By DOUG ROBERSON
Newport News (Va.) Daily Press

We asked more than 50 newspapers about their football sections. Here are their responses. This is the third of three parts.

Jerry Micco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: We did a high school section and a pro/college section. Both sections are broadsheet. Our high school section is pretty much nuts and bolts and wasn't themed. Our cover piece was about the high number of good receivers this year in the WPIAL. This year, the section was 16 pages and we had 57 columns of newshole and 39 columns of advertising (about 41 percent). This is larger by two pages over 2005 as a result of more advertising (an oddity for current conditions in Pittsburgh). Our pro/college section was themed on the Steelers repeating. We had a how they can repeat and how they won't repeat stories inside. Every team page (Steelers, PSU, Pitt, WVU) had a repeat after me ... theme. This section was 22 pages and we had 88 columns of newshole and 44 columns of advertising (33 percent). We didn't put anything up on the net that we didn't have in the section, though we had a plan to run certain items there if our newshole run under projections. Didn't get any negative or positive reader response. They certainly expect these sections from us – rather large with a lot of info – yearly. It's a football town, as you know.

Mary Ullmer, Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press: Our prep football preview sections, which we zone eight ways, featured a Superheroes theme. Graphic artist Michael Moore was given headshots and action shots of players along with a description of their position and/or characteristics of how they play. He took those and ran with them, so to speak, producing all eight covers. We planned the sections in June; he began his artwork in mid-July and wrapped up in mid-August. Here's the link if you want to take a look (we also put the content online): www.mlive.com/grpress/preps/fbpreview/

Brent Neal, Lansing (Mich.) State Journal: For our Preps special section, we changed from a 12- to 16-page broadsheet section to a 64-page tab that gave each school a page of its own. We sold advertising specific to each school or community on pages adjacent to their editorial copy, and advertisers responded well. In the past we've had virtually no advertisements but this new format generated enough ad revenue to pay for all our prep coverage for the entire school year. Readers enjoyed the new format because each team went from having just a capsule to having an entire page with a photo, roster, schedule and the capsule information.

Terry Bickhart, Reading (Pa.) Eagle: Despite recent coverage reductions and impending staff reductions, the Reading Eagle pretty much went about business as usual with our football preview sections. We did three broadsheet sections – scholastic (12 pages) and college (12 pages), published Aug. 30, and pro (16 pages), published Sept. 7 – the same as last year. The advertising percentages – 26% ads in scholastic, 20% in college, 32% in pro – were also close to the same. Content was as comprehensive as past, with scholastic section focusing on 50th year of main league in area.

Joe Tuscano, Washington (Pa.) Observer-Reporter We had more advertising in the same size tab from last year. That meant our copy space was restricted and we had to run some features in the daily. The money crunch is affecting our daily pages as we are down about three per week.

Keith Kaeppel, Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call: Our three-part football preview was amazingly a tad bigger than last year due to a reorganization in our advertising dept. I think they did a fine job getting more ads this year and our readers benefited. Our theme was RIVALS. The High School tab cover REVIVAL story was on the 100th game of the Easton-Phillipsburg; our college cover REVIVAL story was on Penn State and Notre Dame renewing their matchups; and the pro cover ARRIVAL story was on the newest teammate in Dallas (T.O.) and how he fuels the Cowboys-Eagles rivalry. We were heavy on our own graphics in college and pro and heavy on the names for the high school. High school and college was all our bylines and we covered Eagles and Giants with our own writers and filled in with a few wire stories. We did not have any exclusive site for this online but all of our bylines are out there every night. All in all, 26 extra broadsheet pages were produced in the week of publication and we needed only about 16 extra man-hours to do it. We were very proud of our staff.

