Sports Drama - Typical Story Lines

In this post I will be looking at typical story lines which are found in sporting dramas. The two most common story lines are the underdog story and the tragedy/comeback story.

The Underdog story.

A basic outline of the Underdog story would be the movie Rocky. We're a small time boxer in the city of Philadelphia gets the opportunity of a life time as he is given the chance to fight for the heavy weight champion of the world. The odds are greatly stacked against him, however we are taken on a cinematic journey were we see a once average boxer, who would easily loose the fight turn and mould into a real boxer, due to the help of his mentor. He then upsets the Champion and takes the belt. This is the extremely generic underdog story.













The comeback/tragedy story.

The comeback usually contains a athlete who was on-top of his sporting world however due to a tragic event whether that being a death in the family, or a freak accident which prevents him from being able to do the sport that he loves. We watch a once great character hit rock bottom, however he then scratches his way back to the top slowly but surely to get on-top of the sporting world again. This resinates with the audience greatly as we are taken on an emotional rollercoaster watching the demise of a man and also how he brought himself back. A movie which is the impediment of a Tragedy/comeback story would be southpaw. A boxer who was winning his fights then has the tragic death of his with, this leads to him abusing drugs and alcohol and the further loss of his daughter to child protective services, however he comes back from the brutal blows and wins the title after years of being away from the sport.