But what if you want to use a team or a player in your game that Strat-O-Matic doesn't publish (or can't publish due to the cost of licensing)?
If you have a full set of cards for a particular NFL season, you can use them as a reference for creating your own custom cards. (Keep in mind that whatever custom cards you choose to make, you must make them for personal use only; you can't sell them.)
For example, if you have a full set of cards for the 2015 NFL season, and you want to create a set of cards for the 2017 Winnipeg Blue Bombers from the Canadian Football League (CFL), you must first look at the statistics for Winnipeg, which you can find on Stats Crew. Keep in mind that while the NFL plays sixteen regular season games, the CFL plays eighteen, so you'll want to recalculate the CFL statistics so that they represent sixteen games instead of eighteen.
You must then determine which NFL player best represents each player on the Blue Bombers. You can use the Player Season Finder tool on Pro Football Reference to look up lists of players at various positions. For example, you can list all NFL quarterbacks from the 2015 season sorted by completion percentage. When you do this, you might find that, statistically speaking, 2017 Blue Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols is most like 2015 Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins (for passing). If you have full sets of Strat-O-Matic Pro Football cards from multiple seasons, you'll be able to find a more exact match.
The following image shows how the most significant 2017 Winnipeg Blue Bombers players match up statistically with NFL players from the 2015 season.
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| 2017 Winnipeg Blue Bombers players and 2015 NFL player equivalents |
After you find a match for a particular player, simply copy the data from the Strat-O-Matic card for that match. You can use Microsoft Excel to create custom cards.
When it comes time to print your cards, you'll want to use blank index cards. A Strat-O-Matic card is 5.75" x 3" and index cards come in 5" x 3" and 6" x 4" sizes. The following cards for the 2017 Winnipeg Blue Bombers were printed using 5" x 3" index cards, which means the font is smaller than on standard Strat-O-Matic cards.
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| A facsimile of a Strat-O-Matic Pro Football passing card in Microsoft Excel |
When it comes time to print your cards, you'll want to use blank index cards. A Strat-O-Matic card is 5.75" x 3" and index cards come in 5" x 3" and 6" x 4" sizes. The following cards for the 2017 Winnipeg Blue Bombers were printed using 5" x 3" index cards, which means the font is smaller than on standard Strat-O-Matic cards.
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| The 2017 Winnipeg Blue Bombers |
Again, whatever custom cards you choose to make, you must make them for personal use only.