Software to help keep up with standings, schedules, results, etc.

I like to keep track of accurate schedules/records/results of the teams I cover, as well as updated conference standings (for at least the major sports). I feel like that attention to detail gives me an edge over the competition and it's always nice to be able to look back a year or two or five and know exactly how my teams did.

Is there any kind of software out there that will help streamline this record-keeping process? For example, I enter all the schedules in at the beginning of the season, then as I enter in results during the season, it will automatically update each team's record and standings, and allow me to generate a report on a team, a sport, a conference, etc.

Right now, I feel like I spend a lot of time typing and retyping schedules and adding/re-adding teams' records, conference standings, etc.

Just wondering if there is anything out there like that and what folks might recommend. Thanks!

 

If you are good with MS Excel, that program works well.

 

That's some terrific irony.

 

This. If i still had a prep beat, I would make darn sure that I knew Excel inside and out, because it would make that sort of thing a lot easier.

 

OK, so I have some work to do on the attention to detail thing ... doh ... thanks for the advice though...

 

We hired a programmer a few years ago to write crime databases and the like for the newsroom. I mentioned to him one day if he ever had a free minute, I'd like to talk to him about a sports database. In not much time at all, he whipped up a database that works off the schedules we input. We get a daily schedule out of it, plus it calculates league standings and we have the ability to link to specific team schedules and results.

 

That sounds like something we would love to have around here, if for anything the daily schedule.

 

That's how I do it...tweaked my formula a few times, but it works great.
Save the files as PDFs and pull them right into the page. I have a lot more detail to my standings now than I did before going that route...and that comes in handy throughout the year and as an archive.

 

There are also third-party systems you can be. Many Texas papers are using TeamPlayer by Newsengin. That might be worth your while particularly if you can get several papers on a network within that system. But it does basically what others say they are doing in-house with Excel.