The following is an analysis of the article "Missouri, No. 1? College Football Surprises Again" by Pete Thamel and Thayer Evans of the New York Times. The article can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/sports/ncaafootball/26bcs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin.
I liked the headline and the lede. Thamel and Evans used a soft lede that was really effective at drawing readers in. But about halfway through the article I started to wonder if the lede, headline, and first supporting paragraph had misled me about the topic of the article. Suddenly the focus was from Missouri being a surprise this season in college football to describe other football facts that don't really seem to fit. Initially, I wondered if Missouri had just been used as an example to talk about football, but when the story went back to Missouri itself and became more interesting again, I realized that a few unnecessary paragraphs that would probably have lost some reader attention were added.
I thought that the subject of the story was interesting, but the story would have flowed much better had it not drifted to other facts in football. I understand that the authors wanted to show that a lot of crazy things have happened this football season, but I don't think that they needed to go on about it for so long with facts that don't necessarily seem relevant.
At the end of the article the focus is again from Missouri and instead about football teams in general. I wonder if the article should have maybe been about the unpredictable football season as a whole using Missouri as a really strong example. It's something to consider, anyway.
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3 comments:
You're just like everyone else...kicking my butt in the analysis of articles..but well done...and that was interesting...too bad the BSC is all FUBAR this year..but it does make it more fun.
I hear you in terms of feeling like the article's lede is a bit misleading- I almost wonder if those facts were thrown in as a sort of "filler" to make the article seem more official.
i definitely agree about the lede and first few paragraphs being kind of confusing when you compare them to the whole article, especially how it goes from talking about college football as a whole to talking about strictly missouri and then back to college football again. i really liked your suggestion about making the piece more about college football in general, i think that would have made it less confusing and made it flow better. and, i'd have to agree with paul on both counts; you always do a great job of analyzing articles on your blog, and the bcs is ridiculous this year!
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