College football season kicks off this weekend and pro football the next. Which means your football coverage plans are likely in full swing.
So here’s a checklist to make sure you’re ready for the opening kick.
The basics
- Schedule page
- Roster page
- Historic results, statistics page
- Desktop wallpaper (could be schedule or just photos of players)
- Printable schedule posters
- Depth chart
- Entertainment guide – what else to do while in town for the game
- E-mail newsletter
- RSS feed
Blog ideas
- Challenge readers to predict the score (makes a good Friday blog post)
- View from the opponent (could be a guest post from a reporter who covers the other team)
- “Where are they now” profiles (football fans love history)
- Polls (using PollDaddy.com)
Photos
- Create “ultimate photo galleries” for best players on the team
- Create historic photo galleries – especially for rivalry games
- Create historic photo galleries of former players and coaches
Video
- Produce a weekly talk show (example: two reporter interview each other and discuss previous/upcoming games)
- Video from the coach’s weekly press conference
Live chats/blogs
- Live blog during weekly coaches press conference
- Live chat to answer fan questions during the week (use CoverItLive for live chats)
- Live chat or live blog during the game (or at least during pregame)
Gameday coverage
- Live game chat or live game blog
- Pre-game text alerts with any recent news
- Twitter updates for news, scoring updates, etc.
- Post any gameday news to Facebook fan page
- Pre-game photo gallery right when the game starts
- Live scoring updates
- Create first-half photo gallery at halftime
- Send out text alerts with scoring updates
- Photo gallery from the game
- Video highlights from the game
- Quick-hit halftime analysis column
- Interactive graphic of the key play
- Consider an alternative homepage display (and sports page display) for gameday
Mobile
- Mobile site specific to your team
- Mobile app
- Mobile live scoring
- Text alerts
Social media
- Facebook fan page
- Twitter account for site and for individual reporters/columnists
- Forums
- Foursquare widget to see who has checked in at the stadium
Want some more ideas. Here’s what some media companies have created for the upcoming season:
- The Dallas Morning News wants your Super Bowl predictions.
- Here’s a game from the Indy Star.
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a Rams iPhone app.
- The Des Moines Register has desktop wallpaper schedules for high school football teams.
- The Green Bay Press-Gazette has a Packers mobile site.
- And speaking of the Packers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a guide to Packers bars around the world.