Hooker and beavers, or, another headline fail

[HanSenSE]

Or, another chapter in Why Copy Editors Matter:

Hooker High School Basketball Team Gets Hilariously Embarrassing Headline

 

[fossywriter8]

After reading about the headline, I think having a school named Beaver use the nickname Dusters is worse.

 

[FileNotFound]

I grew up in a region that included schools named Licking and Climax Springs.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

I'll bet there's 100 years of hilarity in that newspaper's microfilm. Hooker and Beaver are near each other in the Panhandle and there isn't much in between.

 

[Songbird]

COCKS
POUND
BEAVERS

(When does South Carolina play Oregon State in ... something?)

 

[JRoyal]

We once ran the headline "Ruler can't measure Johnson's impact" on a story about Damaris Johnson, who is small for a football player, when he was at TU. No one who saw it on the desk thought anything. Next day I saw it and cracked up.

 

[Bronco77]

COCKS
POUND
BEAVERS

(When does South Carolina play Oregon State in ... something?)

With Beavers and Trojans, lots of potential for headline embarrassments in Pac-12 country.

 

[MTM]

I've shared this here before, I put a headline on a USC football season round-up in the Larry Smith days reading "Smith's Trojans endure season of ups and downs."

One of the guys in paste up noticed it and we changed it.

 

[TexasVet]

While attending a newspaper conference one year, someone leading a seminar said the best headline writers usually have the dirtiest minds.

At that point I knew I'd be a great headline writer.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

While attending a newspaper conference one year, someone leading a seminar said the best headline writers usually have the dirtiest minds.

At that point I knew I'd be a great headline writer.

That's the genius of it. If someone objects to a headline, you can just tell that person that they're the one with the dirty mind.

 

[Batman]

COCKS
POUND
BEAVERS

(When does South Carolina play Oregon State in ... something?)

One of the great tragedies of our time is that both schools have won baseball national championships in the past decade, yet have never even played in the same College World Series.

 

[Liut]

When North Carolina beat Oregon State in the CWS about 10 years ago, a Mississippi newspaper ran with ... Tar Heels Trim Beavers

 

[Liut]

I grew up in a region that included schools named Licking and Climax Springs.

Ah, the Show-Me State.

 

[HanSenSE]

My favorite editing instructor in college told a story one day about a desker who was assigned to write the headline for a speech by President Johnson, who talked on both sides of an issue. Apparently the editor had a cocktail or two with dinner and came up with the gem "LBJ goes both ways."

 

[Doc Holliday]

How about we start a "Best Headline Fails" thread and post them as we find them? Could be entertaining.

 

[apeman33]

Hooker's summer baseball team is (was?, this was the late 80s) actually called the Horny Toads. Not making that up. We played them a couple of times when I lived out in western Kansas.

 

[TexasVet]

Of course, the headline could read:
"Harry Beavers Smother Cocks"