Episode
Frontline: Chasing the Basketball Dream
Overview
Charlie Cobb looks at young men who make it big playing basketball, and many who will not. College recruiters promise an education in exchange for play, but 75% of players never obtain a degree. Are colleges too busy with their big-time sports programs to be concerned with educating their players?
Details
- Series
- Frontline
- Season
- Season 2
- Episode
- Episode 10
- Air date
- 1984-04-23
Episode context
Chasing the Basketball Dream is Episode 10 in Season 2 of Frontline. It aired on 1984-04-23.
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Episode 9: Captive in El Salvador
Filmmaker Ofra Bikel takes us into the heart of El Salvador -- a tiny Central America nation about which we know so much, and yet so little -- to examine the politics and the people the U.S. government supports there.
Episode 11: The Other Side of the Track
An insider's look at the 'sport of kings' focused on tracks at Belmont, NY, where the rich indulge their interest in horse-racing, and at Great Barrington in Massachusetts where infirm horses run for purses that can barely pay the feed bill. This is America's number one spectator sport, in which tens of millions wager tens of billions every year.
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Episode 8: The Struggle for Birmingham
A special election report focuses on Birmingham, Alabama -- famously a battlefield for black civil rights. Frontline correspondent Richard Reeves examines black political power today and the struggle for the heart and soul of the black voter.
Episode 12: Return of the Great White Fleet
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Episode 7: The Mind of a Murderer (2)
Amid questionable use of psychiatric evidence in criminal proceedings, Kenneth Bianchi is revealed to be an accomplished faker.
Episode 13: Warning from Gangland
Explores what Los Angeles is trying to do about its gang problem. It's the worst in the nation, killing more than 1,000 people over the past three years -- the majority of whom were not even gang members.
Episode 6: The Mind of a Murderer (1)
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Episode 14: Bread, Butter and Politics
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Episode 5: The Campaign for Page One
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Episode 15: Man's Best Friends
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Episode 4: Give Me That Big Time Religion
Investigating whether the tens of millions of dollars raised through the appeals of television evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart goes more to doing God's work or to keeping the preachers on TV. Should the government regulate religious fundraising?
Episode 16: So You Want to Be President
Following the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart to reveal presidential politics as it has never before been seen on television -- from the early days of lonely ambition, through the months of promise, to the day of denial.