Story placement

In general, it doesn't really matter if a game was close or thrilling if it's a smaller school that wouldn't have been planned for the front page.

You are more likely to move it to the front if Jackson State won 49-10 and someone rushed for 400 yards or threw 7 TD passes.

A close game isn't really all that unusual.

 

The Clarion Ledger has a "Blitz" section for college football and it has, for lack of a better term, a "splash page" on the front with art from three games and a number of teases. That section on Sunday had art for Mississippi State (lead art), Southern Miss and Ole Miss (a late game; didn't make the first edition).

So, on point, there were no football games "on the front page" of the sports section. Just teases.

Certainly, they coulda swapped Jax State art into the Southern Miss slot for their metro edition, but the thing is fully formatted for where everything goes and the time line is pretty tight between editions, less than an hour. You can't go tearing stuff up at that point.

From an outsider's perspective, the Clarion Ledger still treats Jackson State awfully well. I'd compare with Nashville, where Tennessee State used to get front-page play along with Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Now, TSU is just another inside element. Which seems about right to me.