TREATMENT

AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SPORTING SERIES

TITLE: “The Lost Talent Bench”.

GENRE: 9 x 30 Minute ‘Sporting Biographies’.

THE LOST TALENT BENCH

1. Charlie Drake | “A storm in the atmosphere” | Mental health.

2. Antonio Carrion “Arguably the best Wide Receiver we ever had.”| Mental health.
3. Mahlon Williams |“From something bad came a lot of good.” | Destiny.
4. Tito Maddox | “An in-your-face blast of fresh air.” | Naivete.
5. David Dotson | “He has made us take notice.” | Alcohol.
6. Thunder Collins “I’m innocent!” | Murder.
7. Dillon Baxter | “He could have been great!” | Arrogance.
8. Todd Doxey | “He’ll live forever in our hearts” | Tragedy.
9. Cocoa Sandford | “I had to be good at everything!” | The gift of sharing.

ARCHIVE & ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHY

There’s a profusion of material to back up the series and perhaps two thirds of its overall
duration can be compiled from archives.

The series draws more heavily on sporting archives, covering the brief achievements of our
nine personalities. There is a secondary requirement for news material, as all profiles are
displayed against a backdrop of brief fortunes and sudden failures, stories that have been
picked up by local and national networks.

Original photography will exist as set piece interviews with fans and coaches. Those whose
lives were influenced by the erratic lives of our nine personalities. These might include
contributions from outside figures who competed with them and who are able to comment on
their sporting abilities.

To add realism, the series invites commentary from the press. So used to being in the uplift
game and sport at the highest levels, reflective opinions about fallen sportsmen and women
will be of particular value, especially on the subject of ‘unintended consequences’. Journalists
will not recruit sympathy on the subject, simply dropping down from sporting hyperbole into
more serious, personal reflections about vulnerabilities in sport.

A subject perhaps they have always wanted to talk about.

Family and friends will take us behind the scenes with reminiscences of the attention our nine
personalities attracted, as they emerged as young athletes at school and college. Fragments
that help the viewer form a broader picture. Finally, to add authority to the series, we secure
an interview with a sports psychologist, a ‘personality’ professional who deals with sports
people every day, most of whom are teetering on the mental edge of success and failure. The
challenges of failure being the open secret for nearly for every sporting professional.
 INTERVIEWS WITH ‘LOST BENCH’ MEMBERS

There is a temptation to record interviews with the subjects of the series, at least with seven of
the personalities who are still living or accessible. Interviews should close each episode as
personal, intimate reflections. In a sense, giving our subjects the opportunity to have the final
word.

In exploring how sports people manage their natural gifts, questions during set piece
interviews would focus on the idea of ‘how you grab the moment’. This should be an
opportunity to dig deep, to recount the complete mental experience of what was achieved and
to replay to the viewer the personal decisions made at those moments through the voice of its
subject.

For example, Mahlon Williams one of the best ever South Bay High School basketball players
would be able to evoke the example of how in life, a disappointing setback can sometimes
produce positive results. As he said in a recent interview: “God didn’t want me to be a pro player,
he wanted me to train future Pros!”

Managing risk and a sporting career is an act of the imagination and the series proves that the
human imagination can be a poor tool for judging risk. We want to learn everything from our
sporting personalities. How they took a gamble, if they won or lost, and crucially how many
of them destroyed an otherwise promising sporting career.

UNDERLYING MATERIAL (IP)

Presented with supporting narration and interviews with well-known personalities, the story
and chain of title rests with Ronnie Smith. The series concept is under copyright license with
the Writers Guild of America (WGA #2084106). Suggested voice over narration by Ronnie
Smith or Dr. Javon Johnson.

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 INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES

Sporting failure is a chilling thought to any serious athlete. This series goes a long way to
understanding why this happens. You can’t annihilate the thought of ‘failure’ from the mind,
so why not face it? Why not understand it?

The beneficiaries of this series will be the young sporting heroes of tomorrow who
appreciating the lessons of the past, are made stronger by it. However good we are at our
chosen sport, we are after all, not machines.

The names of the men and women on our ‘Lost Talent Bench’, will never reach the sporting
halls of fame. However, every one in sport is legendary. Respected for their meticulous
application to their art – a core ingredient for any sporting ambition, their names will forever
be an intimate part of the deep exhilaration of American sporting achievement.

There are no tear-jerking sentiments here. In retrospect, all our so-called sporting ‘failures’ are
acquitted even though some became felons. In every case, they have given us sporting
wonders where without them, sporting culture would be lost.

