To tweet: https://es.pn/1nuGvZj

Mendota  
Outside the Lines (Sunday, 9 a.m. ET, ESPN)
SportsCenter (Sunday, 10 a.m., 11 p.m., ESPN)
SC Featured Special (Sunday, 11 a.m., ESPN2)
SC Featured Special (Spanish) (Sunday, 9 p.m., ESPN Deportes)
ESPN.com (Thursday)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2DfjLbOWmk

brings the inspiring story of the Mendota (Calif.) High School football team to multiple ESPN platforms. Although many players must work in the agricultural fields around the impoverished immigrant town to help support their families, Mendota has become a football powerhouse behind its transformational coach and star running back.

“Out of the 11,000 people we have in Mendota probably 99.9 percent of them are Hispanics. They’re searching for the American dream — having their kids go to college, having a better life than what they have right now working in the fields.” — Jose Calderon, Mandota lineman

“Half these kids probably come from single family homes. They all learned how to survive at a young age because of the hardships they’ve endured. We might be closer to 70 percent of kids have to work, to help out their families.” — Robert “Beto” Mejia, Mendota football coach

 

Out Route
ESPN The Magazine (currently on newsstands)

His story was supposed to read something like this: Tony Gonzalez unretires, leads Atlanta to a Super Bowl and rides off with a ring. Instead, a final season spent with the best tight end ever tells a much different tale. Seth Wickersham reports.

 

Pedaling for Justice/Pedaleando por la justicia
Sportcenter/Reportajes Especiales (Sunday 11 p.m., ESPN Deportes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4-Xiuwl6z8

In 2011, Mexican businessman Carlos Gutiérrez was assaulted, his feet cut off, after refusing to pay $10,000 as extortion money to organized crime groups in his hometown of Chihuahua. He escaped to the United States in search of political asylum and eventually found solace in cycling. It is through this sport that he decided to raise awareness that thousands like him, seek to escape violence and find a new life in America.

“Dual Track”

In Columbia, Mo., Mark Schwarz interviewed Michael Sam teammate offensive lineman Max Copeland.

Boston-based producer Andrea Pelkey was dispatched to Hitchcock, Texas while the rest of the nation’s attention focused on Columbia, Mo. late Sunday after University of Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam announced he would be the first openly gay player to enter the NFL Draft.

“My goal was to support our coverage of the story with interviews and images from Michael’s hometown,” Pelkey said of the Eastern Texas city of about 8,000 people 40 miles from Houston. Not a second was lost en flight as Pelkey’s crew shot B Roll, scoured the internet for interview subjects and studied notes from fellow producer Greg Amante who had been with reporter Chris Connelly for Sunday’s news-breaking Sam interview.

Mark Schwarz was ESPN’s lead reporter at Missouri, noting the campus atmosphere as a crowd watching ESPN in a nearby bar cheered Sam’s announcement, and two students stopped by his location, telling him many people knew Sam was gay, but that it was no big deal so it never became a news story there.

“We woke up Monday to subzero temperatures, but when two of Sam’s closest friends on the team, Max Copeland and L’Damian Washington, agreed to interviews, the chill seemed to disappear,” Schwarz said.

While he would come to conduct one of his most interesting interviews, Pelkey had teamed up with NFL Nation reporter Tania Ganguli to knock on the doors of Sam’s acquaintances, and visit his high school to interview his former coach and Athletic Director.

“I then touched base with Mark and (producer) Shawn (Fitzgerald) to get a script to make sure I had enough B Roll support for their piece,” Pelkey said.

The piece – which debuted on Tuesday’s 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter — was coming together as Schwarz interviewed Copeland in Columbia.

Schwarz said, “Max is a true original and one of the most thoughtful and fascinating people I have come across in my 24 years at ESPN. When he mentioned that Sam’s announcement could potentially save lives, everyone in the room got goose bumps. Then, after his parents watched Tuesday’s piece, he texted me that we ‘made a pair of very skeptical, conservative parents back in Montana cry because of how you illustrated Mike’s story. This is bigger than football, brother!’”