The lost art of the 'gamer'

Of course, raw stats are almost always the most important detail in any football gamer.

 

I use an iPad to record my stats during prep football games. iScore for football works well. That way I don't have to try to read my shitty handwriting later.

 

We had a great set up when I worked in Salt Lake.

They wanted a 300-word gamer, plus 3-4 "bullet points" and a box ... and really wanted quotes from two people.

Well, stupid me, who wanted to actually work, asked if I could try using the bullet points as a game summary and use the 300 words as basically an optional since they wanted the quotes.

It worked out very well with 4 p.m. baseball and softball starts.

 

You're giving me flashbacks to working on stringer copy. Groan.

 

I'm in a weird situation for my second game of the season. Since this weekly usually prints on Monday, they already laid it out and won't have the game from last night in it. I'm not covering the game next Friday because I will be out of town...so now I covered a game that I can't write a feature to focus on the next game...so I'm pretty much going to have to do a straight gamer...which is weird since it won't get read until Sept. 13 and the game was Sept. 1. Just odd.

 

The problem is what if you can't get the stats? You won't know who scored? Now if all they want is tweeting and video, fine. But you can't have it both ways at a prep game when the reporter is fricking busy keeping stats.

 

That is a weird situation, but I have to say, if I were to end up covering a game again for the first time in years, I think this is the setup I'd want. I'd try to look at it as a challenge to try to write the ol' "SI-type gamer" from an interesting angle. Have fun with it!

 

Twitter has this fascinating feature that you can look back and read what you sent five tweets ago. Like if you wrote:

"Tigers start the season with a deep pass from Leo to Kyle. Two plays later, an 11-yd TD pass from Kyle to Lloyd. Tigers 7, Cats 0"

Not only do you have the touchdown score, but you have how the score was set up.

Twitter doesn't have to be a chore, or just another thing corporate makes you do. If you use it correctly, it can aid your gamer writing too.

 

I respect your opinions, but in this case, no.

All Twitter does is detract you from the process of preparing a gamer with proper play-by-play and note-taking.

 

I'll land somewhere between the two of you and say this: If it's a given that you'll be tweeting during a game, and you'll be crunched for time to write a deadline piece, you can shape the way you tweet so that you end up with decent notes that help you write it. Is it ideal? No. But if you have to do both and time will be a factor, it's not the worst compromise to make.

Would I rather watch the game and take notes without tweeting? Of course. But even on that, I've softened up a bit over the years.

 

Two things:

1. No one should be live-tweeting play-by-play from any sporting event. That's especially true at the college and professional level, where the damn games are on TV for everyone and their grandmother to watch. But it also includes the high school level, where everyone who cares is probably in attendance or too old to worry about Twitter. At pro/college level, Twitter should be used to provide occasional insight, observations, or pass along news. At the high school level, it should be to provide occasional updates.

2. The traditional gamer has no relevance in today's media. Again, at the upper levels, everyone watched the game. If they didn't, the wire services will give them the nuts and bolts. So what purpose do you serve writing a play-by-play gamer? Give me something different. Go into the how and why the game played out the way it did. I don't need a recitation of scoring plays and big moments. Pick a key moments or two, a key player or two, a position group, SOMETHING, and get into detail.

You can do that at the high school level. Your goal isn't to get every kid's name in the paper. Your goal isn't to recap every touchdown. That's what the scoring summary and box score are for. Tell a story. Tell me why I should care that East Podunk beat West Podunk and what made Jimmy Quarterback's night extra special.

 

I think you're mistaking a flat game story for a good game story. A good game story is not a regurgitation of the facts and stats. But I also see a lot of writers getting into trouble thinking that picking out one or two things from the game that interests them is a sufficient accounting of the game itself.