The series allows us to reconsider a handful of careers that were either cut short or advanced
in a special way. Individuals who have excelled for a brief sporting hour as if their whole lives
had been in preparation for the moment - and then thrown it away. Either carelessly or in two
cases, deliberately.

The series will also summarize the essence of sporting motivation. During their careers, our
selected bench of sport men and women were quickly eclipsed by others who flew higher. Yet
somehow to the delight of their fans, they found the will to create brief memorable moments.

Being rich and famous is not necessarily the touchstone of all the men and women on our
bench. Perhaps this is the aim for many who enter sport but in the case of our talents, most
ended up punching the air in frustration and failure. Applause and income both fade away
and several live with the whispers of those who say: “…And yet he could have been great!”

Social backgrounds inevitably play a role in the narration of the series, a background of misery
is made explicit. In the case of Todd Doxey, unavoidable. These are sports people whose early
years could be compressed into a single sentence. Stories of unrelenting coarseness and
instability, that perhaps lower the spirit a little but go some way to explaining later emotional
issues. In some cases the viewer might be amazed that the inner sporting talent emerged at all.
Some indeed reveal concealed resentments of a highly problematic family that did nothing to
encourage any fulfillment of promise.

‘The Lost Talent Bench’ is a dedication series for American sporting talents whose promising
careers were never fully realized - because life suddenly got in the way.

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 THE LOST TALENT BENCH
Episodes One to Nine

Our bench of talents were all good enough to make their sport look easy and there’s no doubt that they
inspired younger minds along the way. All gave their lives to sport – and in one case with Charles
Edward Drake by his own hand, loading a modest car with inflammables and setting himself alight.

Charles Edward Drake (Episode One)

A native of Los Angeles, Drake played football at Westchester High School where he was
selected as an all-city running back. He played for the University of Michigan and after his
senior year was selected to participate in the 2003 NFL Combine. Finally drafted to the Detroit
Lions in 2003.

An ardent youth, Charlie could seem airy and did have episodes of violence in his life but was
commended early in his career as something of a “storm in the atmosphere”, said one coach.
This expression furnishes us with a clue, as Charlie Drake’s mental health challenges
remained unchecked by authorities right up to the point of his violent suicide in a Green
Valley parking lot in 2012.

Perhaps the gold standards set by the likes of an Adrian Peterson, Mark Ingram or a Frank
Gore are too high for some? The scope of sporting talent is breath-taking but perhaps over-
whelming. Do some sports men and woman simply believe they are dwarfed by the challenge
and crushed by it? Who knows.

Dying either by his own hand or still argued by some, by accident - Charles Edward Drake
exhibited sporting nobility. His were not dim moments or faint sparks – it was a talent that
burned brightly. Despite its tragic ending.

Antonio Carrion (Episode Two)

The theme of mental health continues into our second episode with Antonio Carrion. A
former Dorsey Football star, Antonio was once considered to be the best wide receiver in
southern California and the nation, whose battle with Paranoid Schizophrenia finally led him
to homelessness and the Criminal Justice System. A cautionary tale that illustrates the lack
of resources available for people in sport struggling with mental illness. He now resides in
Alta Vista Hospital unable even to recognize his own mother.

Outsider contributions for Antonio include reflections from his High School coach, Paul Knox
who attests to Antonio’s precocious talents and that on his better days, there was nothing in
the collective conscience of his peers to compare him to.

A thread that runs through all nine episodes, is the pure state of innocence reflected by some
of the younger talents. A lack of understanding of the ways of the world and the special
psychology required to sustain a long career in sport. It’s an important point that as a
committed career sportsman – you should always keep an eye on the moral horizon.

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The natural sporting order says ‘live in the moment’ but if you do, you can easily miss the more
dangerous pitfalls that lie in front of you. This goes as much for coaches - as for sports people.
Antonio Carrion didn’t receive the right mental health support from those around him. They
missed the opportunity to help, just when he needed it the most.

Mahlon Williams (Episode Three)

No review of sport is complete without the idea of destiny. Interviews and supporting
conversations with teammates, trainers as well as close family members, testify to the initial
frisson of excitement when they originally saw Mahlon Williams play, one of the best-ever
South Bay High School basketball players.

Williams made a seismic entrance in his senior year at Sweetwater High after averaging better
than 30 points in his first two games in 1987. He then missed the next 13 games after coming
up ineligible, and while he returned to lead the Red Devils into the playoffs, the damage was
done. And that was that.

