SportsDesigner.com

Cinderella City

Today's early and late-edition NCAA section fronts from the St. Petersburg Times. For those who don't know, but who do check sports design blogs regularly, Tampa is a subregional host and had two No. 12 seeds and two No. 13 seeds win yesterday.

Thanks to Andrew Braford for sending these along. If you're in Tampa or Orlando, send your pages from today along too.

Madness Madness

UPDATED with a pair of more-than-worthy additions at the end. You've never seen a cavalcade like this. All the contest finalists are in. Announcements will roll out this weekend. But now, the world's greatest roundup of NCAA Tournament preview pages.

Sick, SICK section from the Chicago Tribune with a MAD Magazine Theme. The fold-in answer is here. Writes Steve Cavendish:

The idea was Mike Kellams and then the execution took off in a bunch of different directions. The cover was freelanced out (I can't remember who to credit). Mike and I came up with the back page/fold piece and then Rick Tuma really nailed it. The inside pieces were from the demented mind of Phil Geib -- I count at least four different ways players could die in his Sergio Aragones-ish drawings. He also did the predictions panel on page 2.

I haven't had that much fun working on something in quite a while. One of the great secrets is that no matter how childish and inane some of the stuff Mad Magazine does appears to be, there's some pretty brilliant illustration and writing behind it. As we were talking it through, it was pretty apparent that we were all fans of it at some point (Phil might still have a subscription).

PDF: Download ChiTribMadness.pdf

Wraparound section front by the Buffalo News. Vince Chiaramonte writes:

It's an ambitious project to say the least. Assistant Sports Editor Dennis Danheiser tossed out the idea of illustrating a big dance and that's all it took to sell everyone. I immediately started coming up with some ideas for players and storylines and turned it over to Dan Zakroczemski. It was the perfect opportunity to combine the men and women's fields into one cover, something I'm pretty sure I haven't seen before. We had a lot of fun and the scenarios were endless.

We have a key on the inside to identify each person and an interactive presentation at: www.buffalonews.com/ncaa.

PDF: Download Buffalo2008MarchMadnesscover.pdf

The New York Times (Wayne Kamidoi, Lee Yarosh and Josh Penrod) went with a periodic table.

PDF: Download NYTMadnessPages.pdf

Jon Wile elaborates on the Washington Post's preview:

The cover was based on airports because we have teams coming to DC and lots of teams leaving. The Steinberg page is our blogger giving advice on how to pick a bracket with a plethora of online refers below it The capsule page is one of four. Analysis at the top with all sorts of info on each team below.

It was a collective tag team effort between myself, Manifold and Rukan.

PDF: Download WaPostNCAA2008.pdf

A few of five-plus preview pages from the Detroit Free Press. Rick Nease cover illustration. (Design by Ryan Ford, Kevin Bull and David Darby.)

Star-Tribune's Selection Sunday front (Chris Carr — when not makin' ya jump jump — design) and Omaha's tournament/subregional preview (Tim Parks design and Kent Sievers photo). That's all one image. The only Photoshop work was adding fire to the top of the O.J. Mayo photo.

Omaha preview doubletruck (content and design by Ben Vankat).

Last one from Omaha. Cover of Thursday's entertainment tab, directing fans of each team to bars and hotels where other fans of the same teams will gather. I threw this together in a panic after realizing at noon on Wednesday that nobody was assigned to design this cover for a 4 p.m. page-send deadline.

Selection Sunday and Monday fronts from the paper of record for Van Buren Avenue, The Arizona Republic.

Selection Sunday and subregional pages from the Denver Post (J. Damon Cain, Kristin Fogler and Aleta Labak).

Final Four host city San Antonio awoke to this Selection section (Josh Trudell with help from resident bracketologist Stephen Fontenot) and at right is the Wisconsin State Journal's preview front.

Dallas Morning News (Jason Dugger) and the Boston Globe (Brian Gross).

The Indiana Daily Student (Mark Koenig) and East Valley Tribune preview fronts.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Washington Times.

Tulsa World and The Oregonian.

Creative work across the board.

TWO MORE!!!

The Orlando Sentinel (Adam Shiver) and the Kansas City Star(.) (Noah Musser and Lynn Nguyen).

The Latest

All the panelist votes are in for the Best of Sports Design 2007. Tallying the finalists is a rather arduous task that involves entering each panelist's vote into a spreadsheet, counting, averaging votes, re-averaging votes that had conflicts of interest, entering the finalists, repeating that process to account for errors, and finally looking at the master entry list to put names and papers back on each finalist. This is done for each category.

At this point, there are four categories left to be counted: Special Section Inside Pages, Photo Pages/Posters, Special Coverage and Live Game Covers.

Voting will begin no later than Sunday, right here at sportsdesigner.com. We'll hope for earlier, but with a subregional in Omaha, it's iffy at best to get them up any earlier.

Also, we're officially changing the designation of this contest's winners. We've been using the word "finalist" to refer to the panels' choices in each category. That's a bad word, because it implies that something is left to be desired. (i.e. "The Patriots were NFL finalists this year.") ... Statistically speaking, in the four largest categories, you were much more likely to win an SND than win these categories. (In fairness, that stat does reverse itself as the categories get smaller.) So "finalist" is out.

Category winners are now termed "The Best of Sports Design" and the online voting winners are now termed "Editors' Choice." ... Glad to clear up what's really important.

Don't worry if you sent in your Selection Sunday or Preview Sections and you don't see them posted. They all will be, including a section from the Chicago Tribune that will have you folding your computer screens into fourths.

Contest and Madness

Today's the panelist deadline for each of the Best of Sports Design 2007 categories. On an off week, I'd have the finalists and voting ready and posted tomorrow, but it's NCAA Tournament time, and we're hosting a subregional in Omaha, so expect finalists to roll out slowly all week, with the last of them being posted by Sunday night. We'll have two full weeks of voting after that.

Send your Selection Sunday stuff and anything March Madness/Big Dance/Cliche Buffet related to me or Rich this week, too.