• Stat Box Stories Introduces the Bowl Blitz Invitational

    As some of you may already know, Stat Box Stories is a great community site that uses NCAA Football 12, Madden NFL 12, NHL 12, and FIFA 12 to play games, record statistics, post video highlights, and tell the stories of games played every week. With Bowl Season beginning next Saturday, December 17th, Stat Box Stories is trying to rally some interested guest writers to the cause of trying to create statistical write-ups of all of the Bowl Games for this 2011-2012 season.

    If you have yet to read a write-up over at the blog site, here is the most recent example of work done using NCAA Football 12: the Army-Navy Game. Here also is the link to the guide for guest writers--Write a Guest Story--to give you some idea of what is looked for from guest contributors. Our own psuexv here at The Gaming Tailgate actually contributed the first guest story for the site this week, which you can read here: New York Islanders at Pittsburgh Penguins in NHL 12.

    Continue on to learn how to help write a guest story for Stat Box Stories for any of the great bowls this postseason and to sign-up.

    If you think you might be interested in contributing a Bowl Game write-up for publication at Stat Box Stories, consider the following guidelines below and then comment on this post with the game you would like to play:
    • Bowl Games in NCAA Football 12 can be played on whichever difficulty you like, so long as you specify it.
    • Bowl match-ups should be played in the designated bowl (obviously), and try to replicate the time of day for the bowl game.
    • Quarter lengths on the blog so far have been 7 minutes, but as long as you're playing at least 5 minute quarters you'll be fine.
    • Even if you use named rosters, the write-ups and statistical tracking should reference the player's position and number as though you were playing the game right out of the box. It takes a little bit of extra work when you're collecting the information--trust me, I do it every week--but it's not difficult.
    • If you sign up to do one of the Bowl Games, it must be completed and submitted before the game is played in real life so that it can be posted before the game.
    • Submissions will be emailed to paakaa10@gmail.com.


    For the list of bowl games looking for volunteers, visit this post.


    If Stat Box Stories can get a write-up and statistics for every single Bowl Game, they will consider awarding a prize for the guest contributor whose game result (final score) most closely matched the actual result of the game in real life. In the event of a tie, the tie-breaker would be whichever game had the closest offensive yards for each team in the game compared to the real-life statistics.

    If there are any questions, please comment and paakaa10 will try to answer them; otherwise, sign up for the game you're interested in playing, and good luck!
    Comments 126 Comments
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      I'll play my RG3 bowl this weekend.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      I'll take the vs game and probably some others if I have time.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      A link to the template that you used for the stat boxes would be great. I'm too much of a perfectionist otherwise and I would end up spending a whole day trying to get it to look good to me instead of just fitting the mold of whatever you're already using.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      Also, a suggestion for the table at the beginning of this thread, you may want to show the score of the game as a clickable link to the article written about the game. Makes it easier to run down the list. Then, when the actual bowl games happen, you can put the score for those as a clickable link to the actual ESPN (or Yahoo, or whatever) story written up about the real game.
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      All good suggestions, mors. I will put you down for the game you mentioned and I will create and link a Google Doc for the stat template this evening when I get out of work. Then I will update the original post with links, which I was actually intending to do tonight anyway.
    1. psusnoop's Avatar
      psusnoop -
      Good stuff, and I are interested in doing some NHL matchups too if you can name some games.

      I'll be playing mine tomorrow and will submit the info to you tomorrow as well for the "FIU vs Marshall" game.
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Just uploaded the template spreadsheet as a Google Doc. If you're writing up a game for the Bowl Blitz Invitational, please just save a copy of the file to your computer and then email it to me along with the write-up and the files or links for your screenshots/video highlights.

      https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...zQzQTJQcmtvelE
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Grabbed a few more games tonight for the week after Christmas:
      -- at
      -- at
      -- at

      This leaves the next unclaimed game as the between and on December 24th.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      Ok, here's the deal. Played the vs game (AMAZING game), and wrote all the story bits for it, but I didn't have time to write down all the stat stuff for it so I left my 360 on and went to work. Just got back, found out that (of fuckin' course) the damn electricity blinked for like a millisecond and caused it to turn off.

      My question is, can I kinda fudge some of the numbers (not all of them, just some of them) and keep the work I put in for the story side of it, or would you rather I redid the game and got a completely correct stat box?
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Quote Originally Posted by morsdraconis View Post
      Ok, here's the deal. Played the vs game (AMAZING game), and wrote all the story bits for it, but I didn't have time to write down all the stat stuff for it so I left my 360 on and went to work. Just got back, found out that (of fuckin' course) the damn electricity blinked for like a millisecond and caused it to turn off.

      My question is, can I kinda fudge some of the numbers (not all of them, just some of them) and keep the work I put in for the story side of it, or would you rather I redid the game and got a completely correct stat box?
      If you have a great story, then fudging the numbers is fine by me. After every game I've been playing for this blog, I always worry that my launch PS3 is going to freeze or something before I get all the numbers. Hasn't happened yet, but it's always in the back of my mind.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      So, do I need to do all the formatting and stuff and add it all together for you, or are you going to do that in the process of adding it to the blog site?
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Quote Originally Posted by morsdraconis View Post
      So, do I need to do all the formatting and stuff and add it all together for you, or are you going to do that in the process of adding it to the blog site?
      If you just log the stats you have in the Excel document, I can take it from there to format the numbers for the entry. You can either attach the highlight photos/videos to the email or link me to the EA SPORTS Media World link or on YouTube, whatever works easiest.

      If you want to write up a quick author bio to go with the entry also, I'll add that.
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      With the posting of psuexv's second entry this weekend, today's slate of Bowl Games is covered. This entry features the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl between the San Diego Aztecs and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns: http://statboxstories.wordpress.com/...a-football-12/
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      Please continue without me. I just remembered that I can't upload my highlights to the EA server without Xbox Live Gold Membership, so forget that I did that game after all..... Sorry man.
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Quote Originally Posted by morsdraconis View Post
      Please continue without me. I just remembered that I can't upload my highlights to the EA server without Xbox Live Gold Membership, so forget that I did that game after all..... Sorry man.
      If you have a good story to tell about the game, I definitely want that as part of this "project." Send me the statistics and the write-up and I'll go in today and try to recreate a few screenshots from the game. Even if there aren't videos, it'll be fine.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      Eh, it's just not worth it man. I have to basically completely make up the stats. I barely got any of them written down. I was gonna fudge them, but, without highlights, there's really no point. My story isn't THAT good.
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Quote Originally Posted by morsdraconis View Post
      Eh, it's just not worth it man. I have to basically completely make up the stats. I barely got any of them written down. I was gonna fudge them, but, without highlights, there's really no point. My story isn't THAT good.
      Well, the game won't be played in real life until Wednesday, December 21st; if you want, you could re-play the game and get real stats and I'd be happy to capture highlights. Otherwise, we'll just open it back up to the group and see if somebody else wants to grab it.
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      My schedule is going to be pretty hectic over the next few days, so it'd probably be best to just open it up for someone else.
    1. psuexv's Avatar
      psuexv -
      Brian, I'll try and get the TCU game done tonight.
    1. psusnoop's Avatar
      psusnoop -
      Quote Originally Posted by psuexv View Post
      Brian, I'll try and get the TCU game done tonight.
      If you got it I will pick a different one.

      I think I'll do the Independence Bowl game if that is still available.

      Missouri vs North Carolina.