Posts
Andrew
Russell
Jack
Hennes
ENGL
191-17
September
3, 2012
Rhetorical Analysis Paper
In this paper I will be analyzing a
news article I found about the recent NFL Ref Lockout. The ways that this whole situation has
affected not only the NFL and its players, but also the fans. All of the facts in this and information I
will be discussing and analyzing in this paper will be from this article:
This whole ordeal was happening
pretty much because the NFL wanted to change the way that refs were paid after
retirement. The old style of retirement
for an NFL ref was that they would receive a pension from the NFL that would
help them pay for any expenses that a ref would face after they retired. Rodger Goodell (the commissioner of the NFL)
wanted to change the ref’s retirement plan so that it would be more like a 401k
like plan. The NFLRA (The Nation
Football League Referee Association) didn’t like this new retirement plan
offered by the NFL so they decided to try and make a new plan. The NFL, however, took a
“We-aren’t-going-to-compromise” (nfl.com) stance and wouldn’t accept any ideas or
offers from the refs unless it was the offer that the NFL had stated. This basically caused the entire process to
grind to a complete halt and no progress on the new deal was made for at least
two months. This was all because the NFL wanted to save five million dollars a
year.
Early in August just before the
pre-season the NFLRA and the NFL finally started to somewhat make progress on
the new deal, but it was moving at a snail’s pace. They had spent the better part of a month and
a half still trying to meet an agreement but nothing seemed to be good enough
for ether side. Now the regular season started
without the refs that people were used to seeing around the field; these new
refs had been hired from NCAA and even high school football programs. These new refs were understandably slow at
making calls and sometime would miss the occasional holding call but they
didn’t seem too bad during the pre-season.
The first week of the regular season however wasn’t that clean. The new refs seemed like they couldn’t make a
right call to save their lives; plus they made a three-hour football game into
a four and a half hour game in several cases.
During the first week there were so many blown calls that the NFL had to
issue a statement saying that the refs were understandably nervous. They also added to give the refs another week
to become more comfortable with their new roles and adjust to the new speed of
the same game they’ve been refereeing for years; so that’s what most of America
did.
The next week seemed pretty good and
everything was looking good for the new refs.
Calls were made, there still was the problem with the time of games but
overall the second week went by without a big problem. Most of the people at ESPN weren’t talking
about the refs’ performance but how the players were. This calmness, however, was about to
disappear.
The third week of the regular season
started with high hopes for the ref but by Sunday night this hope was
completely gone. The Saints-Chiefs game
had some of the worst officiating so far this season and the quarterback for
the Saints was about to snap. Other
games this week were bad officiating wise; they couldn’t seem to make a right
call. This cost a few teams extra points
and timeouts but nothing that affected the outcome of a game had occurred
yet. Then came Monday Night Football,
which featured the Green Bay Packers playing the Seattle Seahawks. There were some extremely questionable calls
during this game that caused some of the halftime review to focus on the
officiating so far instead of the actual game performance. Then with zero seconds left in the 4th
quarter, the quarterback for the Seahawks threw a Hail Mary Pass to the back of
the endzone. The ball appeared to have
been caught at the same time by a Green Bay cornerback and a Seattle receiver;
they showed the play in slow motion and it showed that the cornerback for Green
Bay had intercepted the football. Packers win, game over right? Nope.
The officials in the booth took ten minutes to review the play and ruled
that the receiver had actually CAUGHT the ball therefore Seattle just scored
the game-winning touchdown. Everyone was
shocked at the call and even some Seattle players couldn’t believe the
call. On the other side of the football
Green Bay were beyond furious at the completely blown call, so much that the
entire team and the coaching staff had left the field and refused to come out
for the extra point. Green Bay’s head
coach had said that the entire game was “complete chaos”(source). When the game was finally over it was almost
unanimous that that play was completely missed; there even was blatant pass
interference on one of Green Bay’s safeties that wouldn’t ended the game
anyways. All of the talk was about the
last play and the ref’s poor officiating not the football game.
The effects of these events caused a lot
of people to begin boycotting NFL gear and games. People stopped buying NFL game packages for
TV just to show the NFL that this ref situation needed to be dealt with now. Players also got in on the action using
social media sites such as twitter to voice their opinions. For example, T.J. Lang of the Green Bay
Packers posted on his Twitter account after the controversial call of the
Packers-Seahawks game “Got F*cked by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl” (Twitter). This whole situation seemed to just spiral
out of control for three days following the Green Bay-Seattle game until finally
the NFL announced it had come to an agreement with the NFLRA officially ending
the Ref Lockout.
Analyzing this article by using Ethos, I
would have to say that it contains almost no Ethos. The majority of this article is about the
facts of what happened during most of this ref lockout so it steers clear of
using emotional opinions to tell this story.
I could be said that the fans and players would’ve had a very emotional
response to this happening but this article doesn’t use Ethos as a way to
relate to the reader.
Using Pathos, it can be said that this
article uses a very large amount of Pathos throughout the article. It uses numbers such as monetary figures and
years to explain the ref’s new retirement and salary deal. An example of this would be the following
quote from the article: “Apart from their benefit
package, the game officials' compensation will increase from an average of
$149,000 per year in 2011 to $173,000 in 2013, rising to $205,000 by 2019”
(NFL.com). I found that Pathos was used
the most frequently in this article.
Finally, using Logos to
analyze this article that it was used quite a bit also. This article is full of logic, which is
assumed since it is a news article by NFL.com (whom I trust to give the full
details). All it really states is the
facts about the lockout so the entire article is pretty much logical.
In this paper I have
analyzed an article from NFL.com about the recent NFL Referee Lockout and how
its effect on the people and players.
Using Rhetorical thinking, I have established that this article contains
almost no Ethos because it lacks emotion.
It contains a large amount of Logos since it uses logic to explain what
has happened and it contains a large amount of Pathos because it uses number
and statistic. Overall I used this
article because it was from a very trusted source that is NFL.com. It is also a very close topic to me since I
am a die-hard Green Bay Packer fan and I was completely outraged by the
Seahawk-Packer game’s refereeing. Mainly
however, I am just a football fan and I am happy to see the regular referees
back on the field.
"NFL, Referees Reach Agreement; Refs
Back on Field Thursday." NFL.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
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