Even More Favre

Brett Farve is the most interesting stories in the sports world today. And I say stories, plural, because there are so many Favre topics that you can talk about.

I know, I know, you and everyone else seems to say that, "I'm Favred out!" And I feel the same way most of the time. But I can't ignore what is going on with Favre.

As we all know, Favre has returned to the Vikings. So let’s just skip over the part where I bitch about ESPN’s coverage of that. Now we get to the good stuff, the actually worth paying attention to, stuff.

Question one, why did he come back? Of course for love of the game, blah, blah, blah. I think that it’s possible that he came back because of his ‘iron man’ streak that he has. If his ankle was the reason for retirement, then that means that his streak comes to an end, due to an injury.He isn’t going to let that happen. He wants to quit on his terms, and those terms would have another championship in them.

That brings me to my second question. Is Brett’s team good enough to get him to the Superbowl? Sydney Rice is a pro-bowl receiver who is going to be out until mid-season and who knows if he will be the same Sydney Rice as last year? Percy Harvin is another instrumental guy that has question marks around his health. But there is no question mark on whether the Vikings need him or not.

If Brett Favre is the key to the Vikings success on offense this year, then Adrian Peterson must be the gas, engine and the tires. If AP can hold on to the rock (and stay healthy), then the sky is the limit for the purple and gold. We all know he can run, so hold on to the ball and you will stay in the game and rack up the yards and wins.

On defense the Vikes are so good that it’s boring to talk about. I will, however, mention the best defensive line in the league. There, now Jared Allen can’t complain.

My third question and the bigger picture. What is Favre trying to accomplish? Well, if the Vikings win the Superbowl then Favre is hailed as the greatest QB that has ever walked the face of the Earth and all is well in the world. BUT, what happens if he doesn’t? Then we go thru it all again next year. Duh, duuh, duuuh….

I Learned A Lot?

What have I learned? That's a tougher question than it seems.
I guess that i will start out with the obvious things. I have learned different formats for writing stories. Chronological, day-in-the-life, problem and solution, catalog, repetitive are all examples of formats. As much as I would like to dismiss these as being boring stuff I cannot tell you how important they are. But what I learned most about formats is that I definitely have my favorites and least favorite styles. I like the ones where you start the story off with an anecdote in the lead then go on with the story and finish up the anecdote in the ending. It's kind of like "The Rest of the Story," with Paul Harvey. But if I am going to be totally honest, I don't know which format that is called. Maybe I didn't learn those things.
Leads, nut graphs, endings and theme statements are another bunch of terms that I should have learned. All kidding aside, I did learn them! The leads and endings are my favorite part of writing a story. To see if you can get a reader hooked by the first couple of sentences is pretty fun. If you can give the reader a good ending, most likely, they will walk away with the thought that it was a good story. It's like a movie. You could watch a great movie with a terrible ending and end up hating it. But if the final scene is good, you're going to remember it.
But the most important thing that I have learned from UNC is that news writing is not just jotting down what happened, the who, what, when, and where. It's telling a story and making your readers care about what happens to the characters in your story.
And now the sappy stuff. I learned that I can actually write. Granted it's just sports writing but I know that I can do it.

Know Who You Are and Who You Aren't

I wrote a story on the head coach of the UNC Bear's baseball team, Kevin Smallcomb. I really thought that this was the easiest assignment that a teacher or an editor could assign. A-day-in-the -life story is what it is called. Why did I think it would be so easy? Well, all you do is hang out with the person you are writing the story about, ask some questions to the subject and the people that he interacts with during your time with them and then write about what happened. Easy, right? Should have been.
So here it is. I listen to a lot of sports talk radio and there is this radio show host named Sandy Kluff. If you ever listen to him, then you probably know what I am talking about. He comes off as pompous and all-knowing. He goes off on these analogies that, to me, just sounds like he is trying to show everybody how smart he is. And don't get me wrong, he does seem smart, but he is mostly over the top.
That is kind of what I did with my story on Smallcomb and I didn't realize it until I got my paper back from my professor. When I finally did realize what I did, I was kind of mad at myself because that is just not me. I am glad that it happened now because I can make sure that I don't do the same thing in the future instead of becoming another Sandy Kluff.

My First Well Writen Profile

I wrote a profile on the captain of the University of Northern Colorado's baseball team, Kevin Sandberg. The story was challenging in the aspect that I really did not know much about him when I decided to write the story. When I had a chance to talk to him, it made the story a lot easier because he was very open and easy to talk to. He did give me a lot of sports cliches but at the same time he did answer every question that I had. The research that I did is what made me decide on Sandberg as my topic. He was at the top of virtually every team stat in 2008. I need to work on getting more information from other sources is what I learned from doing the rewrite, but I think that the story turned out well.