Spotting Board — broadcast prep for college sport, free

What you get

Four sheets, ready to print.

Everything a spotter or a play-by-play voice reaches for during a game, laid out the way the charts you already use are laid out — and it fits on one sheet of paper.

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The matchup page

Both records, both slates, and the two teams' season numbers side by side so you can read a comparison out loud without holding one figure in your head.

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A chart per direction

One team's offence against the other's defence, then turn the page when possession changes. Numbers, vitals, last-season and season stat lines, red zone and third down.

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Photo rosters

Everyone on the board, one sheet a team, big enough to match a face from across a truck — with the number set large, because that is what you match on first.

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Yours to change

Type a pronunciation beside any name. Add a note line. Swap a player, add one off the roster, take one off the board. It prints the way you left it.

How it works

Three steps, about a minute.

Create a free account

Username, email, password. Click the link in the confirmation email and you are in.

Pick the two teams

Choose the sport and search for the matchup. The boards are built and filled in for you.

Correct it and print

Fix anything you know better than we do — a depth chart moves all week — then print or save a PDF.

Where the data comes from

Published information, read carefully, checked twice.

You are going to say these numbers out loud on air, so it matters where they came from and what happens when they look wrong.

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What the schools and conferences publish Rosters, results, season statistics and staff listings, taken from the pages the programmes maintain themselves and rebuilt every night.
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Cross-checked before it prints Team totals are reconciled against the individual lines behind them, and season figures against the games they are made of. Where two records disagree, we say so rather than pick one.
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A number that cannot be true never reaches paper Every figure is bounds-checked on its way to the page. If something is impossible it is left blank — a blank tells you that you have nothing; a wrong number does not.
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Guesses are marked as guesses Nobody publishes a two-deep in August, so where a line-up is inferred the chart says so — and it is one click to correct.

About player photographs

Boards show initials by default and import no images at all. If you hold the rights to a school's photographs — because you work for the school, or your broadcast is licensed to use them — you can switch them on yourself for a matchup. That choice is yours to make and yours to stand behind, which is why it is off until you make it.

When we get one wrong

Tell us. There is a feedback button on every board and it goes to the people writing the software, not to a queue. A depth chart that moved, a name spelled two ways, a stat that reads oddly — that is how this gets fixed, and it is usually fixed the same week.

Who it's for

Anyone who has to know a number in three seconds.

Play-by-play The name, the number and the one line about him, where your eye already goes.

Colour and analysts Season splits, red zone, third down and who coaches the unit that just did that.

Spotters and producers Photo rosters for both benches and a matchup page for the open.

Student broadcasters The same sheet the networks work from, for a programme with no research budget.

Six hours of prep,
done before dinner.