Tom Housenick, Sunbury (Pa.) Daily Item: We went from two separate tabs, a 24-pager for college football and a 48-pager for all high school fall sports, to one 64-pager for both. In it, we usually wrote individual previews for all the high school football teams in the leagues we cover. This year, we only did capsules on the out-of-area teams and stories and capsules on the locals. The hole was 70 (news)-30 (advertising). The cover story was 'Unmasking the mystery behind field hockey.' We did break-out boxes on the rules and terms of the game, as well as a story focusing on the two sets of rules that cause most confusion among officials, coaches and fans, with cutout art of an official demonstrating those calls. We had the one official and the two most respected coaches comment on those rules in the double truck package. No one seemed to care enough to complain that we combined the two products. We just used AP previews for Big Ten teams (and other PSU foes) in the daily sections leading up to the tab so everyone got their fill for weeks. We still are doing a 20-page preview tab, Game Night, for 12 weeks. We preview each high school and college football game, plus a double-truck cover story. Line-ups, stats and standings are all in there. All stories for these tabs are staff/stringer generated. Our online product now includes a Friday night scoreboard, which is posted at 10:30 p.m. each Friday with all of the area football scores, as well as a video highlight package from 2-3 selected area games. That is a 10-minute segment. We are throwing out mini footballs at the games we will be featuring later that night in the online video package, as well as having announcements read by the PA announcer. And during the week, we run a 3-5 minute interview segment with each of the three area college coaches (Bucknell, Bloomsburg and Susquehanna). They are posted right after their respective luncheons. We lead PSU fans to the PSU site for Paterno's stuff and run daily PSU stories Wednesday to Saturday. The stringer budget has been cut. No overtime in the department. Ottaway recently put The Daily Item and five others up for sale.

Jim Carlson, Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News: The football tab for The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, which placed in the top 10 last year in the 100,000-250,000 division, was 36 broadsheet pages this year as opposed to 38 last year. Advertising was up, actually, but not by much. The high school section was 24 pages and the cover theme was 25-year anniversary of the Mid-Penn Conference. The college cover was a shot of Penn State linebacker Paul Posluszny (A Team Poz-essed). Content was not compromised; in some instances accompanying art was smaller. It's reader-friendly and very popular. People begin calling at the beginning of August inquiring about the date it was going to be published.

Jeff Beideman, Doylestown (Pa.) Intelligencer: Actually this was our best year for fall guides. We do two, a prep one and and an NFL one. I have a great relationship with our assistant ad director and he and his department have been very supportive in making both of these a success and allowing them to grow. He has a great respect for editorial and the direction that we want to take our guides. I in turn realize that there are ways to make the guides work that can lead to greater financial success. This year our NFL guide mirrors the one we did in '05. It's a pre-printed inserted 12-page broadsheet. We split the full color holes – he got 4 and I got 4. I got eight pages of copy and the section brought in $6,000. But the biggest change was made with our High School Football Guide. Last year it was a 20-page tab. By working to create a model with advertising we moved it up to a 28-page broadsheet that went from four full color holes to 12, of which I got 11. It's still a NEWS product that I'm awfully proud to produce but it went out the door with solid ad support. Our revenue went from $8,500 in '05 to $18,000 this year. This is the 11th one I've done here and the general consensus both inside and outside of the building is that it was a success. We also produced three high school "All-Intel" special sections last year that were very well received and financially viable. In this age of belt tightening, shrinking newshole and bylines I feel good to have hit on a workable model.

Jason Carris, Vineland (N.J.) Daily Journal: The Daily Journal expanded its football preview section to 12 broadsheet pages. The section was completely void of advertising. The section included full preview pages on each of the eight teams in the coverage area, along with a cover story comparing the sizes of high school football offensive lines, and a full-page graphic outlining the Top Three players at key positions from around the area, region and state. New this year was a 3/4 page map to all the stadiums in the two coverage-area conferences. We're hoping to make it interactive online. The DJ also is rolling out a new High School Football web site, which will include the usual stuff plus individual player profile pages with photos, bios and accrued statistics.

Ron Fritz, News Journal (Wilmington, Del.): We made the decision to cancel our Football Section just a week before publishing it because advertising sold no ads. Zero. Nada. Zip. Too many niche products they claim. So we went from 40 broadsheet pages to nothing. We rolled space into our daily sections beginning the Sunday before the high school and NFL seasons began. We had high schools, college football and NFL/Eagles covered during certain days of the week. It was extremely disappointing.

Mike James, Los Angeles Times: We had about 105 columns in our preview section, which was about 20 columns more than we had last year. We went with a Reggie Bush theme (what's going to happen to USC not that he's gone; what's going to happen to New Orleans now that he's there). And we might be bucking the trend a bit, at least in terms of special sections. It appears that we're getting some support from advertising to resume doing at least some of the special sections we used to do but stopped doing a couple of years ago. And the larger football section was one of those. The folks who run things here now like the idea that we can produce solid editorial content in a special section that will also make money.

