One of the chief rules of writing is "Show, don't tell" — the belief that you can get a point across better by illustrating it than by talking about it. Yet every time ESPN wants to celebrate one of its anniversaries, the cable sports giant spends a whole lot more time telling you of its awesomeness than showing it to you. And that, in turn makes the ESPN empire seem not so much awesome as obnoxious.

That's why "30 for 30," the primary component of ESPN's 30th anniversary festivities, is so remarkable — both surprising and great. Though the project — a series of 30 documentaries covering sports stories big and small from the last three decades — celebrates ESPN's legacy by limiting itself to the channel's lifespan, it doesn't spend any time telling you why ESPN is so wonderful. Instead, it shows you, by virtue of the directors the project was able to attract, and the quality and sweep of the films they made with minimal executive interference. This is ESPN using its power for good instead of evil, for a celebration of sports rather than a celebration of itself.

Conceived in part by popular ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons (you can read my interview with Simmons here), "30 for 30" will, over the course of the next year or so, unveil films from some of the biggest names in both documentary and fiction filmmaking, including Steve James ("Hoop Dreams"), Albert Maysles ("Grey Gardens"), and Barbara Kopple ("Harlan County, USA") from the traditional docu world, and Barry Levinson ("Rain Man"), Ron Shelton ("Bull Durham") and John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") crossing over from scripted features. (There are also films from celebs-turned-directors like Ice Cube and Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash.)

HBO Sports has long been the standard-bearer for sports documentaries, and while they do excellent work, there's a predictable house style for all the films, down to the use of actor Liev Schreiber as narrator. The "30 for 30" films share an umbrella title and a general era, but beyond that, they reflect the individual personalities of their directors.

The series opens with "Kings Ransom," Peter Berg's look at the trade of hockey great Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers (playing in a small but passionate market reflecting the game's Canadian roots) to the Los Angeles Kings (representing the NHL's expansion into semi-interested warm weather cities). Like Berg's fiction films ("Friday Night Lights," "The Rundown"), the edits are fast and the sound is mixed up high, particularly when he keeps cutting between a middle-aged Gretzky quietly reflecting on what became of his career after the trade with very loud snippets of Gretzy's glory days with the Oilers.

The second film, "The Band That Wouldn't Die," is set, like so many of Levinson's films, in Baltimore, as he takes an equally warm and melancholy look at the Colts Marching Band, who kept playing for years after the Colts left town, hoping their ongoing passion for the team would inspire the NFL to give the city a new team. (With the arrival of the Baltimore Ravens in 1996, it's the only one of the first four films to offer a happy ending.)

The fourth, "Muhammad and Larry," is Maysles' look at the tragic Muhammad Ali-Larry Holmes 1980 championship fight, where Holmes so savagely beat on a past-his-prime Ali that one onlooker recalls, "I wanted him to knock Ali out early. Not to hurt him, but to end it." Maysles actually shot most of the footage in the run-up to the fight, but when the bout ended up traumatizing most of boxing fandom, he couldn't find anyone willing to buy the film. Decades later, ESPN came calling, and some new interviews were shot with Holmes and many of the participants and witnesses. (Star-Ledger columnist emeritus Jerry Izenberg appears, as he does in pretty much every Ali film — and, as always, he comes up with a few choice anecdotes that he hasn't told in any of the other movies.)

As with "Muhammad and Larry" (which offers just enough glimpses of the fight to show you how horrific it must have been in full), all the films offer a mix of classic and contemporary footage, and images both familiar and never-seen. Berg shows a long excerpt from the Edmonton press conference Gretzky gave after the trade, and the famous moment where he broke down in tears and had to sit in a corner; it's no less striking for how many times you may have seen it if you care about hockey. But he also finds home movie footage of a dazed Gretzky and new bride Janet Jones (who was accused of driving the trade so she could focus on her acting career) in the limo immediately after the wedding he planned for them.

TV news coverage of moving trucks trying to smuggle all the Colts equipment out of Baltimore under cover of night never gets old — it's amazing to think such a thing was ever attempted, even a quarter century ago — and Levinson also finds bountiful video evidence of the contempt that the city and Colts owner Robert Irsay held for each other. (Irsay shows up drunk for a TV appearance and bellows at the Colts fans, "If you love the Colts, why don't you treat me right?")

And because Maysles had open access to the Ali and Holmes camps, "Muhammad and Larry" is witness to many intimate moments, as well as ones that are tragic in retrospect. The Ali of today doesn't appear in the film, but there's a sequence of 1980 Ali amusing visitors with close-up magic tricks, and it's painful to see how dexterous and fast-talking he was, and then to think of how much Parkinson's disease (which was exacerbated by all the blows to the head in fights like this) has slowed his fingers and his mouth in the years since.

The third film, "Small Potatoes" — a look at the rise and fall of the United States Football League from Mike Tollin, who has produced many movies ("Varsity Blues") and TV shows ("One Tree Hill") with sports themes — is both lighter and less focused (and therefore less compelling) than the other three, but the story it tells is infectious. And Tollin has a great villain in Donald Trump, who bought the New Jersey Generals franchise and pushed the USFL to move its games from the spring to the fall, directly in competition with the NFL — an impatient move that everyone else in the film agrees killed the enterprise.

The media has been so in the tank for Trump ever since "The Apprentice" debuted that it's almost startling to be reminded of what an arrogant, selfish blowhard he is — surprising most of all for Trump himself, who gets grouchier the longer his interview lasts, and the more obvious it becomes that this isn't another puff piece. There's a telling moment where Tollin shows Trump demanding to know which will be his primary camera, and a priceless sequence where Trump does a slow burn while Tollin reads a long and damning quote about him from former USFL announcer (and one-time "SportsCenter" anchor) Charley Steiner.

Because of ESPN's reach, and its tendency to club you over the head with that reach, it's easy to focus on all the annoying things the network does rather than the many things it does right. Based on these initial four films, "30 for 30" is one of the best ESPN projects in years — a reminder of how great ESPN can be when it acts a little humble and gives you the story without the self-promotion.

"30 for 30" (Tonight at 8 on ESPN) A series of documentaries covering events from ESPN's 30 years on the air opens with Peter Berg's film about Wayne Gretzky being traded to the LA Kings.

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com, or at 1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, N.J. 07102-1200. Include your full name and hometown.