What's the play?

To answer your question, of course. It's the same as if Tiger won the U.S. Open it's the lead for everybody most likely. The biggest name winning always makes it a bigger story.

 

In a lot of markets, plenty of readers don't give a crap about golf or NASCAR.

 

Mark: I think Junior was the key to the importance of the NASCAR race.

I think if it's not him (or a local driver), the deadline might be less of an issue. You have a great story with Junior winning.

 

Interesting, because Simpson, who attended Wake Forest, now lives in Charlotte.

 

Fair enough, although I never understood the fascination with him. Hell, Jimmy Johnson won five straight Sprint Cup titles.

My thought on the US Open is simply it's one of the 2-3 biggest events of the year in that sport. It would be like playing up the Daytona 500 regardless of who won.

I also understand the mentality is different in different places. Some places that are close to a MLB team or one of the two teams in the NBA Finals, maybe that's the bigger story. Just assuming we're talking about some mid-size place with no geographical biases and nothing local. I worked a lot of Sundays over the years and I'd say 75-80 percent of the time we didn't have any local copy. Getting a photog to shoot anything local on a Sunday was a non-starter. So I either had a feature in the can with art shot earlier or had to go something national.

 

Doesn't matter if you get it. All that matters is there's a fascination, he's the like 20,000-time Most Popular Driver, and him breaking a four-year winless streak and everyone saying after the race he could be the favorite for the title is a big story in one of the four-five major sports.

 

We were in similar boat as Rusty, but we're limited to three stories and one jump. I was starting to kick the subject around with my desk guy when we noticed there were 12 laps left in the race and Junior was leading. That was a no-brainer for no-jump centerpiece play.

I wanted one of the night events as the stripped lead, and so U.S. Open went there. No jump, but teased to a sidebar inside.

There was a SEC-themed thumbsucker I'd hung onto that we jumped out of the "short hole" on the right side.

NBA teased inside. We'll elevate that to the front on Thursday night if there's potential of the series ending at that point.

 

Junior winning made it an easy CP for us -- when coupled with the deadline issue.
Our first-edition deadline is so bad that there was a chance if the basketball game went OT it wouldn't even be over by deadline. (and then waiting for an AP gamer? Anyone else have that issue?) That has knocked the NBA out of our CP hole every night. The 8 p.m. central games? Forgetaboutit. Not even over before deadline. ... Now, if Tiger had been in contention, we might have re-thought the CP for Monday, but when Tiger blew a gasket early, then Junior got in the lead, it was an easy call for us.

 

Show me the market where readers of a newspaper sports section don't care about golf.

My newspaper went biggest on NASCAR, then golf, then NBA. Part of that was time of finish.

 

Sunday night for Monday, my paper, located in the NYC-Philly sandwich market (the part of NJ we're in covers BOTH cities) went biggest on the US Open (2 stories out front and huge art) plus smaller stories on the NBA and the Phillies out front. Yankees, Mets, and NASCAR inside.

 

Both papers are produced by the same desk, which is located in Charlotte. I think one one day, Charlotte had a headline calling him Charlotte's Simpson and Raleigh had a headline calling him Raleigh's Simpson. Both were, of course, correct.

 

And he isn't 1/10th as popular as his old man.