You want football? We got football.

Hometown papers led with the Patriots-Colts and Bears-Saints. Today's BFD would be the paper that did the best job with headline, photo and above-the-fold presentation.

Many of the Illinois papers used similar or precisely the same image. Here's a sampling from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and The Times. The best of these (ever so slightly) was Redeye. The Indianapolis Star matched an exuberant headline with an equally joyful photo.

Much to their credit, many papers did a good job even in defeat. Here's a selection from The Times-Picayune, Sun Journal and Sun Herald.

For a paper with no team in the either game, Link did the best job of providing equal play to the results of both games.

According to football legend Vince Lombardi, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." But when your team loses, it's still a big story – albeit not a happy one. The Telegraph had the Best Front Design today, win or lose, because they did the best job with the most important aspects of front page design: story selection, lead headline, lead image and above-the-fold presentation.

The Telegraph's lead headline worked literally as well as figuratively. But more importantly, it worked beautifully with the lead image. And all elements were carefully packaged to appear neatly above the fold.

Room for improvement: Getting the lead package right requires good choices, judgment and skill – all of which are apparent here. But the rest of this page is little more than headlines and text – no story-telling images or short-form, except for a couple of intro summaries. How 'bout a map with the hiker story or a chart with the prescription story? The above-the-nameplate promos would benefit from tighter writing, larger image size in the photo(s) and fewer elements.



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