Stats Overdone in Sports Articles

The article named 'Surging Benglas discover defense' in the USA today's sports section about the NFLs Cincinnati Bengals and there improved defense gives readers an insight to how the Bengals have improved their defense and gone on a winning streak. The article is broken up into four sections, each titled in a bold; '1st', '2nd', 3'rd' and '4th', indicating the downs in football to give the reader a the atmosphere of the game while reading. It is called 'Four Downs' and written by Larry Weisman. Each topic is totally different so the main title of the article becomes confusing because it appears to be about the Cincinnati Bengals, but you are decieved when you see that there is only one sections (1st) about the Bengals and then moves on to other topics for 2nd, 3rd and 4th down.

The article is written well, and I didn't notice any errors to the format or writing itself, but I did notice that the entire article consisted of mainly statistics from the season and had no signifigant figures. The article mentions different players and their statistics, or different NFL records that are being approached and/or broken, such as the age record for the oldest player in NFL history, Morten Anderson at 46. I wasn't interested as much in the statistics of it than to what the article potentially offered, which could've been a story about the improved Bengals defense. The article could have gone into a good story, or at least one more intriguing than a bunch of sloppy statistics. The journalist could've went into detail upon why the Bengals defense has improved, while interviewing players and coaches about their reasoning for the more productive play defensively as of late and how it is affecting the team.

The short article that was loaded with meaningless statistics could potentially have been a good story about the changes made in the midseason of the NFL. The Bengals are a perfect example of that, so it really could've been a solid feature. The title of the article leads you to think that there will be a story like that but when you start reading it turns into meaningless, jumbled statistics. I don't think a writer should be paid to write mini-clip articles about a potentially interesting story, then write three more short sections on wacky stats from across the NFL that have no meaning to anyone. Journalists are supposed to do research and go deep into the storys, be it a feature, opinion or hard news about the topic. This type of article is not well done, and though it has a catchy set up, it's virtually pointless because gives little insight to the league and just throws around statistics. Thats what box scores are for, not for story space. Give me a story, not statistics.

-Z man