Examining the Sports Narrative, Part 1: Perspective

I’d be remiss to attempt to discuss the narrative of sports in its entirety within a single article.  A topic of such complexity deserves a more thorough approach without concern over whether or not I can address every component in the time it takes to brew your morning cup of coffee.  Thus in order to address the numerous facets of the subject, this article is only the first of many installments to come. So, without further ado, I bring you:

EXT. HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD — NIGHT

As his team lines up along the snow-veiled goaline, MIKEL, 18, eyes the game clock: 0:02. Beside it, the score reads, “BULLDOGS: 24, AWAY: 28.”

He looks to his MOTHER in the front row of the crowded bleachers, and she says something to him as she places her hands against her heart: the only word he can make out is “proud.”

Mikel lines up behind center in the shotgun.

MIKEL

Hike!

The center snaps the ball. Mikel leaps toward the endzone, sailing over the lineman. He stretches out the ball as two defenders sandwich him in a lethal tackle, and as he falls to the ground, he hears the referees blow their WHSTLES: TOUCHDOWN.

The crowd erupts as the team piles onto Mikel in the endzone, celebrating their last-second comeback victory.

The high stakes, the ticking clock, the wants and needs of our protagonist and the obstacles he must overcome to achieve them—whether it’s inside the ring or on the field or the track or turf or whatever, competition amplifies all narratives, and sports provide us with the perfect venue for the physical incarnation of our characters’ journeys. 

Whether used for a single scene or as the foundation of an entire film or TV show, sports are to screenwriters as pinewood derby kits are to boyscouts: all the necessary components have been provided; you need only decide how best to use them.  You don’t know Mikel’s story any better than I.  But with the above scene already in place as a tangible moment of accomplishment, how you choose to develop his character from there is limited only by your imagination.

Just as my sister is a fan of Friday Nigh Lights despite having no interest in actual football, you need not be a sports fan in order to utilize the narrative of sports within your own screenplays.  To the best of my knowledge, Aaron Sorkin never rowed crew in any capacity; but he understood the metaphorical significance behind the Winklevosses losing by less than a boat-length at the Henley Royal Regatta in England and thus knew how to utilize the scene within The Social Network.  Even with fictionalized stories largely centered upon the sport itself like Remember the Titans and The Rookie, our investment in the game derives solely from our investment in the protagonist, situating our perspective within the thematic implications of the narrative.

But the real narrative of sports, the world from which these stories arise, has no universally defined perspective, no single agreeable protagonist.  The narrative of sports is a crossroads where countless stories intertwine, a web of fleeting narratives that undulate in and out of relevance with respect to the fickle preoccupations of our culture.  A single athlete will be loved one day, then loathed the next, and then forgotten altogether as a dozen other stories rise and fall in between.  Above all, the narrative of sports is defined by our own singularly defined investment in the game, a game in which one team’s victory is always another team’s defeat, and one man’s hero is always another man’s villain. 

Life is magnified in sports, and the narratives we find within it are more than just that of a few compelling characters.  They are the stories of our players, our teams, our cities, and most of all… ourselves.

The Rudy Paradox: Why Rudy Was Destined for Cinema

November 8, 1975:  On their opponents three-yard line with 38 seconds left in their final home game of the season, Notre Dame already has the game locked up with a 17 to 3 lead over Georgia Tech.  Being the a-holes that they are, the Fighting Irish forgo the classic kneel-down to run out the clock and instead run up the score with another touchdown.  But this seemingly dickish move ultimately pays off because it provides a scrawny but beloved walk-on senior the chance to play on the kick return and Georgia Tech’s final offensive play; and when the kid sacks the QB, everyone cheers and hoists him on their shoulders and chants his name even though the sack was relatively meaningless within the game because everyone’s so happy this kid was able to have this one moment in his otherwise negligible and statistic-less college career.

Of course, if he hadn’t gotten that meaningless sack, there would be no pivotal “tear-jerking” conclusion to Rudy, without which the film likely would never have been made, and the life that Daniel Ruttiger has built for himself based on the success of that film would cease to exist.

Yeah, I know—what kind of d-bag doesn’t like Rudy, right?  But there are other dyslexic and/or 5’6’’, 170-pound players with more successful collegiate and professional careers, and lord knows Dexter McCluster ain’t getting his own film anytime soon.

I get it, though.  Rudy’s underdog story was almost thematically compelling enough without the sack, but that final scene makes the story too perfect to pass up.  As is true of all facets of our lives, sometimes stories arise that all but write themselves.  Every now and again, someone like Rudy will appear like a perfectly wrapped gift under the Christmas tree, a ideal protagonist within a neatly sketched narrative blueprint just waiting to be assembled like a Star Wars Lego Death Star—but even Santa Claus only comes once a year, and it could be longer than that before we stumble across the next Rudy.

That’s not to say that the underdog story is an anomaly within the narrative of sports—far from it.  Clay Matthews, who hails from a legacy of professional football players, joined USC as a walk-on after failing to obtain any scholarships due to his small stature (166lbs. coming out of high school).  But his hard work and dedication in the weight room and on the field has helped him evolve into an iconic, Pro Bowl linebacker for the Superbowl-winning Green Bay Packers.

Originally, a top college prospect, Mark Herzlich missed the entire 2009 season at Boston College battle Ewing’s sarcoma.  He returned to put up adequate numbers in his 2010 senior year and (ironically enough) won the Rudy Award for courage, but still went undrafted upon entering the NFL.  The New York Giants ultimately signed him as a rookie free agent going into this season, and after surviving all the initial cuts, he continues to play for them today.

The true irony is that while each of these players offer even better sports stories than Rudy—i.e. overcoming equal or greater adversity with even more successful results—it is Rudy’s sack that ultimately makes him the more easily adaptable narrative.  What is the focus of Matthews’ or Herlich’s story?  What is their ending? Rudy’s football career may have been negligible at best, his triumph less monumental than others before or after him, but that single sack provided a bookend to his story from which the rest of his narrative could easily blossom.

So how do we craft a narrative from a story that lacks such obvious inherent structure?  Whether you’re a writer trying to draw inspiration for your next screenplay or a journalist trying to find an angle for an upcoming game, the narrative of sports as a whole and the stories we draw from it all derive from that same defining element that works to shape any story of any genre: the element of perspective.

Next Week: Examining the Sports Narrative, Part 2: Obstacles