Football/Basketball
Postgame
Brian Binette, former South
Carolina SID
Sending Information to the Media Can Be Accomplished
in 3 Clicks!
As
SIDs, we’ve all been there before.
A
night football game … finishes at 11 … reporters on deadline and the newspapers
waiting for the official stats.
You
finish the game … proof the stats … print them out and put anywhere from
six to 20 pages on the fax machine. If you don’t use Sports Systems (eeks!), you’re embarking
on a long process that will miss most paper deadlines. Inevitably, the fax machine stops
midway through the upload due to a line or jam error. Is anything going out? Do I do it again? Did I mention that in many
instances, a student is handling this while you’re conducting interviews or
escorting media to and from the interview room? However, if you use Sports Systems, you just have to
contact one location and paper deadlines will be reached with time to
spare.
Sports
Systems gives you two ways to avoid all this mess: Stat Crew FTP uploads
and Web site uploads. With
Stat Crew uploads, transmission time to send and start a broadcast to your
media contact list is less than 10 seconds and takes just three clicks!
Web Site Uploads
First
things first: if you’re currently a client, and not familiar with uploading
a document via our web site, then contact your account representative
immediately. For those of you
unfamiliar with the system, you can upload Acrobat or Word files (among
other types) straight from your computer. There’s no need to come into the office to send a fax, or
even print out your release. At
games, you probably already convert your stats to .PDF files, so why not
just upload them?
If
you’re familiar with the web site (www.sportssystems.com),
but not file uploads, start by logging in. Your three-digit account number is the user name and the
first four-digit document number in your system is the password. Once on the site and logged in,
click the “D-Load: Upload a Document” on the right side. Choose the document you wish to
upload, then use the Browse button to find your Word, .PDF or other
supported document and hit upload. If you have emails along with fax numbers on your lists,
make sure you type in a Title which will become the subject line of the
email.
Wait
for the balls to finish bouncing (which means the system is still
processing). If your documents
send automatically (meaning you don’t have to call back to start a
broadcast), then you’re all done. If you do manual (or two step) broadcast, then view the
document and make sure it looks good. If it does, go to “Start a Broadcast” and follow the
instructions to send your document. Your document is then sent electronically to us and
accomplishes two things: (1) you’re sending the media an electronic version
that is very clean and (2) we send the document faster, so it costs you
less money!
But
that’s more than three clicks, isn’t it? Never fear … Stat Crew FTP uploads are here!
Stat Crew FTP Uploads
Qualifying
to use this great technology is three-fold: (1) Do you do Stat Crew live
stats, (2) Have you updated your Stat Crew software either this season or
last, and (3) Do you have an Internet connection at the scoring computer
location?
Number
three might seem redundant, but keep this in mind; you do not have to do
live stats for an event to use this great functionality!
If
you’re at all familiar with the Stat Crew software, you know that you must
go to Game Reports to print out your game stats. You select the game, then click “Boxscore” or “Scoring
Summary” and that document is displayed. Click, File>Print>Enter to print the boxscore. Instead, using the Stat Crew FTP
technology, click File>Transmit Report>Enter to upload your boxscore
to us and start your fax broadcast! Three clicks and about 10 seconds and you’re finished!
Complete
details on this procedure (and web uploads) are on our web site, but all
you have to do to setup is fill in the Transmit Report fields. The first three are just your
account number, document number and school name. The last three are static one-time setup fields that
connect with our servers. Once
you input this data, just click File>Transmit Report>Enter, and your
settings are saved.
Are
you playing a team that uses Sports Systems? Just change the account number and document number and
transmit the boxscore to their list. Ten more seconds later and their faxing/emailing is
finished. You’ve just spent
between 20-30 seconds and have finished your postgame faxing!
So
you say, “But I send multiple pages in a single broadcast.” No problem there either, as this is
how the time savings really comes in! Select the game you just finished,
but before displaying a report, click Display>All Selected. StatCrew will give you a box where you
can select all the reports you want to display. Make your selections and hit “OK.” You then will be asked if you want
to combine these into a single report. Hit “Yes” and all the reports will be combined with the page breaks! Then do as before: File>Transmit
Report>Enter. All of your pages have just been
transmitted to us and your broadcast will start shortly. Repeat this for your opponent and,
again, you’ve transmitted – this time multiple pages – in less than 30
seconds.
By
doing the Stat Crew FTP upload after a football game (for example) where
each team is sending the stats and play by play (about 15 pages), you’ve
taken a 30-minute process and
reduced it to 30 seconds. You now reach your media
exponentially faster and save money in the process with a cleaner document
sent from our system.
Now you say that you only do live stats for football
or basketball. Don’t worry! The
Stat Crew FTP license is for your school, not the sport! For example, you
don’t do live stats for baseball but are connected to the Internet with the
scoring computer. Just make
sure the Stat Crew FTP is loaded on that laptop, and then you can do the
Transmit Report function after the game. Any sport
where you use Stat Crew, have an Internet connection and have Stat Crew FTP
loaded on the laptop can use this great function!
Any SID will admit that the business has changed
dramatically over a short period of time. Sports Systems is leading this change with time and
money-saving tips to help you do your job quicker and better, letting you Go Home Earlier! In this case, we’ve taken a long
drawn-out process and reduced it to as little as 30 seconds!
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