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Sample Tutor Response

 

Tutor Name:

LESLEY HOPPERT

Session Completed: 1/21/98, 4:27

Overall impression of paper:

Hello, Garrett. Thanks for sending your paper to the online writing lab. I'll start by looking at the paper globally, that is, looking at it as a whole. Then, I'll answer the questions you asked. I'll also put **...** into the paper for local comments (about individual words and sentences).

The two aspects of this paper which stand out most are its strong, unified theme and its interesting style. The strong approach comes from your choosing one comparison (football to war) and continuing it throughout the paper. You follow through with the promise (to your readers) to look at the many ways in which football resembles warfare. The style comes from your lively, casual tone and also the vivid supporting details which make your topic real for readers.

Globally, you have a very good paper. On a few of your comparisons, you might think more carefully about the logic of your assertions. I'll be nitpicky (like a teacher!) about some of these points, so you can rethink them if you want. Look below, under your questions, for my comments on your questions, and there are more comments within the paper. I'll also write a few concluding remarks.

Specific comments about paper:

ON QUESTIONS 1 AND 2: You ask if there are any reasons you left out. Actually, your paper only focuses on one reason why football is popular. However, this is not a bad situation, so maybe what you really want to ask is whether or not you left out any ways why football is like war...?

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. **I'd use a question mark here. For the following sentence: This can be seen as an exaggeration. In my experience, many people will "veg" in front of the TV even when football is not on! They might watch other sports, movies, etc.** 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. **Good comparison** Just because no one gets killed does not mean it's not war. I'll show you why, but **To make this sentence a little more concise, why not omit "I'll show you why, but"? This would also make the sentence more formal in an academic sense.** 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 **players'** attitudes, the mile high salute, and the way football resembles war emotional. **emotionally, right?** All of these things show us why footb **...why football is a warlike sport, or something like that, I guess...? This sentence was cut off in transmission.**

**Your thesis statement clearly outlines the structure of your explanation. I just see one problem: Most of your areas of comparison look at football in general, but the mile high salute is specific to the Broncos. Do you want to add a qualifying phrase, such as, "in the case of the Denver Broncos," to that one (maybe after it in parentheses)?**

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". **Why put that word in quotation marks?** I 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. **In the previous and following sentences, you mention the quarterback as the leader of the team. Not being a big football fan, I asked someone else about this. He said that the star player, usually the quarterback, does have leadership among the players, but that the plays are planned in advance and called by someone else. This does not take away from your comparison to war. Maybe the coach is like a general and the quarterback is like a major?** 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 **In fact, a team's** 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 **watch out for mixups between affect and effect. The verb here should be affect.** 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. **This paragraph is rather short. What about spectators' attitudes and their intense loyalty? These are areas which also compare to war.**

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' **no appostrophe needed** 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 *love what? I lost the noun you are referring to here** 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, **is** but no one ever stops long enough to think about it.

Football is like war in emotional ways too. **I'm not sure why the ways in this paragraph are more "emotional" than in the other paragraphs. I suggest that you work on rephrasing this topic sentence. I think the focus is that football heroes are treated like war heroes (actually, in my opinion, much better!)** 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 **talk** 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 **Broncos'** charter flight to buffalo. **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. **This sentence is a run-on. The comma should be a period or a semicolon. (Also, do all fans really want to play football, and do all citizens want to go to war? I think fans and non-soldiers often take a vicarious pleasure in the sport/war, but don't necessarily want to put themselves in danger. Just a thought.)**

So as you can see football is war with rules, violence without blood, warfare without injustice. **Interesting comparisons. You used "war" and "warfare." How about a synonym, such as "battle"?** 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 **check spelling** between war and football. When one side loses they can come back and play again another day.

SO, OVERALL, you have used great examples to show the extent of the comparison between football and war, and hinted at the darker side of fans' extreme love of the game. I really enjoyed the paper. Remember, in the couple of places where I suggested changes in topic sentences...if you want to use them, go back and update your thesis accordingly. I think I addressed the areas you checked off, except the one about sentence structure and variety. You have done well in this area; I didn't notice weak sentence patterns or any lack of transitions.

Please write back if you have any questions about what I said or want any more specific explanation. You can also find me in the writing center on Monday afternoon. I'd be happy to look at a revised version of this paper.

Lesley Hoppert

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