Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The awkward art of the recap intro

I was reading through the New York Times recaps of this week's football games, not expecting to find anything useful for this blog. However, I began to notice that recaps are not necessarily as cut-and-dry as I assumed. Consider the first two paragraphs of Howard Ulman's recap of the Patriots-Bengals season opener:

"Tom Brady survived a frightening car crash, signed a rich contract and ended his week with what he wants most: a win.

The quarterback who makes headlines on and off the field threw two of his three touchdown passes to Wes Welker, who returned after a speedy recovery from a serious knee injury, and led the New England Patriots to a 38-24 opening win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday."

Recaps serve a very basic purpose in sportswriting: to describe the events of a game. However, I noticed that they often open with a quick and dirty human interest angle. The opening paragraph is fairly awkward, to be honest, and it jumps very rapidly to a description of the game, and then suddenly (mid-sentence, no less) to another angle of interest (Wes Welker's return from injury).

Recaps routinely open in this sort of fashion: an awkwardly phrased intro that sets up some sort of drama and allows for an easy segue into the description of the game. Here is Barry Wilner's intro to a recap of the Jets-Ravens game: "The Baltimore Ravens starred in this version of "Hard Knocks," punishing the New York Jets with plenty of them."

Wilner refers to the HBO show "Hard Knocks", which followed the Jets preseason, and uses it to make a pun about the Ravens' defensive performance.

Or how about Chris Duncan's intro to his story on the Colts-Texans game: "It took a record day by an undrafted running back for the Houston Texans to end years of frustration against Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts. "

How's that for drama? An undrafted running back, leading his team to victory after years of futility against a powerhouse rival and their superstar quarterback.

That intro works quite well, I think. It relies on a story from the game, and doesn't try to jam a smorgasbord of information to create drama like the Ulman recap. Recapping games is not as easy as I've long thought, I think, and writing a good intro is probably the most challenging aspect of the form.

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