Saturday afternoon, Twitter was blowing up when Johnny Football went up against a number 1 Alabama team. I then decided to check the game out and witness the greatness of both schools dueling for the headlines. The game itself was exciting and high scoring which made for a memorable bout between the two powerhouse schools. When I went on espn.com to screw around on my fantasy team, the headline story was No. 1 Alabama beats Johnny Manziel, No. 6 Texas A&M, I decided to check the article out, to watch the recap video, but I was fairly impressed by the whole piece all together.
This article encompasses the elements of print, video, and interactivity. When you first click on the link you are automatically able to see the score of the game and the highlight video if you scroll down slightly. Hovering over the video are options to see comments, box scores, play by plays, videos, pictures, and drives. You also have the option to share the article to your Twitter followers and Facebook friends. The print featured in the article is under the video and the video playlist.
I think that the video is the corner stone of this article, without it, it would be somewhat dull and uninteresting. For sports articles especially the video has to be well made and front and center to give the reader what they want. After the highlight video the article does a good job of setting up the next video on the video playlist, and it’s good that it doesn’t start automatically like other sites. The commentator of the highlight video was really enthusiastic and knowledgeable which made the video more engaging and exciting to watch even though it’s just a highlight video the guy commentating sounds as if it were a live game. The fact that under the video the journalist does a good job of writing an engaging piece adding links to every player he mentions really gives the reader insight if they aren’t familiar with the college teams. On right the side of the article as you read down it shows you literally every stat of the game, researcher notes and scoring summary which is very informative if you missed the game. As you scroll down the page, the bar on top of the page called the “Game HQ” scrolls down with the reader, this bar informs you about the scores of other college games going on so you don’t lose sight.
This article is pretty well made but there are a few things I would like to change. The fact that the video playlist has virtually unnecessary videos after the first two videos, since the game is over why would I want to watch the preview of the game and what analyst think the result is going to be. Another thing that I would change is in the print section. Enveloped in the print are little boxes and preview a similar story and have a picture so it’s distracting if you are trying to read the article itself. At the end of the article there are 3rd party sponsored links, but not necessarily for other sports stories but for Hollywood articles, like If I’m reading an article about college football why would I care what Kate Middleton looks like. I would also change the fact that the discussion boards are on a separate page, I would slap the discussion board on the bottom of the article since it looked bare anyway, I feel like most websites do this where they add a comment section below to cap off the article with other peoples beliefs and opinions, and I know I have been accustomed to reading some of the comments just to see if people agree with me or just to witness the pure idiocracy.
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