Popping my football stat-keeping cherry tomorrow...

We do full boxes. If you get one carry for 0 zero yards, your name's in there.

 

Yep. All the papers I've written for have done the same.

 

This was adapted from a hand-drawn sheet that a colleague had given me, that I found to be the best stat sheet I'd ever used. I used it when I did print, and currently use it while doing broadcast (I keep my own stats while doing pxp, and it's probably the best broadcast sheet I've ever seen).

The initial sheet was designed for legal-sized paper (if you can handle 8.5x14 paper, try http://www.indianassa.org/files/FBstatslegal.pdf). Because I write excessively small, I can handle the passing box, but it does shrink quite a bit on letter-sized paper.

Part of my off-season work will be to modify the sheet a bit to try to make the passing box a bit more user-friendly.

 

That was your creation, crimson? Despite my minor whine, I do like the setup. Many thanks.

And yeah, I went back and printed out the legal-sized one today. I'm thinking I might be able to read my scribbling a little better on that one ...

Again, thanks for sharing.

 

Jay, care to share how much blood was shed last night?

 

Can't really take the credit, which goes to an ex-colleague.

He gave me a stack of hand-drawn sheets that were identical to that one. After a few years, they'd been copied and re-copied so many times, they were almost illegible, so I sat down one afternoon in Quark and basically took the same sheet, made a clean version of it and saved it as a PDF.

To really work, the legal-sized sheet is the best way to go. I made a letter-sized version because my crappy home printer doesn't handle legal-sized paper and I can write small enough to make it work.

 

Friday night was nuts. A 7:30 game 45 minutes away, working from the press box where I could hardly see the numbers on jerseys. I got my stats, got my story under the gun (we file at 11:45, sent the file at 11:44) and my face was beet-red because of all of the pressure. Compiling the box was nuts but I had it the worst because I was driving from so far away (other two writers were in town).

I did PBP and compiled the first-half stats at halftime. Got passed by in the second half and compiled the second half stats at the office.


Today I covered a game at a military institute. The team had 17 kids, 8 rows of bleachers, every 10 yards marked on the field, and six cheerleaders ranging from age 5 to age 11. It was creepy, but since it was a day game, I got in the groove a lot easier with the PBP. Did all the stats at the office when I got back, but the story itself was 100 times better. Gettin' ready to do it again next Friday, though the game is in town for me, so the pressure should be a bit lower.

 

glad you got the day game on, no matter how vampire-like it was. that will help.

 

We've started running boxes online and in Sunday's paper. Saves us a ton of time on deadline Friday night.

 

well look who's no longer a freakin' newb.

 

Damn. Just noticed that. Wonder what I wasted No. 500 on. Prolly a reponse to your dumb ass.

 

well, since we both regret it, go fetch me a beer for old times ... bitch.