Theme of this entry: Themes for football sections

What do we think about mixing the concept of fantasy sports with high school athletics?

That’s the question I have after reviewing the sports sections that took part in the second annual exchange of football preview sections coordinated by yours truly.

I know the high school fantasy football topic isn’t something new. In fact, while trying to look up some information on one of the exchange participants, The Citizens’ Voice in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., I found that paper has had a high school football fantasy draft since 1999.

But I had not seen the concept incorporated into a high school football preview until seeing this year’s slick section from the News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio.

Page 15 of the 16-page broadsheet section explained the first draft, with eight teams selected by staffers. A ratings list ran down the left rail, and an explanation of the scoring also was included.

Bill Tilton, who wrote the story about the draft on Page 15, also wrote a column on Page 2 explaining the section.

"(S)ome people on the staff expressed concerns over actually ranking and assigning numbers and positions to high school student-athletes, or, in more direct terms, picking one player over another," he wrote.

"I tried to quickly douse that potential fire because I have faith in you, the reader. I believe, um, correction, I know, that you are all smart enough fans to realize these rankings are not some biased list of favorites, or that we are ‘rooting’ for the guys in the top 10 and nobody else."

He explained that the rankings are "based on projections, not on the individual players’ personality or media savvy or whether his parents have subscriptions to The News-Herald."

In addition to a clean design on team previews, the section employs the fantasy theme with a stats box of the area’s all-time best seasons in passing and rushing that are paired with feature stories on the top running backs and a two quarterbacks — one in a spread offense and the other running the option.

As we all know, it’s important to know your audience, and diehard high school football plans probably enjoyed the section. I’m sure there are some markets where readers, coaches, parents might be less receptive to the concept. Would it work for your audience?

I will have a couple more installments based off the exchange this month. I thought, across the board, the covers were impressive, so I will showcase those in the next entry. And there are some examples of presentations for team info and schedule/stats info in this entry, but I will devote an entry to featuring those as well.

Other themes
Sauk Valley Newspapers, an APSE award winner last year with a "Football for Dummies" theme for its 2008 preview section, came back this year with "Football & Farming."

The cover was a takeoff on the Farmer’s Almanac.

The 56-page tab section included conference previews packaged with a series of first-person stories by players called "Why I play."

The team preview pages continued the theme with terminology: The coach is field boss; the schedule is hoedowns; the five-year results graph is the yield report; and the roster is the workforce.

A full-page portrait and brief "Down on the farm" bio accompanied each team.

The North County Times in Escondido, Calif., which last year looked at the greatest games played for each school, this year had a theme of "Traditions."

Using a similar template to last year, the preview information for each team appeared on the left-hand page and the feature story on each school’s tradition appeared on the right-hand page.

The marquee players feature that ran with each team was reminiscent of publishing a football card for the standout player.

The TimesDaily (below), from Florence, Ala., had a theme of "Then & Now." Each player feature in the preview had a picture of the player from this season and one from that player’s youth football days.

The Southeast Missourian (below) in Cape Girardeau eschewed the typical player or team feature on the cover of its 10-page broadsheet edition and instead did a photo illustration and story about the money spent on high school football.

Charts show the percentage of athletic budget and a school’s coaching salaries spent on the football program.