Clocking in at a slim 60 minutes, this documentary on players and coaches who broke down racial barriers in the NFL could be useful for a younger crowd unfamiliar with some of the steps along the way of the NFL’s 75-year history. For older viewers who can remember further back than, oh, say SuperBowl XXV, the film is a thin primer on a complex issue that can seem, at best, a bit lacking in details and, at worst, a self-congratulatory effort on the NFL’s part that at times glosses over some of the more complex and problematic issues in the league’s history.

One thing that can be said is that football’s history is nowhere near as embarrassing as, say, professional baseball’s past. There was no “Negro leagues” in the NFL and, as the documentary points out, the first black head coach was (sorry, kids,) not Tony Dungy or Dennis Green, but a fellow named Fritz Pollard, way back in 1921. Of course, in the first 40-50 years of the NFL, such things as a black head coach or a black quarterback were not common and were more of an aberration, but they did happen far earlier in football’s history than in baseball’s.

The archival footage, largely drawn from old newsreels as well as NFL Films’ stock footage library, is a treat for anyone with an appreciation for the history of the game. The film pays tribute to several remarkable figures in NFL history, which older fans and younger will appreciate for different reasons.

However, do not sit down expecting a detailed, Ken Burns-style documentary on this one. This is more of a typical, NFL Films-style treatment of the subject and at times seems more like a promotional piece than a detached and objective documentary.

While the film is not bad, the product doesn’t seem to be the beneficiary of a lot of detail work; no one needed to take out much travel insurance to complete it, based largely as it is on archival game footage and interviews. If anything, in a year after Tony Dungy coached the Indianapolis Colts to a SuperBowl championship in 2007 (which is covered in the video) and in a year when Barack Obama is a favorite candidate of a fair percentage of the electorate, pointing out the race of such players can seem a bit unnecessary to a more modern viewership.

However, despite its minor shortcomings, it is a DVD video that makes for a solid memento of the progress of racial equality over the past 75-plus years, a record in which the NFL has sometimes taken risks ahead of cultural readiness, or at least tracked along with cultural progress, although unfortunately has witnessed examples of backtracking behaviors as well. While a subject rich for mining, this video only skims the surface and could benefit from a longer, more detailed, and more detached treatment. For what it is, though, it is watchable.