No rosters at a high school football game

That would be the same announcers who rarely get the A) yardage or B) yard line correct?

 

I know exactly what you guys mean. This one time at a Monday Night Football game, there was no decaf and I couldn't get to sleep until about 6am.

But in all seriousness, it strikes me that some of you guys are pretty young and just starting out, so you'll probably appreciate this story.

In my day (cue Dana Carvey here), we didn't have Internet sites to fall back on to try and obtain these rosters. So I usually had to resort to getting the other team's names from someone on their sideline. And one time, somebody had a little fun with me and just made up a bunch of names. It might have been the longest correction in the history of the free world.

Henceforth, our SE -- who, thankfully, never gave me much shit about that incident -- demanded schools fax their rosters by Wednesday or Thursday (depending if they were playing Friday or Saturday) to our office. No roster, no staffer at your game. It worked wonders.

 

There's a couple of ways to handle this.
1) Print rosters for your preview section, then you have them for the rest of the season. Of course you have to get them early but it beats gameday.
2) If the PA announcer has one, ask them if they'll let you it after the game. If not, get your photog to shoot it at halftime, then print it out when they get back to the paper.
In non-football sports where there are no programs, I've had photogs shoot the teams' rosters. It also helps the photog for IDs for their cutlines.

 

Rosters, rosters, rosters?

Let me guess, smallpotatoes, this was in a rural part of the country.

Like others have said, it's no big whoop to get rosters. It is a bitch to do it this way, but if you don't have a roster prior to a game, and none are available at the game, you can get it a number of ways. One way that's quite reliable is to find the nicest looking MILF in the stands wearing either team's colors, and ask her if she goes to the games regularly. Usually she'll say she's a parent of one of the kids or waterboys, and typically she knows everybody's name and number. Might not know what position they play, but knows their names. Might not know how to spell their names, but it's a starting point.

Whenever I've had to rely on the hometown MILF for a makeshift roster, they have usually provided me with some nice sidebars and potential feature story material.

"And that's Rory Smith, and his momma can cook the best apple pie in town. We had a pie eatin' contest and all of momma Smith's pies were pro-vy-dud when Rory, Sr. won it last year. You know, Rory's father was a football grayt at State Cowllidg Tech back in the 1940s when the Ramblin' Wreck won its only two national tyd-dulls...."

"Is that right?"

"It shoar is. Rory, Sr. wonted to play foot-bawl, but broke his laig the first day of practice, but the Smiths live vi-care-slee through tha-yur son, Rory, Jr. Heez the best and he leads the team in scorin'. He plays kwarturhbayk and kicks feeyld goals. His name's always in the pay-purr...."

"Tell me more about Rory, Jr.'s grandfather."

"Oh, he played fer th' Ramblin' Wreck and then fer th' Baltimore Colts when thay wuhr in Bawlt-ti-more. He's been on the tee-vee with that Oakland Raiders coach that tawks about the gaymes..."

"So the grandfather got playing time back at State College Tech?"

"Well yayess. He was an Awl Amurkan, you know. And I don't know wigh the low-kull pay-per hasn't had an arti-kull about thay-yatt."

On the other, not-so-popular sports, I take great joy in showing up at a game and rosters are not available. that way when people call me to complain about the lack of coverage of championship tiddly winks or bowling, I usually respond by saying: "Newspaper work operates under strict deadlines, and being that I'm only one person in sports, I don't have time to go to a _____ game and have to walk through the stands asking parents for names of the players and their jersey numbers. Maybe if the coaches over at Podunk High could take the time to print up a roster on Microsoft Word, or just jotting down names and jersey numbers and the grade each player is in, then we could cover it more. But until that happens, we're going to have to make a tough editorial decision based on our deadlines system."

That usually shuts them up, or the next call I get is the tiddly winks coach at Podunk High wanting to fax me a roster.

 

You're either a genius or a deranged individual. But either way, I like it.

And why not just slide up to that scorekeeper for those names? Both teams do have to turn in rosters to her for the officials to sign off on, you know.

 

What scorekeeper?

I'm talking about very rural places in the deep South. Most of the teachers down here can't read and write, much less print up a roster or keep stats.

I'm not a genius. If I were, I'd have figured out a way to make sports writing a lucrative endeavor.

 

No, not a rural part of the country. Just the opening game. You tend to have these problems at the beginning of the season more than a month or so into it. It takes people a while to get their acts together. Until just about every school around here posted its schedule on Highschoolsports.net, there were some schools that never had their schedules ready until a week or two into the season.

 

Damn. In my neck of the woods, football rosters are printed in the spring, adjusted in late summer to reflect personnel changes. Most schools have a meet the Fighting Toejam night, that's usually a booster club fundraiser as well.

And about every team has had some radio show devoted to each team, which kicks off during the preseason practice games that start around mid-August.

Basketball season is what people do around here to stay in shape for football. It's serious business down here, and coaches get paid at the bigger schools upward of 80-90K on the high school level. It's ridiculous.

 

Up here, football coaches are gym (usually) teachers with an extra 5-8k tacked on to their salary.