After the Duke men's lacrosse team lost by a goal in the finals of the national title game, Jason Whitlock captured the thoughts of sportswriters around the country, writing that team's sloppy play denied them "the storybook finish many of us wanted." Perhaps Gelf missed out on a demented sub-genre of the modern fairytale, but it seems like a story featuring inebriated strippers and bogus rape charges doesn't quite cut it as mythical fare.

Let's consider the potential plotline: A combination of lies, poor decisions, and strained race relations force a heroic group of lacrosse players to defeat the misdirected wrath of Al Sharpton and Nancy Grace, somehow embodied by the Johns Hopkins team. Since Gelf can't imagine how that would work, and what the illustrations would look like, maybe we should ask the New York Post, the Washington Times, and USA Today, which all used the phrase "storybook" in their coverage of the game. Or maybe the Detroit Free-Press, which went with "fairytale." Or the Washington Post, which described it as a potential "Hollywood ending."

Instead, let's listen to Coach John Danowski, who took over the team when his predecessor Mike Pressler was fired in the wake of the scandal. Though he was probably describing his team's disappointment in the championship game, he could also have been giving a lecture on journalistic clichés. "This isn't Hollywood," he said in the post-game press conference. "There are no storybook endings for these kids."