Published February 8, 2026

College and pro football are great to cover if you’d rather someone else keep track of every play and statistic. For most high school games, you’re on your own.

Sunday’s Super Bowl reminded me of how busy my brain was for three hours on Thursday and Friday nights during football season early in my newspaper career. I decided to give you a glimpse into what that was like.

Everybody who reports on football has their own system for keeping play-by-play and stats. I never saw a better one than the one I learned at my hometown paper decades ago.

The benefit to this one is that because you keep running totals of everything, you eliminate having to spend time after the game doing math. The challenge is that you have to do math on every play, all while trying to absorb what you’re watching: schemes, atmosphere, ebbs and flows, and so much more.

Accounting ledger

In this system, we’d use the same type of bound journal you’d buy at an office supply store to keep financial records. And we all started out with the same type of four-color pen.

Using the Super Bowl as an example, here is an approximation of what my play-by-play, stats and notes would look like.

 

I’m sure there are errors. This was more laborious to do on a computer than I’d imagined. It’s not meant to be a spotless record of the first two possessions. I wanted you to get a sense of what I’d return to the office with after a game.

Fum = fumble/fumbles lost;
FD = first downs;
Run = running yards on the play/total running yards in the game;
Pen = number of penalties in the game/number of penalty yards in the game;
Pass = completions-attempts-interceptions over passing yards on the play and for the game;
Punt = number of punts/total punting yardage for the game.

There were no fumbles or penalties during the sequence above. I did not account for the yards lost on the sack, but in high school football it would be rushing yards lost. In the NFL, it’s charged to the passing game.

Sometimes I’d vary things slightly, but those column headers never changed. I’d write them in before the game. The widest column was for a description of the play. Sometimes I needed two or three lines for a wild one.

I kept individual rushing totals on the page at left, so there was flipping pages back and forth after, say, the first quarter. A standout receiver would have a column on that page. At halftime, I’d check my math in every category.

Yes, we used pens

You write in ink? You don’t use a pencil? Well, ink is the only way to easily differentiate between the two teams. That’s why the multicolor pens were so popular.

When I began using this system, I’d do what I was taught: designate one team as black (or blue) and the other as red. Along with green, those ink colors had me prepared for almost any game. But then I got bold and brought pens to match the team colors, which meant I had to switch pens often rather than clicking on the ink selector throughout the game.

And of course I brought backups.

If you live in a city or town in Louisiana where high school football is played, I probably stopped at your local drugstore or general store to buy a pen. They had a habit of walking away, never to return.

It’s a lot

All of the in-game math, writing and record-keeping can be overwhelming. More than once I got back to the office and had to stop and think for a few seconds after being asked, “Who won?”

Having updated stats at game’s end was crucial. Let’s say the game ended at close to 10 p.m. Your deadline might be 11 or 11:15, maybe 11:30. That night! No time to waste.

Interview coaches and players. Run to the car. Race back to the office or a place to type on a laptop. Or, in my first few years, find a payphone and dictate the story to a fast typist.

The list of things that could go wrong is too long to put here. Some other time, maybe. But deadline was deadline. No excuses. Get it done, somehow.

I always did. I’m proud of that.

One time I sent my story to the paper on a Tandy laptop using the phone line at a Radio Shack store in Rapid City, S.D. There was no other option.

The salesman said a customer watched what I was doing and bought the same type of laptop from the store right after I left. I know this because I went back at least two more times to file my story. My hotel was next door to the mall that included Radio Shack. Luck was on my side.

Times have changed

Nobody had to keep their own stats at Sunday’s Super Bowl. Heck, even high school state championships long ago started providing play-by-play sheets and statistics. You can just … watch.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges. But writing a coherent story decades ago after keeping a game journal like the one above was one of the biggest challenges my neurodivergent mind has ever navigated. And I had to do it again and again.

I don’t know what made me think you’d find this interesting. It was all I could think of writing. I’ve already written about the first Super Bowl I went to, the first one I covered, and the one the Saints won that I blogged about from the French Quarter.

Sunday’s game wasn’t even the first Super Bowl between the Seahawks and the Patriots.

Also? It’s still the third quarter as I post this. I have a game to finish watching now!

Sending love. Protect your peace, and your multicolor pens.

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Featured image by FranciscoJGA via Shutterstock.

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Bonus from pregame

Will I understand this Super Bowl if I haven’t seen the first fifty-nine

— Dr. Bucky Isotope, PhD, BOFA (@buckyisotope.bsky.social) February 8, 2026 at 8:09 AM