How are you scratching your itch for televised sports? (If you don’t have one, move along. I don’t comprehend you.) With no live competition to show, broadcasters are offering a buffet of leftovers — “classic” games, old poker tournaments, spelling bee marathons — and constantly replenished chatter about what’s not happening.

There’s a better way to go. Listed here are some current or recently available shows — a pair of documentaries, a pair of dramas and a nonfiction series — that offer the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat without the stale taste of a reheated meal.

‘The Scheme’ and ‘Vick’

These recent documentaries sit at the intersection of athletics, race and true crime. Each focuses on an African-American sports figure who ran afoul of the law and, without trying to justify or excuse his actions, shows how neither crime nor punishment can be fully understood outside the context of race.

HBO’s “Scheme” hands the microphone to the college basketball scout and fixer Christian Dawkins, and lets him tell the story of the F.B.I. corruption sting in which he and a handful of sneaker executives and black assistant coaches took the fall. He’s good company. As Dawkins narrates the story with rough and self-deprecating humor, you understand both the charisma and business savvy that fueled his precocious success and the arrogance and naïveté that contributed to his downfall.