COVERAGE

The 22nd edition of Gridiron Glory marked our expansion season. Instead of covering just the three conferences most local to Ohio University, we broadened the scope of our work to include all schools in the 740 area code. We strategically utilized our staff to cover about 10 games each week, double that of your typical Gridiron season.

Our list of featured matchups would be posted on Friday mornings to generate excitement for that night’s games. We felt that had we posted any earlier, our coverage would’ve been forgotten — but we still wanted to post before the school day was over. About an hour before kickoff, we would post the list of reporters attending each game with live updates, and link their accounts in the caption. All reporters tagged @gridironglory, promoting the brand to all those following along. As soon as each game went final, we posted the list of scores from said games to all of our feeds.

Each week, about half of our games were considered “Showtime Games” — which meant in-depth coverage from those games would appear on that night’s episode of Gridiron Glory. These were the games closest to the station, and/or the games we felt comfortable leaving at halftime in time for our 11:30 broadcast. The morning after, reporters who covered those games were responsible for tweeting out a segment clip and tagging the relevant teams and players. This not only helped our reporters build their social media presences, but drove viewership for the show on YouTube, as a link to the archived stream was included in each tweet. Even though these games were reserved for the show, an article for each game would still be written and posted on the website with photos. The full episode was also embedded atop each article to further increase views.

The other half of the games, “Digital Games,” were exclusively covered on our social media platforms. These games were those further from the station that could not be covered in time for the 11:30 show. However, clips from each game were included in a montage at the end of each episode to promote our social media platforms. The next morning, each game received a two-minute package recapping the action, complete with post-game interviews and analysis. They were posted throughout the morning and early afternoon on Saturday. These recaps were also posted to YouTube and included with the articles on our website.

Each week, one game was designated our “Game of the Week” to receive additional content. This included an designated announcement graphic, a “sights and sounds” pre-game hype reel — and these games had both a show segment and digital recap.

Throughout the week that followed, bonus coverage from each game was posted on all our social media pages — in the form of photo galleries, highlight reels, and sidebar videos. We also asked reporters to connect with coaches and players ahead of their next game to gather pre-game interviews and create preview packages.

CAMPAIGNS

STUDENT SECTION SHOWDOWN
With an expansion that brought our coverage beyond 60 teams, we knew we needed some sort of event featuring all of them to engage every corner of southeast Ohio. Because students are the most active members of most of our communities, we decided to focus on reaching the student sections, and developed a 64-team bracket that pit schools against their rivals to crown one student section the very best.

The campaign took place from Weeks 7–10 of the regular season. At this point, our team had a routine established and the fundamentals ironed out, but the playoff outlook was heating up. We felt it was only right to crown the winner on the final night of the regular season to feed into the significance of Week 10. Voting for each round lasted 24 hours and was held on Twitter, but promoted on our other platforms and the show each week.

It was a massive success. Over those four weeks, we gained 1,817 Twitter followers (79 per day, 38.3% growth) and 789 Instagram followers (34 per day, 89.4% growth). Largely responsible for this eruption was a promotion we held in the final four, in which every quote tweet contributed five additional votes to the school’s final count. These two tweets became our top tweets by the year’s end, earning 129,800 impressions & 844 retweets, and 85,700 impressions & 526 retweets respectively.

By Friday night, the tournament was the talk of each student section. We sent staff to each game to interact with the fans, promoting the final round ahead of its announcement on that night’s episode. We saw our vote count double in those final four hours; as though nearly every fan in the stadium cast their votes. The final round ultimately received 5,830 votes and over 63,000 impressions.

ALL-GG TEAM
To honor the talented football rosters occupying southeast Ohio, Gridiron Glory selected 50 players from all parts of the region to comprise the All-GG Team. The team featured athletes at each position on the field, created with the idea of an “All-Star” roster in mind. We gave “first-team” recognition to 11 offensive and 11 defensive players, and created starting lineup graphics for both. To maximize engagement, we wanted to ensure that a variety of teams were represented, even if there was a good argument that another player on an already included team was better. We shared this roster throughout our season finale, and included full season stats and career accolades of all fifty players.

We built this idea off of the foundation we laid the year prior with 740 Zone. But this time, were able to take the production to the next level with a larger staff and support from the station. For example, our dedicated staff of student photographers made it possible for us to have photos of all 50 players. In order to accomplish this, I created a thorough spreadsheet detailing the players on our our watchlist weeks in advance. From there, we assigned photographers at each game to get action shots of select players that we anticipated making the roster. We were also able to obtain full-season stats of every single player thanks to the relationships our reporters built with the teams.

With these assets available to us, we decided to create mockup trading cards for each of the players on the team. These cards were shared to social media in the days following the season finale to keep our engagement up in the days leading up to the state championships. In conjunction with the lineup graphics, these personalized designs were a great reason for every one of the fifty players, their teams, and their families to share our content. Thus, these were among our best performing posts on all platforms at the end of the year.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Every season, Gridiron Glory turns to the fans to name one player in the coverage as the GG Player of the Year. In season 22, the Player of the Year award was a season-long campaign, narrowing down the list of candidates week-by-week. When we finally reached the top five candidates, fans knew it was their time to vote — yet we continued to promote it for the entire 10-day period, plugging the voting link wherever possible. We set up interviews and photoshoots with the players to create even more opportunities to promote the poll. In the end, we amassed 4,889 votes on our website.