Joe Hawk, Las Vegas Review-Journal: Our 2006 football preview was the same number of broadsheet pages – 20 – as in 2005, with advertising accounting for about 40 percent of the space. Because of legal wagering on college football and the NFL in Nevada, the section is popular and our ad department goes out of its way to get every local sports book involved. Most advertise in color, which allows us color photos, headers, etc. Our focus, as it is each year, is UNLV and the Mountain West Conference, with eight of the pages devoted to that. The rest is preseason college features and NFL team-by-team capsules. We also run the full NFL and NCAA Division I-A skeds. As for preps, because the season opens a week before the section comes out, we simply run the season sked (with first-week results) and a map of the city that shows where the 40 Class 4A schools are located.

Rachel Wilner, San Jose Mercury-News: The Mercury News' football section was actually bigger and had more advertising than any we've done in recent memory. We printed a 24-pagebroadsheet with eight pages of advertising. (Last year, we didn't even have a section – we just sprinkled the coverage throughout the daily paper.) Our theme was "Lesson Plans," and aside from the usual team previews, rosters and schedules, we printed four pages of graphics, charts, and definitions about football – everything from defining "linebacker" to diagramming the Cover 2. The idea was to give readers – those who know nothing about football and those who are experts – something they could hold onto throughout the season. We got a very positive response from readers.

Tom Moore, Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel: The Santa Cruz Sentinel's recent projects included an All-time All-County football team, in honor of 150 years of publication. We've also had a good response to weekend football video highlights on the Web, along with scores from all games updated at halftime.

Mike Anastasi, Salt Lake Tribune: The Salt Lake Tribune apparently found itself in a different situation as many papers. After two years of lobbying to HAVE a football special section by Michael Anastasi, managing editor/sports, features and copy desks, the advertising department finally agreed, and it delivered just under 4,000 inches of retail lineage in its debut effort. The result was a 40-page broadsheet section (59 percent advertising) that included a color editorial doubletruck and approximately 100 columns of editorial space. The theme of the section was "Brave New World," featuring an enterprise package taking a look at how the digital revolution was impacting college football both in the state of Utah (the Mountain West Conference created its own network, "the mtn.") and nationally. The section included preview material for all of the state's college teams, national material, a staff-generated section for the NFL and appropriate schedules and other complementary content.

Des Moines Register: The Des Moines Register produced three 12-page football preview sections – one focusing on the University of Iowa, one on Iowa State, and the other was the traditional All-Iowa Football section that covers all levels of the sport with Iowa ties.

Denver Post: The Denver Post college football section focused on Front Range programs – Colorado, Colorado State, Air Force, Wyoming- being somewhat in transition and disarray, and the challenges the coaches face trying to right the ships. The pro football section focused on quarterbacks, with all the uncertainty about Daunte Culpepper, Ben Roethlisberger, Phillip Rivers, Carson Palmer and locally, Jake Plummer being the guy with top draft pick Jay Cutler waiting in the wings. The high school section focused on the cost of playing football in Colorado.

Daily Oklahoman: The Oklahoman's annual football preview section wanted to give readers an idea of what it was like to be a college football player. The theme of the section was "Welcome to My World" and contained as-told-to pieces on all of the key players in a non-traditional story form. The theme carried through the college and high school sections.

Southeast Missourian: The Southeast Missourian in Cape Girardeau produced a 16-page section with a theme of rebuilding. The area's six high schools and Division I-AA football program were a combined 21-50 in 2005, and none of the high school teams qualified for the playoffs – marking the first time since 1992 the area was shut out. The format was nontraditional, listing five reasons why each team would contend for playoff positions this season and five reasons why they wouldn't. The section also had other graphic tidbits and some Q&As. The Southeast Missourian, and its media partners inSoutheast Missour, launched semoball.com. The Web site compiles the top stories from five daily newspapers, includes weekly video highlights and interviews from a high school game, and a place for readers to submit video and photos. Staff writers from the various papers blog about high schools and Southeast Missouri State athletics. A Division I athlete is writing her freshman diaries, the Missourian's advertising manager writes a fantasy sports blog, and the paper hired a full-time employee to blog, coordinate content and marketing for the site.

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