Unusually, Mahlon was not bitter but surprisingly gracious after the fall. He knew exactly
where he had gone wrong. The sport may have moved on but unlike most talents on our
bench (outside of ‘Cocoa’ Sandford) Mahlon found himself a new space. Arguably better than
where he was before. He had indeed composed himself under a new guise and in some way
vindicated his original talents.

For the basketball player Mahlon Williams, it was a case where, as he said himself: “from
something bad came a lot of good”. Here was a man who turned his failures around by coaching
his son and daughter to become top grade athletes in their respective sports of basketball and
softball. Indeed, his son Mikey Williams is considered a five-star recruit and a top three player
in the 2023 class by ESPN and 247 Sports.

Mahlon Williams underlines the modesty of some sportsman – they may have been the center
of attention for a brief moment but never held any illusions about their skills or their place in
the universe. We witness some attempts to modify behavior in sport but often it’s too little too
late - with careers already in a steep nosedive.

Mahlon Williams however pulled out of his dive and through his coaching and generous
personal donations, sending over 80 young women to college with $17 million worth of
scholarships, he is arguably flying high above all our other lost talents - for the subtle way in
which he turned failure into success.

Tito Maddox (Episode Four)

The series deals with practical sporting realities. How some personalities are in a sense, fore
doomed. We explore how hubris will get you every time – that an overt sense of self-belief can
in the case of Tito Maddox leave you vulnerable to the vultures. Tito was careless in the
extreme and in his determination to flatter his family accepted a range of illegal gifts including
a never-ending parade of cars. Falling for his own propaganda with startling naivete.

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At 6'4" and 190 lbs, Maddox made his mark at Fresno State, being named the 2001 Western
Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year. As a guard, Maddox knew how to share the ball,
leading the WAC and ranking fourth nationally with 8.0 assists per game and ending the
season with 130 - a figure which stands to this day as a school record and the second-highest
total in conference history.

However, this rapid ascendency cloaked a series of major benefit scandals while a student-
athlete at Fresno State, and Tito wantonly committed a range of NCAA rules violations. His
descent was swift and brutal, enduring a two-year probation and the loss of three
scholarships.

Tito Maddox was an authentic, resolute, tireless young sportsman. On the surface, an
honorable figure in the rich tapestry of sporting achievement. In his case however,
achievements that lead to a dead end, his young life simply a rehearsal for a promising career
that failed dramatically. A victim to connivances of sporting agents and ultimately, forces
greater than himself.

An essential element of the American ideal is variety and Tito, like the other eight talents that
sit in the sporting shadows, should still be celebrated for their sporting art, however badly
their private lives turned out. Such sportsmen make a significant contribution to the
conversation in a country that has a pious streak for its sporting legends.

David Dotson (Episode Five)

David Dotson came to USC with impressive stats. At Valley View High in Moreno Valley,
Dotson set five California high school records. And as a senior during the 1991 season, Dotson
ran 3,544 yards, averaging 10 yards per carry and scoring 46 touchdowns. In one game, he ran
for 507 yards in 27 carries. Sports journalist Eric Shepherd of the LA Times commented at the
time: “He made us take notice”.

What distinguished David Dotson and where he deserves respect as a sportsman, was his
avoidance of hubris. It’s perhaps what endeared him to his teammates during the early 1990s.
He was a dominant figure on the field, a daredevil, courageous, an exaltation who regularly
broke single game rushing records.

But sport and body health have a difficult relationship. Psychologically, David Dotson found
training hard. Too hard. Trying to tread the fine line between sport and his private life became
impossible to balance, secretly finding an escape in drugs and alcohol.

Dotson’s blood ran hot and he was diffident to the advice he was receiving about his career
and in particular, his growing connections with gang culture. Instead of stone-faced single
mindedness, he falls in with the bad boys as a young inductor with profile. He engages in a
life of risk and training hard. With the inability to be self-critical and to rise above the
problems he was creating for himself, the outcome for David Dotson was inevitable.

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We can’t get around the fact that many of the talents on our ‘Bench’ threw their careers away,
when many of us could only dream of attaining such skills. David Dotson is a classic example.
Questions arise at each corner. Why did he entangle himself with a heady cocktail of drugs
and alcohol when life was so good? One watches with incredulity as David Dotson threw his
talent away into a hazy void.

Thunder Collins (Episode Six)

In truth, when you take account of each of the profiles, approving ‘ticks’ are often matched by
‘crosses’. Virtues have often been overweighed by failures. The biggest negative as always is
the lack of tough mindedness. A sporting gift wrapped in cotton wool gets nowhere.

In the same way, Thunder Collins knew how to conduct himself on the field of play, but
apparently nowhere else. He is a half-story, unfinished business, a life that included a big
dollop of lucklessness.

