Working on a small redesign. Need opinions.

Our paper used to have a four-page special section come out every Friday for high school, college and professional football. I'm trying to get it back, and in order to do so, I'm doing a redesign. I played around a little today and pretty happy with what came out. I just used old photos and random copy. The main focus I had was on the flag and promos.

What do you guys think? Think anything should be added, taken away or have any other ideas? Criticism and feedback are appreciated.

 

Clean and functional. Maybe have some sort of game capsule sidebar, perhaps in place of the column, but nothing seemed out of sorts.

 

Unless it's a paper-wide style, there's no reason to have a section letter that big.

And maybe you'll want a box with game schedule, TV info.

Otherwise looks good.

 

Instead of stretching out the flag, you might try shrinking it down to two columns and stacking Football Weekend. Then in the free space created, you move the pro and college football reefers you already have. Like ditch the star, keep Peterson and all the text, but make the hed a little smaller for the Cowboys.
Keep the bar you already have and make that for high school football since you're in Texas and Friday night football is a big deal there. Like call it tonight's best games or something like that.
Or flip flop that and put the high school stuff in the open space and keep the refer bar.
See what works best.