of Hard Knocks about the midseason fortunes of the Indianapolis Colts, I thought no show could be more directly targeted at me. I’m not excitable about many things, but as Rich Lowry (a partisan of the rival Tennessee Titans) can attest, I’m fairly excitable about my Colts. I’ve been rooting for them since 1976 (longer than any current team member has been alive), and cheering on the blue and white is almost the only aspect of my life that hasn’t changed since then. Every Sunday in the fall, the strange and unwelcome persona known in my household as “football dad” reappears.

So I hang on every minute of Hard Knocks In Season: The Indianapolis Colts, but I wish it were better. As with Friday Night Lights, a football show that contained almost no football, I was hungry for more X’s and O’s, but instead I got images of the players buying breakfast for schoolchildren or listening to the motivational speeches of their coach, Frank Reich, who talks like the posters you used to see in your high-school guidance counselor’s office.

When I heard HBO was doing a season of Hard Knocks about the midseason fortunes of the Indianapolis Colts, I thought no show could be more directly targeted at me. I’m not excitable about many things, but as Rich Lowry (a partisan of the rival Tennessee Titans) can attest, I’m fairly excitable about my Colts. I’ve been rooting for them since 1976 (longer than any current team member has been alive), and cheering on the blue and white is almost the only aspect of my life that hasn’t changed since then. Every Sunday in the fall, the strange and unwelcome persona known in my household as “football dad” reappears.

So I hang on every minute of Hard Knocks In Season: The Indianapolis Colts, but I wish it were better. As with Friday Night Lights, a football show that contained almost no football, I was hungry for more X’s and O’s, but instead I got images of the players buying breakfast for schoolchildren or listening to the motivational speeches of their coach, Frank Reich, who talks like the posters you used to see in your high-school guidance counselor’s office.