"Verbosity" also encourages empathy. The piece does a good job relaying the lengths several players go through to achieve the sleep they want. It also gives a good overview of what their travel schedule actually is. Let's not pretend that a three sentence summary contains the same amount of information as a long-form article.

(And to counter the inevitable follow-up: yes, I know many people think there is too much human-interest, irrelevant personal information in such reporting. But there's still lots more relevant information.)