Alright, so folks have been asking me how I get all obsessive with my note-taking, especially with Obsidian. And with the 2023 NFL season kicking off, I figured I’d show you how I put together my NFL checklist in there. It’s nothing super fancy, just something that worked for me to keep track of the chaos that is a football season.
Getting Started – The Big Idea
Last year, I was all over the place. Missed games, forgot who was playing who, standings were a blur. My brain just ain’t what it used to be for remembering all that stuff. So, this year, I said, “Enough!” I use Obsidian for pretty much everything else in my life, why not for football, right? Seemed like a no-brainer.
First thing I did was open up Obsidian and just stare at it for a bit. Then, I created a new folder. Called it something real original like “NFL 2023”. Genius, I know. Inside that, I made a main note, maybe titled “2023 NFL Season Hub” or something similar. This was gonna be my command center.
Putting in the Schedule – Week by Week
This was the most tedious part, not gonna lie. I went online to the official NFL site, found the full season schedule. My first thought was to just copy-paste the whole darn thing. Well, that was a mess. Formatting went all wonky. So, I decided to do it week by week. Much more manageable.
Inside my “2023 NFL Season Hub” note, I started making headings for each week. Like:
## Week 1
Then, under each week, I’d list out the games as checklist items. Simple stuff:
[ ] Team A vs Team B[ ] Another Team vs Some Other Team
I also added the date and time, just so I wouldn’t get confused. So it looked more like:
[ ] Thu Sep 07 - Lions at Chiefs - 8:20 PM[ ] Sun Sep 10 - Panthers at Falcons - 1:00 PM
I just manually typed these out. Took a while, put on some music, and just grinded through it for all 18 weeks. It felt good to have it all laid out, though.
Tracking Scores and Winners
This is where the checklist part really comes in. After a game was done, I’d go back to my note. I’d check the box for the game that just finished. And then, right next to it, I’d add the score. Something like:
[x] Thu Sep 07 - Lions 21 at Chiefs 20 - 8:20 PM
Sometimes, if it was a big upset or a crazy game, I might add a little note right below it. Nothing fancy, just like “Wow, can’t believe the Lions pulled that off!”
Linking Teams – Making it “Obsidian-y”
Now, here’s where Obsidian starts to shine a bit more than just a plain text file. For each team name in the schedule, I turned them into links. So, instead of just “Lions at Chiefs”, it became:
[x] Thu Sep 07 - [[Detroit Lions]] 21 at [[Kansas City Chiefs]] 20 - 8:20 PM
Why do this? Well, if I clicked on “[[Detroit Lions]]”, Obsidian would create a new note for the Detroit Lions if it didn’t exist, or take me to it if it did. In that team note, I could jot down things like their overall record as the season went on, key players, my random thoughts about their performance, whatever. And the “Backlinks” panel in Obsidian would automatically show me all the games that team was in. Super handy.
So I went through the whole schedule again and added those double square brackets around every team name. Yeah, more typing, but worth it for me.
What About Standings?
For standings, I kept it pretty simple. In my main “2023 NFL Season Hub” note, below all the weekly schedules, I made a new section like:
## Standings
And under that, I’d just manually type out the conference and division standings after each week’s games were mostly done. Something like:
NFC North
- Lions: 1-0
- Packers: 0-0 (before their first game)
- Vikings: 0-0
- Bears: 0-0
I know there are fancy plugins like Dataview that could probably automate some of this, but honestly, I didn’t want to overcomplicate it. Manually updating it once a week wasn’t too bad, and it kind of helped me internalize how everyone was doing.
How It’s Working Out
So far, so good! It’s really easy to see the week’s games at a glance, check off who won, and see how my favorite teams are doing. Clicking on a team name to see all their matchups or my notes on them is pretty cool.
It’s not perfect, I’m sure. Maybe next year I’ll try to get fancier. But for this season, this simple checklist system in Obsidian is doing exactly what I needed it to do: keep me organized and on top of the NFL schedule without too much fuss. I just open Obsidian, go to my NFL hub, and everything’s right there.
It’s a living document, really. I’m in there every Sunday and Monday (and Thursday!) updating scores and checking off games. It’s become part of my football ritual. And hey, it stops me from asking my buddies “Wait, who won that game again?” all the time. So, win-win.
