Double coverage: Fiesta, NFL playoff

If you were a sports editor and had a writer(s) covering the Fiesta Bowl, would you have assigned one to cover Saturday's Atlanta-Arizona NFL game? Regardless of the interest in NFL in your paper, would you take the "cheap" chance to staff an NFL game for the Sunday paper?

Just curious. Have at it.

 

Players with local connections playing in the game? Staff it, but just for the feature -- not to do a gamer.

No locals and staff it just to staff it? I'll leave that to the world's largest newsgathering organization.

 

You pay a subscription price for AP, if I have no local angle, then it becomes double work.
If some of the kids from the Fiesta Bowl are attending the game, namely Beanie Wells, I might do a story about him experiencing the NFL atmosphere.

 

If I'm spending money to have a reporter at one, might as well do both.

 

Yea, but you're also already paying for AP.

 

And if I'm spending my money to send a reporter to one, I want him concentrating on the team I sent him to cover. Unless there's a hell of a local story to be found at the other game.

 

I'd rely on BLOGS! myself.

 

Here's the thing: Fiesta Bowl had its media day. If I'm covering that game, I can get enough material to do multiple stories on different days. I don't need to hang out at the team hotel all day.

So, if I'm even in TOWN as a reporter, I find a way to go to both games.

 

I certainly think just about any paper in the country that's staffing the Fiesta Bowl could find a strong angle at the Cards-Falcons game that the AP wouldn't go near.

I'd staff it.

 

Does the reverse work?

If you are covering Falcons-Cardinals, do you have a reporter hang around an extra couple of days to cover the Fiesta Bowl?

 

I'd let him freelance it for a different publication.

 

If you're the AJC, for example, and you staffed Falcons-Cardinals, does having a reporter at the Fiesta Bowl do you any good, with as late as the game's going to finish?

And aside from the AJC, is anyone else going to be staffing the Falcons?