Work with a Writing Tutor

About Online Tutoring

Sample Student Submission

for Online Tutoring

 

Name: Garrett G

Email Address: goodstudent@yahoo.com

Student I.D. number: 111111111

Colorado Resident: yes
 
Class: ENGL 1020

Instructor: Ali Hill

Due Date: 11/17/97

In Teacher's Words:
To explain why something is the way it is. My paper is about why football is popular.
In Student's Words:
I chose to write about why football is popular. I said that it is popular because it is violent, then I use the rest of the paper to prove that football is violent.

Questions:
1. if you watch footbal, are there any reasons that I left out?
2. if you don't watch football, did this paper explain to you why other people do?
Checkboxes
 
Paper:
Garrett G
Comp 1020
Ali Hill
November 12, 1997
Why Football is Popular
Every Sunday millions of Americans flip on the TV and sit in front of it for three hours straight. Why would anyone want to sit still for three hours, let alone three hours every Sunday for 16 weeks. There is only one force in the universe that can cause people to become insane enough to actually watch television for three consecutive hours, on Sundays, and that is football. But why, you might ask, can the game of football glue diehard fans to the tube? Well, people like violence and football is just war with rules. Think about it. The armies are limited to eleven men each and one battlefield a week. Just because no one gets killed does not mean it's not war. I'll show you why, but in order to explain why football is like war, it is necessary to look at several different things: the violent nature of the sport and the names of plays and actions in football, the players attitudes, the mile high salute, and the way football resembles war emotional. All of these things show us why football
The game is very violent when you think about it. The players wear so much padding that only their arms and a small portion of their legs go unprotected. Only hockey players wear more pads and that's just to keep warm on the ice. To begin every play 22 men charge each other head to head, trying to knock each other off balance. To end every play someone has to get "tackled". In other words, the player is pounded into the ground by the immense body weight of the players on the other team. The game has many similarities to war in other ways. The quarterback, the key player for each team, mimics a military general: calling the shots, choosing the plays, and leading the team. The quarterback chooses which type of play to execute. He can choose a passing play or a running play. Long passes are called long bombs and short passes are called bullets. Passing can be compared to air strikes and running to ground attacks. In fact a teams running game is usually called the running attack. Here is another example: One team attacks and the other team defends; the similarities are endless.

The players' attitudes effect the way the game is played. The way they act in between plays usually sets the mood of the game. They celebrate when they do something good and resort to calling members of the other team names when they perform poorly. The players also use name-calling to try to intimidate the other team, to make them "mess up". Sometimes the players go too far, as was the case when I was at a game, and a fistfight broke out among the players.

The mile high salute is just an example of celebrating when you do something right. The mile high salute, which is just exactly like the military salute, is performed after Broncos players' score. The Broncos' running backs now call themselves the no limit soldiers. This is just another example of the game's violent nature rising to the surface. The Broncos probably picked that name because of the game's violent nature and similarity to war. The fans love it because it's cool. It represents war but that does not seem to stop them from liking it. Most fans don't even think about how much football is like war. Subconsciously they know it does, but no one ever stops long enough to think about it.

Football is like war in emotional ways too. Football players are treated like war heroes, not to mention that they are paid millions of dollars. Retired football players often sit around and tall about the games they played in their youth, just like war heroes talk about battles fought long ago. Football players get special treatment, as was evident during the blizzard that hit Colorado several weeks ago. During the blizzard one of the only flights to leave DIA was the broncos charter flight to buffalo. Why are football players given such special treatment? Is it because they make millions of dollars? Probably, but that is only a small factor in the question of special treatment, the real reason is that people think of them as war heroes and soldiers fighting the good fight, that there fans only wish they could take part in.

So as you can see football is war with rules, violence without blood, warfare without injustice. This violent nature captures the imagination of the fans. Even the Nation Football League's new slogan, "Feel The Power", sounds like it has something to do with war. There is only one major deference between war and football. When one side loses they can come back and play again another day.

Date: 11/12/97
Time: 4:15 pm

see other samples