Many of you may remember this series. I was going to highlight great writing examples. I posted about one or two, then trailed off. Not because I forgot. Mainly because I couldn't find any good writing. Most of what I read these days makes the Showgirls script seem like To Kill A Mockingbird
Nowhere does that hold more true than with sportswriting. Anyone still willing to become a print journalist these days goes into news, commentary, or exposes college football recruiting violations for Yahoo Sports. The reporters who cover games? They're more concerned with finding the best buffets, scoring free rounds of golf, and preserving their access to coaches and players than with writing anything remotely interesting.
Take tonight's Monday Night Football game between the Giants and Vikings. It was...simply awful. I think it broke my DVR. ESPN 2's Tuesday night MAAC showdowns think this game was horrific. The Rice Owls play more exciting football than this crapitude. The normal sportswriter would probably pound out something like "the Giants' defense, which has allowed an unusually high amount of passing this season, frustrated Josh Freeman's Vikings debut."
Oh, sorry. I think I fell asleep just writing that.
These guys don't want to alienate players or coaches by saying negative things, so they mostly write a bunch of vanilla sentences as boring as a Microsoft FAQ page.
Not Steve Politi's story for the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Entitled "Giants-Vikings Is Better Off Forgotten-The Sooner The Better," for once a sportswriter has actually written something interesting about a game. And accurate. The first sentence follows the old reporting admonition to sum up the entire story in the first sentence: "I have witnessed the worst game in the history of professional football." That's pretty much the most precise description of anything I've ever read. The remainder pretty much goes from there. But really, when Peyton Hillis is a game's feature back, there's not much else you can do with that, is there? Conway, Arkansas, yall....
This story is what Howard Cosell would call "telling it like it is."
I don't want to spoil the rest so I'll just shut it down here. Go read the story!
We'll pick up the Top 5's soon. Very soon....
2 comments:
My mom who is 79 and bent in half question mark style, shuffles about and weighs 90lbs soaking wet….is a die hard football fan. She plays fantasy football with my son. She has football on essentially every time it's showing on any channel she gets. She knows most of the players in the league and all the gossip about them. Once an opinion is formed about a team or coach she will never change. She's the only other person on Earth who still refuses to watch the Cowboys over the Landry issue besides myself.
She called me this morning and I could hear in her voice she was pissed about something. She just wanted to ask if I made it through the game last night. I told her I gave up at half. She said "that was potentially the worst game I've ever seen. It was horrible on all counts" But I guess I'm glad Eli won.
So I called her tonight and read your blog to her. She said "I don't know this boy but he appears to be smart"
How flattering! Your mom sounds like good people.
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