Originally from Los Angeles, Thunder Collins was a junior college All-American in 1998 who
was touted by recruiting analysts as the next in a long line of great Nebraska running backs.
It’s arguably a good thing that some hyped sportsmen don’t live up to their potential and
Thunder proves just that point. We all can’t be that good and of the talents on the bench,
Thunder threw his talents away the quickest - a record in itself.

Perhaps it’s hard to celebrate the many paradoxes of Thunder Collins. A life-affirming in-
your-face blast of fresh air running back - who blew up a sudden storm by shooting one
Omaha man dead and seriously wounding a second.

This portrait reflects a private life made public. Sports people are not self-contained or live in a
bubble and the story of Thunder Collins is supported by interviews with friends and family to
adjust the story accordingly - because of its violent ending. He claims his innocence to this
day. Many will speculate about why wrong turns were made and whether Thunder’s final
judgement, fits the man. They exist not as a defense of his actions but an attempt to
understand his original motivations and why he turned his back on a promising career to
commit such an act. Is there a relationship?

Episode six goes a long way to answer this difficult question.

Evolving and honing your sporting skill lies at the heart of the idea of modern America. How
easy it is to reflect on the rounded sporting career of a Lebron James, yet such sportsmen
should also be defined by the talents around them.

Talent proves a vivid idea that life is richer through sport, so even the failures should at times
be celebrated. The quest for rooting out unsung sporting heroes leads to surprising places. In
Thunder’s case to the act of murder. Yet each member of our ‘Bench of Lost Talent’, is
distinguished by how different they are to each other. How many people remember Dillon
Baxter for example? A man who exerted a huge effect on his sport, brought low by bold-faced
lying?

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 Dillon Baxter (Episode Seven)

Like Tito Maddox, Dillon Baxter exhibited talent and naivete in equal measure. An example
of how the mighty are fallen. Dillon’s arrogance with his physical gifts started a chain reaction
of events, which he was unable to contain.

If talented sportsmen like David Dotson have taken short cuts through drugs - a thicket
through which no sportsman ever survives, plain lying can often be punished as ruthlessly by
Authorities for sometimes apparently minor infractions. Dillon’s bending of the truth after
informing a compliance officer that he had been illegally contacted by Alabama, Florida,
Washington, Oregon, and Fresno State, set off a train of events that were enough to alter his
mood on the field ending with a bombardment by his peers that was unrelenting.

As his mother Michelle Baxter commented at the time” "I never, ever, ever had a problem with
Dillon. But when he went away, he grew up on his own and made some decisions that he had to pay for
dearly." Four years previously, Baxter was lighting up spring practice at the University of
Southern California – a high school all-American and Hall Trophy winner and the nation's top
prep player. "This young man had been put on a pedestal by everybody," Baxter’s coach Mike
Grossner reflected. What happened? Why did he have to lie in that way?

It would be simplistic to say that something as innate as sporting talent is incompatible with
normal life. But it is true that with many of the talents on our bench there is sometimes a
conflict between the two. Dillon Baxter reached a state of humiliation and realization when it
was too late and the truth is that ultimately – some sportsmen pass life’s tests and some do
not.

The Lost Bench series does not waste time in speculation and does not make a mystery where
none exists. In Dillon Baxter’s case, he simply got caught lying.

Todd Doxey (Episode Eight)

Of course, a failure to deliver on your talent incurs the wrath of your supporters. On our
bench are several members who received out and out denunciations by those critical of such
waste.

Being disillusioned with promise is a healthy public debate, common amongst all sporting
observers. They muse about the “cast of mind” necessary to succeed. Vice and virtue are
overturned constantly in the analysis. However our profile of Todd Doxey is the exact reverse
of all that and alone exists as the most tragic and stark profile on our bench.

Sporting fans are intrigued by emerging talent. Sport may be dominated by a small handful of
heroes, but the general eye is always cast to the youth wings to recognize the talents of
tomorrow. Beyond the co-mingling of money and muscle, American life enjoys its youth and
in the untimely death of Todd Doxey in the Mackenzie River, those who knew him recognize
that they had lost a precious sporting spectacle.

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Succeeding where more mature players would have failed, Todd Doxey was the nicest person
in FBS Football in 2007. A more engaging, caring young man you could not hope to meet. This
is why the complete account Todd’s sporting career is so tragic – because it doesn’t exist. All
sportmen hope to make a dignified exit from their sport – despite their failures in the eyes of
society. Todd was robbed of both his grand entrance and his grand exit.

