Your first read on the Super Bowl

Anyone read Ian O'Connor on ESPN?

Overwritten with a Jeter reference (of course...).

:/

 

This post resonates with me for this reason:

Everybody's into more planning now, and part of it's understandable -- hell, a lot of it is. You have to have plans for the paper or the website, and you have to have an idea of what you're going to lead with every day of the week.

But some of our best work during Super Bowl week was unplanned -- reading and reacting, if you will.

Wetzel didn't go to the locker room looking for this story, he found it. And that's part of what made it what it was.

You can't go into each day without a plan; but I think sometimes we overdo it, and don't look at the plan and say, "Boy, that's not the big thing to be talking about today" and throw the plan out the window.

It's a delicate balancing act, admittedly, with no simple answer.

 

I really liked Wetzel's column. A whole lot. But I understand what Alma's saying about great writing and columns.

What makes a column great, I think, is its clarity of thought. A simple idea, expressed crisply, without any speedbumps or tangents or diversions. Like "Death of a Racehorse," the textbook example. And Wetzel's Brady column is in the same family: It's just a simple observational piece, that, despite the hundreds of thousands of words written about Brady and the Super Bowl, and despite their being, what, 3,000 sportswriters in the building, made it feel as though Wetzel and Brady were the only two guys in the room.

I think the best compliment a column could receive is to call it crystalline. Coming from a guy who's trying to learn how to write a column, Wetzel's column, for me, is a really instructive piece of work.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you, in general, but this brings up a point to me that I find myself discussing often with my coworker. Was that a column? Was it an extended deadline feature? Because so many people write an extended feature, slap a mug shot on it and call it a column.

I'm torn. I think in some ways it's a column, in that it leads you to feel a particular way. But in other ways, it's not.

Your take? Anyone's take?

 

Typically you don't assign stories on these type events. You assign topics, coverage areas. Reporters find the story.
I never went into any big event with a you-do-this edict, but somebody was assigned to Gamer, Team A main, Team B main, Sider A, Sider B, key matchup, key play, MVP, TV coverage, commercials, halftime, etc., etc. Divide and conquer. Communicate to avoid duplication. And of course reserve the right to audible.
Yahoo had enough people there, so it's likely Dan knew he was writing something Brady-related, win or lose. The game and his reporting ability would determine where the story went.
I'm guessing Les knew he had Patriots sider duty, and Welker was obvious. Also very well done.
You can't have 6 people all hunting for the best story after the game. They have to find the best story on their "beat" that night.

 

I really liked Wetzel's column. And it reminded me of his column from the BCS title game two years ago, when Colt McCoy got hurt and Alabama beat Texas. In both instances, Wetzel found a compelling story in the losing locker room and told it beautifully by presenting it simply.

 

I noticed that too and thought that was the only point where he drew more attention to himself than the story. Almost like, look at me, look at my access.
Edes had a story couple of years ago after one of Beckett's playoff masterpieces where he somehow had time to get the coaches to break down scouting reports, tendencies, etc., as a way of piecing together their strategy. Just great stuff, inside stuff, but it felt natural. Seats 35 and 36 felt a tad forced. It stopped me for a minute. Personal preferences. If I were editing the story, I would have expressed that and asked what he felt it added.

 

So who from Yahoo had the Giants column? I'd go to the Yahoo site and check myself, but it keeps shutting down my laptop and I'm sick of rebooting.

Les, by the way, is always excellent. I wouldn't call anything he does a sidebar, not in the traditional sense. He's as much of a columnist as he is a feature writer.
That would be a pity if Yahoo's best two writers were assigned Patriots stories, on a game like this. (And I think "assigned" is still the correct word, since if you've got more than one reporter covering an event, there has to be some old-fashioned consistency, even in the wild west internet world.)

 

Appears Silver did.

 

And then there's this column from Bill Simmons:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7547184/searching-silver-linings-indianapolis

Featuring this:

<i>I have never been able to answer the question, "Why does this matter to me so much?" That's just the way it's always been. Ever since I can remember. You get older, your life changes, your friends change, your house changes, family members start dying, your kids start morphing into miniature people … and yet, one thing never changes for anyone who truly cares about sports. See, there's no feeling quite like watching your team blowing a big game. It's devastating. It's paralyzing. It's the only feeling that a 6-year-old, a 42-year-old and a 64-year-old can share exactly. You never get over it. You never stop thinking about the three or four plays that could have swung the game. It becomes something of a sports tattoo. You live with it forever, and then you die.

<b>So yeah, that's why I didn't write a column last night.</b> I was in a dark place.</i>

The Nicholas Sparks of sports journalism.