What The People Want: Components of a Legendary Sports Narrative

This project aims to identify particular traits, specifically off-field and non-gameplay, of sports narratives that elevate them to legendary, beloved storylines among the canon of sports history, focusing on the “big three” American sports of baseball, basketball, and football. This was accomplished through an analysis of existing literature on the topic of sports narratives, as well as three case studies of individual narratives from varied sports and points in history. Each study, each representing either a legendary, hate-watched, or forgotten narrative, was broken down into its background, relevant people, events, and contemporary media coverage, and lasting legacy. The various aspects of these studies were then compared and contrasted, with concepts from the literature review being included in the synthesis of the storylines. Ultimately, the presence of a clear protagonist-antagonist dynamic, balanced media coverage, high stakes, and perceived authenticity were determined to be crucial for a sports narrative to gain legendary status. In addition, the notion of authentic coverage was found to have been able to shift public perception of a narrative as well as “resurrect” forgotten storylines of the past.