Leitch on Darren Rovell

Didn't get past the stuff just below the photo. Scrolled down and realized that instead of reading another overlong column about name writers being jerkfaces to each other, I could just pull up Twitter and be entertained by one-liners.

I like Rovell (on Twitter). I like Leitch (on all platforms). Travis is hit-and-miss on all platforms. None of them escape my usual preference for a writer getting in, making the point, and getting out.

 

An argument is best kept as concise, non-repetitive and focused as possible. Agreed? Rarely is an argument on such a minor thing like Darren Rovell requiring 3,000 words.

A narrative, well, can be of differing lengths depending what's needed to tell the story in a manner it deserved.

I'm not exactly the No. 1 champion longform pieces, mind you. (as will be attested here.)

 

If Jefferson (and his editors) needed 1,300 words for the Declaration of Independence, you sure as hell don't require 3,000 for a critique of Darren Rovell. Or 10,000 for a piece on cricket. Our time in a day and on this planet is finite - sometimes I wonder if the brotherhood understands that.

 

People have written books about cricket.

This seems like a really arbitrary standard.

A story deserves what a story deserves. Sometimes a story on the Super Bowl deserves 400 words. Sometimes a story about cricket deserves 150,000.

 

You're not going to find any argument from me on the cricket piece. But I think you'll hear the rebuttal that the piece was very well received and it served a purpose of drawing more readers outside the US. So more than a few appreciated it.

I dunno about the "cabal." I think that's a unusually strong word for it. And, at any rate, I rarely see any substantive arguments against a given piece that wouldn't lend itself to simple jealousy at play. Criticism of anything short of an Adam Sandler movie takes talent, focus and commitment.

 

Gettysburg Address was 270 words. Why do we need any stories to be any longer than that?

 

Part of maturing as a writer is showing a little self-restraint - not gilding the lily every chance you get.
That drunken approach is what piles up the word count and loses a reader.
Anyway, we all agree the Travis thing was a bloated mess. That's good.

 

I'd tweak that a little by saying: The content contained in the column/story helps determine whether all the words spent on it were necessary.

I'd argue, for example, that most history books are much too long and boring. Team of Rivals? I'd lop 200 pages from it. It's just an accumulation of facts and details that detract from the narrative and at times obscure the hell out of it.

On the piece in question...Clay Travis has a small point to make, does not make it with any support (he lumps sports bloggers together as a whole, like all bloggers care about Darren Rovell, names no one in particular, and offers no examples) and makes this small point repeatedly and inartfully.

 

I'd argue Team of Rivals had very little fat on it.
It's an ensemble work. Need a little room to unpack all that.

 

So, just to be clear, on the pop culture/sports media comparison chart, it seems: ESPN is the Death Star, Rebellious Blogger Nation is the cast of Mean Girls, Sports Illustrated is Cheers during the Rebecca years, Yahoo is the East Dillon Lions from Friday Night Lights, Boston's traditional sports media is Stadler and Waldorf from The Muppets, Grantland is like Freaks and Geeks if James Franco was really into the NBA and Survivor, Fox Sports is a head-scratching blend of Biff Tannen from Back to the Future as well as Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties, CBS Sports is early episodes of Taxi (if Christopher Lloyd had a mohawk), Sports on Earth is an episode of Joey without a laugh track, SB Nation is the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tattooine, The Classical is Dr. Cox from Scrubs, and Traditional Newspapers are Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

 

This should be framed and hung on a wall somewhere.

 

Eddie Sherman has a lot of work ahead of him.