The main character, Gil Thorp, is the athletic director of Milford High School and coaches the football, basketball, and baseball teams.

As editorial standards relaxed, he was able to move from stories about jalopies and after-school jobs to topics like teen pregnancy, divorce, steroids,[3] and sexual harassment.

[5] Upon Berrill's death, Tribune Media Services chose author Jerry Jenkins (co-author of the Left Behind novels) to take over writing the strip.

The Jenkins stories discussed overtly religious topics which had not appeared in the strip before, including an Orthodox Jewish football player[7] and a 15-year-old pregnant girl whom Thorp talks out of getting an abortion.

[9][3] In 2022, the Tribune Content Agency announced that graphic novel writer Henry Barajas would take over authorship of the strip beginning in July of that year.