There was simply the hint of something great in him, standing on the cusp of significant
playing time. He had just been redshirted. One of the brightest and most capable students on
the entire Oregon roster, Doxey came from a beat-up neighbourhood to post a 3.5 GPA in his
first year at Eugene. He died soon after, drowning in a river at just 19.

He is certainly remembered for his proudest achievements. It was a fateful day, but every
season, the Ducks play their hearts out for Todd Doxey. Much in the same way the Lakers
played their hearts out this year for Kobe Bryant. This bunch of young players will never
forget Todd, and in that sense his name has become immortal. Our profile of Todd Doxey is a
heart-lacerating insight into a young man of great warmth, robbed of a promising sporting
career.

‘Cocoa’ Sandford (Episode Nine)

To conclude the series and to anticipate a second series with women athletes, we introduce the final
member of our Lost Talent Bench.

At a time of sporting confidence when some seem to learn intuitively what’s needed to be,
let’s say, a great basketball player – this series explores fundamental truths about what it
really does take. Certainly, our ‘Bench of Lost Talent’ has provided enough delights for us to
remember them by, although we are in a sense robbed of the joys of what might have been.

It would be ungracious to say that our nine personalities didn’t understand that subtle point,
but we end the series on an up tick, with a woman who didn’t lose her way, but decided to
share her talents widely. An altruistic, naturally female response to being gifted with so much
sporting ability.

By the time she got to her teens, ‘Cocoa’ Sandford began to see the downside of being the lone
daughter in a family with three sons. Life was a challenge in every direction: “Struggling to pay
bills, expected to wear the same pair of jeans three times a week. I decided to be a great athlete”

Cocoa excelled in literally all the sporting departments available to her at high school: Nine
varsity letters, including four in track, four in basketball and one in volleyball. Team captain
and ‘Most Valuable Athlete’ as a senior in track. First-team all-league honors for four years.
Named first-team all-city selection for two years. “It’s something I could not escape, it’s part of
who I am. I just had to figure it all out,” she says.

In 2001, Cocoa was hot property. Recruited by a slew of Universities including UCLA, USC,
Florida, Georgia, Stanford and Notre Dame – to name but a few. In 2002, she enrolled for the
University of Arizona committing to the Wildcat Women’s Basketball team.

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The contours and characters of each of the ‘Lost Talents’ have a lot to say about overall
sporting ambition. Cocoa is marked out by her exemplary work ethic, a great team player,
with a fierce mid-range shooting game.

To this day she coaches. A working leader for the sport of basketball both on and off the field.
It’s how she chooses to share her talents. And like Mahlon Williams, she has decided to simply
advance her skills to others, helping to bridge the talent gaps of other woman in the sport. As
a woman, Cocoa had to be good at everything. And she was.

CONCLUSION TO THE SERIES

This series marks a departure from the norm of sporting programmes by lifting forgotten
names out of the shadows. In one case, recognition is given posthumously.

Failure in American sports is always a blow to the national gut but the desire to ‘discover why’
is part of the journey of dusting yourself off and starting again. An important training
dynamic we’d do well to consider. Let’s not just spin the bliss of victory but understand why
some of us fail or some of us choose to coach.

Of all these pen portraits, some will be unknown and surprising to the viewer, as the series
takes advantage of hindsight and in many ways exists as a form of closure on the subject.
Many enjoyed the physical liberty of their sport but were enclosed by demons. Another
Thunder Collins committed murder and is now serving a life sentence.

They are all important. Some like Charlie Drake and Antonio Carrion developed mental
health issues, ultimately living with a wall of separation between their sport and those who
tried to support them to better health.

For some like Tito Maddox and Dillon Baxter the onslaught of commerciality and
sponsorship deals overwhelmed them. Some of our sportsmen have been identified by their
aspirations and distinct achievements and yet some like David Dotson have crumbled under
typical sporting pressures. Some like Mahlon Williams and ‘Cocoa’ Sandford simply felt
their destinies lay in a different place. Hidden sportsmen yes, but for one moment they all
caught our breath.

Taken together, these are cautionary tales about how sporting careers can suddenly change.
Sobering in one way yet frustrating in another, their achievements could not be perfected in
the normal sense. In the long struggle for sporting excellence, there are men and women with
a particular zeal to be the best, who became the best and were then chopped down early in
their excessive enthusiasm, by some of life’s challenges.

The series does not seek to revise opinions about these men and women but to salvage their
sporting achievements. All sporting people have something to risk in their talents. Some are
unlucky, some find a quiet glory.

This series is above all, a memorial to what might have been.

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