Prepare to climb aboard our new rail feature
Late August is always a blur around here.
We are desperately hanging on to the last days of vacation season while trying to keep ahead of the avalanche of events and projects.
On top of the surprising Shock (who saw that coming?) in Puerto Rico for the af2 championship, we have the Spokane Chiefs camp, high school fall sports, and the college football season. Our annual college and pro football preview section will be in newspapers Wednesday and we are busy putting that together (more on that later).
In addition, we will roll out a new feature on Wednesday. Industry folks call it a rail. It is a collection of refers, briefs, teasers, questions and polls that will generally run down the left side of the front page of sports.
We have a rail on A1 of the newspaper and Outdoors Editor Rich Landers has run a rail on the Sunday Outdoors cover for several months. The one in Sports will be a little different.
Yes, we will use it to tell you about our online content and upcoming projects. And we will use it to tease to inside stories. But we also intend to get a little interactive with readers, asking for responses to questions and polls. We want to know what you think and would like to publish results online and in print.
Our news-hole space is limited and the rail will take up some of that space, but my hope is that the rail will be useful and entertaining to readers and outweigh the loss of some national content. We will also move some of our local content to spokesmanreview.com. For instance, we will preview the varsity high school fall sports starting Monday. We will run a preview story with an overview box in the paper and then run a team-by-team capsule of each league on the Web site.
We will do our best to point you in the right direction for all our online content.
Football section
It was 24 years ago when I first met Dennis Erickson. He was the young new coach for the University of Idaho and I was second-year sports reporter at the Idahonian in Moscow. That’s my connection.
Since then Erickson has led Idaho into the I-AA playoffs, taken Washington State to a bowl game, won two national championships at Miami, took Oregon State to new heights and coached a couple of NFL teams. Now, he’s back at Idaho and the focus of our football special section.
Over the past 24 years Erickson’s influence has spread far and wide. Columnist John Blanchette and staff writer Jim Meehan covered Erickson at various times over the past 24 years and know a thing or two about his connections. Along with those stories will be some old photos that you’re sure to enjoy.
In addition, we will have season previews of all the local college teams and the Seattle Seahawks. We also take a close look at the Pac-10, WAC and Big Sky and have complete Division I-A and NFL schedules.