Patterns break and as for the 2019 San Francisco 49ers, this reigns true. In Grant Gordon’s article “These Niners look a lot like ’94 Super Bowl champs,” similarities between the 1994 and the 2019 Niners are made and lead to the idea that in Super Bowl LIV, the 49ers had a shot to win against the Kansas City Chiefs. As of Sunday night however, it’s evident that history was not bound to repeat itself. With this being said, it is logical to suggest that Gordon had a secret motive behind his article? A desire to pull at the heart strings of football super fans? After analyzing his message, it’s fair to say that he had no intentions but to spread interesting information with the readers of NFL.com.
The first step I took while analyzing this article was to consider the source. First of all, the author, Grant Gordon, has worked for multiple different press companies in sports editor and writer positions. He posts on a daily basis while maintaining a reputable name in the sports industry. The sources mentioned in this article lacked. Although facts were embedded into the text, citations were not available.
Although these sources were not cited, I did find that the proximity to this story did help Gordon’s case. While mthis writer probably wasn’t as present in the 1994 Super Bowl as he was in the 2020 Super Bowl, he does have credibility in the world of football. As a daily writer, he is up to speed with what is happening in the league. In addition to this, he quotes 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo directly. This adds a sense of credibility.
Another reason why I trust this article is because Grant Gordon, and all of the writers on NFL.com, are fairly independent and have standards to uphold. While each particular writer for NFL.com may have a personal bias as to which teams they support, I believe that this media source does a nice job at balancing coverage between teams. The result of unbiased writing comes from this media source’s necessity of expertise. For example, as an expert in football, Gordon is able to write with accuracy and through a nonpartisan lens.
After looking through Gordon’s twitter, I noticed that he appears to have zero biases when it comes to NFL teams. After the Chief’s took the championship on Sunday night, Gordon tweeted posts congratulating the Chief’s on their victory. This speaks volumes when it comes to the motivation behind this article. I don’t think Gordon was trying to coax anyone to bet on or to root for the Niners. I believe that he simply found correlational information that created a quite interesting article. The motive behind this story was to show that the 1994 Super Bowl Champion team and the 2019 49ers are two similar teams, thus creating an interesting twist on the story behind the 2020 Super Bowl.
Although I enjoyed this story, the evidence should have been pronounced much more clearly. This article is written by NFL.com and strictly mentions NFL stats and facts, but there is only one time a source is mentioned (that source being the NFL). Personally, this does not come off as inaccurate news, but as poor judgement of the writer. It’s hard to exaggerate or skew facts such as who coached a team, which round draft picks were in, and season records, but Gordon still should have clarified the information which he provided.
Gordon’s article had some amazing correlational information, however I did think that some facts were over-generalized. Yes, both teams had some free agent players on their roster, but that occurs on every NFL team. Essentially, some of the facts mentioned were not as noteworthy as others.
I don’t find that anything is left out because this story is facts that are strung together and connected. To grind the story down to the core, you could say that some of the differences between the 1994 49ers and the 2019 49ers were omitted however, I don’t think that anything is being marginalized in this piece.
Overall, I think that Gordon made a strong comparative piece that was able to grip me into reading more. While there are some logical and evidential changes that could be made, this article sits well with the reader. Because football is less controversial than other news, Gordon’s story would most likely come off as captivating and well written to the average reader. All in all, it’s a shame those Niners weren’t victorious this year.
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