Cleats features a group of young kids, coaches, and their parents as they deal with the day-to-day trials and tribulations of being on a soccer team.
Bill Hinds stated that he had ceased producing Cleats because the strip "had suffered in many newspaper comic polls over the past nine years.
In many newspapers, editors have chosen to run the earliest Cleats strips again, allowing readers to compare Hinds' initial style and characters against their more recent development.
This has resulted in previous Sunday strips appearing on weekdays, but has opened to broad examination the processes by which a professional cartoonist evolves his work over years of production.
Fictional characters who have made special guest appearances in the strip include: A compilation of Cleats comics named Who Tracked Soccer Through the House ?