Showtime's four-part documentary series "Boys in Blue'' on the 2021 Minneapolis North football team debuts Friday night. The players and coaches involved have not seen the roughly three hours of filming in advance.
"We get texts in a group chat every day and some of us are trying to find a place to watch the first one together,'' Rio Sanders said. "The film crew was there for so many days, but you have no idea what they decided to use.''
Sanders was a star receiver and occasional quarterback as a senior with the 2021 Polars. He's 5-10, 185 pounds, tops, but extremely explosive.
He redshirted this fall at Iowa Central Community College, a power program in junior college football that was loaded with receivers. He has been home in Minneapolis during a school break.
"The only thing we were told when filming started was to 'be ourselves,' and that wasn't a problem,'' Sanders said. "I never wanted to be a person to change the way I act because there was a camera around.''
Tae Gilchrist, a senior lineman on that team and now playing at St. Scholastica in Duluth, said: "We would see the film crew every day, or at least every other day, and it actually started to feel like family.
"Peter Berg, the director, and his crew … they cared for us. You could tell that.''
The event that ultimately devastated these coaches and athletes — the murder of Deshaun Hill, their 15-year-old starting sophomore quarterback — will not be covered until the final episode late in January.
