Prep capsules

[Trey Beamon]

I'm planning to run prep football preview capsules for the first time later this week. Better late than never, I suppose.

I realize certain information -- records, stats, players to watch, series history, etc. -- is essential, but what has your paper done to make it stand out a bit more?

Gracias mi amigos.

 

[nietsroob17]

We always run the helmets of each team, which helps to spicen things up a little, especially if you're working with a color page.

 

[HejiraHenry]

I always thought it was interesting to look at results against common opponents.

In my last gig, we had to predict a final score and looking at those common games sometimes suggested something about how the game I was previewing might turn out. I got surprising close on many of my slightly educated guesses.

Radio broadcast info is always a good idea, but sometimes a pain in the butt.

 

[Chi City 81]

We always run the helmets of each team, which helps to spicen things up a little, especially if you're working with a color page.

HELMETS!

 

[JayFarrar]

Have your graphics person make a logo for each school. Not a helmet, but an original piece of art for every school, make sure they work days, weeks even on the project, then never use them.

 

[HejiraHenry]

Have your graphics person make a logo for each school. Not a helmet, but an original piece of art for every school, make sure they work days, weeks even on the project, then never use them.

The sound, i suppose, of one axe grinding.

 

[Angola!]

This is what we run for anywhere from 15-18 games.

PODUNK LIONS AT CITY CHEESEDICKS
>> Time, Date, Place: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Cheesedick Stadium.
>> Districts: Podunk 1-3A, City1-3A.
>> 2006 Records: Podunk 4-1 overall, 1-0 district; City16-0, 2-0.
>> Last Week: Podunk 52, Another Podunk 0; City 47, Another City 22.
>> Last Season: Did not play.
>> Radio: 98.3 FM (Podunk).
>> Notes: The Lions played their best four quarters of the season last week in the rout of Another Podunk, even without tailback John Doe. ... Doe broke his hand last Wednesday and it was too tender to play more than a couple of plays against Another Podunk. He still has a cast on, but will play tonight. ... Fullback Jimmy Smith has handled the pressure of being the go-to-guy well, averaging 8.0 yards per rush with nine touchdowns. He has carried the ball 87 times for 693 yards, second most in the district. ... The last time the two teams met were in 1997 when they were both in the same 3A district. ... City is averaging 423.3 yards of offense and 38 points per game, while giving up 219 yards on defense and just 10.6 points. ... After a couple years of being beat up at the 4A level, the Cheesedicks are off to their best start in at least 12 years. They have defeated four 4A schools in the process.

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

This is probably something you don't want to start in the middle or at the end of a season. Just gives readers something else to complain about.

They'll say why did you do it this way for Podunk High, but you didn't do it for Podunk Tech.


And I'm guessing the regular season is about one or two weeks from ending, so you'd have just two weeks of it.

Another thing you could do is wait until the playoffs start, then start doing capsules for each game. Then you can continue that into next football season (or even do shorter capsules for basketball).

 

[Breakyoself]

we have logos of each team and the cap looks as follows:

Team (x-x) at team (x-x), 7 p.m.: blah blah this team sucks but i have to find something nice to say about them and thei 5-foot-6, 145 lb. tailback who is slower than paint drying.
last week:
Last ear:
radio:

Real simple, gets basic info in and names.

 

[Angola!]

I forgot to add that we run a mug shot or two with each capsule to break up the text.

 

[BillySixty]

I'd advise against starting capsules now. At least wait until the playoffs.

Next year, be sure to keep up with whatever you start. The adrenaline flows at the beginning of the season and you want to have the best capsules this side of USA Today but when Week 7 rolls around and you have soccer playoffs around the corner and scores of bowling leagues to type in, you may not want to spend hours figuring out records agains common opponents or coming up with new ways to say an 0-7 team is really, really bad.

Start out simple the first year and adapt for the second.

 

[shotglass]

We always run the helmets of each team, which helps to spicen things up a little, especially if you're working with a color page.

HELMETS!

You startin' something?