eld for downs. |

=3. Long Football Story.=--The third class of football story is the long
detailed account. This is all that is left of the elaborate write-ups of
the season's big games that were printed a few years ago and may be seen
occasionally now. Ten or twenty years ago it was not unusual for an
editor to run several pages, profusely illustrated, on a big eastern
football game. The story was written up from every possible
aspect--athletic, social, picturesque, etc. Every play was described in
detail and sometimes a graphic diagram of the play was inserted. Each
phase was handled by a different reporter and the whole thing was given
a prominence in the paper out of all proportion with its real
importance. Such a treatment of athletic news has now been very largely
discarded.

The outgrowth of this elaborate treatment is the common one- or
two-column account in the pink or green sporting pages. All of the
various aspects of the big game are still to be seen, condensed to the
smallest amount of space; and this brief account of the different
aspects of the game is arranged as an introduction of a half column or
less to head the running account of the game. This is the sort of story
that is used to report the Yale-Harvard games and the more important
middle western games. Its form has become very definitely settled and a
correspondent can almost write his story of the big game by rule.

The first part of the story, called the introduction, consists of five
or six general paragraphs. The material in this introduction is
arranged, paragraph by paragraph, in the order of its importance.
Following this is a running account of the game which may occupy a
column or more, depending upon the importance of the contest. At the end
is a table showing the line-up and a summary of the results.

The introduction of the big football or baseball story usually follows a
very definite order. There are certain things which it must always
contain: the result of the game; how the scoring was done; a
characterization of the playing; the stars; the condition of the weather
and the field; the crowd; etc. The reader always wishes to know these
things about the game even if he does not care to read the running
account. It is equally evident that the scoring is of greater interest
than the crowd, and that a comparison of the teams is more important
than the cheering. And so a reporter may almost follow a stereotyped
outline