Marin native helps create sports docuseries on Amazon Prime

Sept. 11, 2001, felt like any other ordinary day for high school athlete Matt Waldeck — until it wasn’t. Before the end of the day, the halls of Saint Ignatius High School, a Jesuit, all-boys preparatory school in Cleveland, Ohio, were nearly empty as parents brought their kids home following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but Waldeck, his teammates and his head coach, Chuck “Chico” Kyle, took the football field for their usual practice to prepare for a big game that weekend against the state’s No. 2 team, the Massillon Tigers.

“While every area school canceled their games that weekend, 25,000 people came together under the bright lights on Saturday night to watch something ordinary during an otherwise extraordinary week. We won the game, but that wasn’t the point — it hardened within me a core understanding about what American football could be and is when it is at its best,” he said.

It would be one of the times when Waldeck, who played tackle football for 13 years, would realize that the sport was much more than just winning and losing games — and the lessons he learned from Kyle would resonate far beyond his teenage days on the football field.

In his docuseries “The Object of the Game,” Waldeck turns the camera on Kyle, one of the most respected high school football coaches in the game, with 11 state championships and four national titles under his belt. Dozens of his former players advanced to Division I college football, the NFL and professional careers beyond sports, while many of his assistants went on to become head coaches themselves. When Jonathan Gannon, a former St. Ignatius player, was hired by the Arizona Cardinals to be their head coach in 2023, he thanked Kyle in his introductory remarks.

In a three-part series on the Amazon Prime streaming service, the show, named after Kyle’s book of the same name, showcases archival footage; interviews with Kyle, his family, former players and assistants; members of football royalty like Super Bowl-winning coach and Patriots legend Bill Belichick, former NFL quarterback Tony Romo and Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy; and captures the final season of Kyle’s legendary career — his 40th as St. Ignatius’ head coach. The first episode purposefully came out during Super Bowl week.

“Matt was very influenced by Chuck Kyle, and when we found out he was retiring, we knew that there was something there, and we wanted to do a ‘Hard Knocks’-style documentary. But when we started getting into it, we realized that his philosophies were going to be the real star of this docuseries,” said Ben Hecht, who grew up in Marin and served as executive producer on the project.

It quickly became a “crazy domino effect.”

“We pivoted at that point,” he said. “We went to the Cleveland Browns — they’ve always been supportive of Chuck Kyle — who hooked us up with Joe Thomas, who’s a Hall of Famer, to do an interview with him. The interview went really well, and he recommended the next person. We would go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and they really liked what we were doing, so they sent us out to NFL headquarters, and we met with (commissioner) Roger Goodell. … It became a snowball effect of Hall of Fame coaches and players getting involved with this project. And on top of that, we caught, just out of sheer luck, some amazing games and some amazing situations that really exemplified all of Chico’s philosophies and coaching methods.”

This is the third project the pair have released through their media entertainment company, Zodiac Features. The first, “I See You,” a thriller starring Helen Hunt, was a global hit on Netflix, and the second, “Lovely Jackson,” tells the story of Rickey Jackson, the longest wrongly incarcerated person in the United States at the time of his release in 2014. In the film, he returns to the prison he was sent to at 17 years old and participates in reenactments alongside his wrongful accuser.

“What we’re really focused on is human stories that are inspirational,” said Hecht, who now lives in San Diego.

Kyle, who taught English at the school, would often quote Shakespeare and other literary figures as well as his “Chicoisms.” The docuseries shows how he rallies his team by reciting Walt Whitman during a pregame speech before a state championship.

“His big tagline is, ‘The gridiron, or the football field, is a classroom.’ He really believes that the lessons he’s teaching on the football field, the kids can take them later into life,” Hecht said. “It’s all about growing these kids into decent human beings. He spent his life worrying about how to grow and raise kids that weren’t even his.”

For Hecht and Waldeck, it felt important to highlight an old-school type of coach they felt was dying off as preprofessional sports are becoming more commoditized.

“Matt and I have both been into sports our entire lives. I played varsity basketball at Redwood my junior and senior year. If I wasn’t swimming at the Tiburon Peninsula Club or Scott Valley Swimming and Tennis Club, I was going to summer sports camps in Marin. I had fantastic swim coaches, like the DeMonts. I think everybody who’s going to watch this is going to get a little good nostalgia over that old coach or old teacher that they loved,” said Hecht, who also got into video editing during his time at Redwood and would go on to study media studies at Pitzer College with a focus in digital editing.

And while viewers will have to see what happens in Kyle’s final season, Hecht says it felt like a proper send-off.

“He could have had a 5-6 season to end his career, no real exciting games, and we probably still would have made the movie, but just the magic of sports, movie making and luck hit a home run for us,” he said.