NFL box scores -- overrated or untouchable?

Ditto. We stopped running NFL and MLB boxes about two years ago. It really hasn't caused a lot of fireworks from readers, though, which is surprising. Since then, space has shrunk but local content has improved significantly.

 

We went to AP Limited right before the start of baseball season. We get our state boxes and have been running those, as well as for NFL. The most complaints, though, have come from golf and NASCAR fans, since that agate's not included in the limited package.

 

As a fantasy football player who is also web inclined, I love a printed page with all the boxscores on them. That's very difficult, if impossible, to do on a web platform. Honestly though, I've seen most boxes by Sunday evening. Still like having it all out in front of me when I want to.

 

I'm adamant that all NFL summaries should appear.

 

We still run them, but they are all given the exact amount of space, and if a summary runs too long, well, they'll just hack all the defensive stats (except for the leader) and hack off the line about what field goals were missed and hack off whatever else is necessary to make the sum magically fit.

Not even an attempt is made to stack a long sum on top of a short one. That would be too much work. Gotta just have them all square off.

 

We quit running all boxes except that of our local teams. I've got -- and I kid you not -- three phone calls in more than a year. Space was our reason, too.

If somebody is playing fantasy baseball/football, they know how those players did long before they pick up the paper.

 

You don't need them.

Fantasy football players are all plugged online. They've read Andy Behrens' recap hours before they get their newspaper the next morning.

I've never been a huge advocate of a full agate page. What's the point?

 

Thanks for all the great feedback.

To a couple of points: I hear a lot of talk about providing more than the box score, but like the stats, I think a lot of that is already online by the time the printed paper comes out. Plus, while I know there is overlap between our print and online audiences, I also know, at least in our market, there is a significant portion of print readership that is not comfortable, willing or able to get their NFL info online.

I think if we're going to really go beyond boxes, the analysis has to be worthwhile and, frankly, I don't have the staff to produce that and I don't see much of it on the wires, either. For instance, I'd love to run a good fantasy recap wire column every Monday.

In a bizarre coincidence, I just a got a call from a reader unhappy that we only ran the Redskins late box in today's paper. She wanted a story, too.

 

Primary newspaper readers are old people. Old people love box scores. The idea of getting rid of box scores baffles me.

When I was at The Oklahoman, they did focus groups for their redesign. During a couple of the groups, they deliberately left box scores off the baseball page. That was the first thing they heard about from that group, and the subject was never brought up again.

 

Very interesting discussion and an issue I've wrestled with quite a bit.

For now, we are running them because management gave me an extra page in the Monday edition. We started running MLB boxes back in April, so it seems impossible to stop them now. And the MLB/NFL overlap in September is quite challenging. I told management we'd have to go from 4 pages to 5 pages, because otherwise all we'd have is the cover, one MLB page (which is 80 percent boxes), one NFL page (80 percent agate) and one scoreboard page (golf, autos, college FB polls), etc. and never have room for any actual news, which I felt was unacceptable. If we have to get cut to 4 pages, I'll probably ditch the summaries in favor of NFL stories and photos.

 

I can understand the problem with leaving off baseball box scores. However, when it comes to football box scores, I'd just use my local team's box score.

 

Give me the boxscore and forget about all the crap. I don't need or want a list of 12 players who had half a tackle; I don't need or want the temperature and wind direction; I don't need or want a list of the medical staff or the 22 people sitting in Section 312. There's absolutely no reason why a boxscore needs to run 5 inches.