Virginia Tech and Boston College

Saturday, October 10th was the homecoming football game for Virginia Tech. They played against Boston College and the final score was forty eight to fourteen, with the Hokies coming out as the victor. Once this game was over, it was discussed on ESPN and written about in several newspapers. I chose one particular article from the Washington Post website titled, “Hokies Hound Boston College in 48-14 Win” by Mark Viera to write a rhetorical analysis on. The article was very well written but had some minor flaws that may have pushed some readers away.
In this article, there were two main ideas the author wanted to get across: explain how well Virginia Tech played on Saturday and that Virginia Tech has a big challenge ahead of them. Both of these have a similar purpose of informing the audience of Virginia Tech’s overall standing in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), with the focal point being the game they had just played on Saturday against Boston College. Since the article was based on a topic such as football, the author most likely was not writing to a general audience.
The audience who would most likely read this article and have the most interest in it would include: college football fans, but mainly Virginia Tech or Boston College fans. Knowing this, the author should keep in mind that any college football fan could be reading his article and therefore he should not favor Virginia Tech or Boston College. If the author is being biased while writing on a topic such as this, it can easily make an audience lose interest or even make some angry. Many people have a lot of pride in their favorite football team and some may be easily offended if the author is writing bad remarks about their team. If the author is being biased and talking down on a team it is very noticeable in the word choice and technique of the article.
The techniques this author mainly uses in this article are logos and ethos. In his writing the author uses logos arguments by explaining specific facts about the game. The author explains to the audience key plays throughout the game which include how many yards were gained of lost and other specific details that gives readers some knowledge of what went on in the game. He also included specific achievements or failed attempts of certain players, to show how they may have affected the outcome of the game. The author also included with in his article, the rankings of Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech and the current seasonal record for Virginia Tech and Boston College. This tells the audience how well each of the teams are doing so far in the season. Because the author uses so many facts, it makes him seem like he has a lot of knowledge about the game and both of the teams, which makes him more trustworthy.
The other technique the author used—ethos—made him a little less trustworthy. Although the author had all of his facts correct, he seemed to have his own agenda. It seems throughout the article that the author slightly favors Virginia Tech because they were the winning team, but he tries to cover it up by saying that Virginia Tech has “not always played consistently enough to warrant entry in the championship conversation”. But this is the only time the author talks negatively about Virginia Tech and the rest of the article seems to put down Boston College because they lost. This becomes more obvious once you take a closer look at the word choice and tone of the author.
When the author referred to Virginia Tech players or their performances he used very optimistic words. Some of the words he used to describe them include “efficient”, “impressive”, “positive”, “businesslike”, “dazzling”, and “crisp”. All of these words and the way he puts them into a sentence make it seem like the author is speaking in a tone that is favoring Virginia Tech. Furthermore, once the writer starts to talk about Boston College, the tone seems to become negative. He refers to Boston College being “in a daze as [they] tried to figure out the Hokies’ defense”. This makes it sound like Boson had no clue what was going on in the situation they were in and this type of language could possibly offend someone. The author also used words such as “hound” and “snuffed” to explain how badly they lost to Virginia Tech. These words may have not been the best for the author to choose because it could have turned the audience off by making them angry, so therefore he should consider being more courteous and aware of his audience.
One other minor flaw in this article was the way the author presented his argument. In his first paragraph he says how Virginia Tech’s football team watches the films of other teams. This makes the opening very weak because it is irrelevant to the rest of the article. Then in the second and third paragraphs, the author starts to talk about Virginia Tech’s next “big challenge” Georgia Tech. These paragraphs are out of place because he only says a couple things about the game against Georgia Tech, including a quote from a Virginia Tech football player, then all of a sudden starts to talk about the game against Boston College, and then later refers back to the game against Georgia Tech near the end of the article. The piece would flow much better and be more organized if the author had talked about the game against Boston College first and then talked about their next game to come against Georgia Tech at the end of the article.
Overall the article was written well except for some minor flaws that may have pushed away some audiences. The words the author chose to describe the game and players were creative, but they may have been offensive to those who are not Virginia Tech fans. Although it can be a challenge to write an article that does not sound like it is favoring the winner, but I think this author could have seemed less biased by pointing out some good things that Boston College did in the game and changing the title of the article.