Football Contest

Small-town newspapers were always looking for a way to increase the circulation. While they depended on advertisers for the bulk of their income, they needed every subscriber they could get so that the merchants would think their ads would pay off.

One way to make sure people would buy the paper was to include some kind of coupon that everybody would want. In 1963 the Herald began to offer a weekly Football Contest. Readers would pick the winners from a list of high-school football games and for a tie-breaker guess the score of the local game and then turn in the entry blank before the start of the games on Friday.

The Herald editor managed to get local businesses to support the contest, offering cash prizes of $5, $2 and $1 for the closest guess. Copeland Motor Company and Hendrick’s Gulf Station got their names in large print, so I assume they donated more than the other 27 merchants. The Herald profited by the fact that you had to buy a paper to get the entry blank.

Since our digitized copies only go through 1966, I don’t know how long this contest went on, but it was extremely popular. Entrants came from all ages and genders. . The first-place winners I cataloged ran about 2-1 for the males but a couple of the repeat winners were women “of a certain age” – Kate Pearman and Mrs E D Bullock

Originally published in the October 5, 2016 edition of the Cherokeean-Herald