The Timeout

I enjoy writing this personal blog, but it's mostly just a chance to express some things on my mind regarding sports and sports broadcasting.  It also takes a lot of time to complete an entire blog, for me upwards of three hours overall, and that takes away time from other aspects of my life. 

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In athletics, a coach who falls behind early faces a choice: do you use your timeouts early and try to turn things around, or do you save your timeouts hoping the team can rally on its own and using the timeouts later in a closer game.

Timeouts are tools.  And like any tool, it takes an artist to use them well.  A choice must be made.

Two stories, mostly for entertainment:

My friend and co-broadcaster this year, coach Larry Holley of William Jewell College has more wins than any other four-year college coach in Missouri, and is the 10th most winning coach at all levels of college basketball.  He's seen a lot of games and called a lot of timeouts.  A practiced storyteller, he tells of the time early in his career coaching at Northwest Missouri State University.  

Late in a close home game, Larry needed a timeout but wasn't exactly sure how many he had remaining, so he quickly went to the scorekeeper.

"How many timeouts do I have?" he asked.

"How many do you want?" replied the scorekeeper.

And, former volleyball coach Terry Pettit, who put the Nebraska Cornhusker volleyball program on the map as a head coach, used to say this about what goes on in a timeout:

"During a timeout, you either say 'Woah!' or 'Go!'."

I think in life, as in sports, you have several timeouts to use as you see fit.

And I see fit to take a timeout right now.  I'm behind and I need to say Woah.

I still have a lot to say, and it will come, but right now my focus is on producing and broadcasting basketball, whether it's the current Holiday Hoops basketball tournament at North Central Missouri College, or NCMC games which resume next week.  And the upcoming baseball and softball schedules for this spring. As well as teaching responsibilities.

So, it's Woah for this blog, probably until late spring.

Not to say there won't be an occasional rant that makes a cameo appearance; but not weekly.  Until later.

So until later, 

Cheers!

Women's Basketball is a Separate Sport

Problogue:  I have to admit it, this blog has slid down my priority list with the onset of the college basketball broadcast season at North Central Missouri College and my other duties for NCMC.  Designed as a weekly commentary, I've fallen short in the last month, but certainly plan to become more of a regular writer.

A happy holiday to you all!  My holiday season will be wrapped into coverage of the Holiday Hoops basketball tournament in Trenton, Missouri, hosted by the NCMC Foundation.  Hope you can join us!

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I was having a discussion with a coach recently--a female who coaches women's basketball, but that's not really important--and I was doing an impromptu speech about the differences between men's basketball and women's basketball.

The two are different sports, in my mind.  Different in popularity, to be sure; the men's game is more popular to the general population, according to the statistics, than the women's game, there is no disputing that.  Men's basketball is also:

• Different in speed of play.
• Played by athletes above the rim at times.
• Influenced heavily by what is shown on sports TV.

OK?  It's different.  

I like men's basketball.  But I like women's basketball also.  It's just a different game.  Accept that, and enjoy it for what it is:

It is a game where skill and talent rule, but fundamentals and systems still matter.

Red Auerbach's Book

When I was 11, I found a copy of Red Auerbach's book, Basketball: For the Player, Fan, and Coach from 1953...paperback edition, no actual pictures but drawings of players to illustrate the concepts.  Even a

section on shooting the set shot.  The foul lanes in the drawings still have the narrow lanes of the bygone era...it teaches you to never leave your feet on defense...don't throw fancy passes... and extreme fastbreak "racehorse basketball" ( I'm sure Red never anticipated a Paul Westhead).

I treasured that book as an introduction to the game.  I didn't understand all of it...I had to ask my non-sports mom what a "pivot" was, and really didn't learn anything from that discussion.  But I digress...

This was a book on basic fundamental basketball.  Most of it is still used in some form today at all levels of basketball.

And the women use the fundaments, even those fundamentals spelled out some 70 years ago, which is refreshing to me.  

And what's wrong with that?

It is a game in which women practice hard, play hard, and and play the game hard.  Then they let it go, win or lose.

I'm going to generalize here, I admit: the final score of a basketball game often is not as important to females--again, generally speaking--as it is to males.  Of course there are exceptions...and there are important games that mean more than other games.  My experience in coaching female teams and being around them for many years as a broadcaster, is that females forget the outcome fairly quickly, consider it another life experience, and embrace winning as a very nice feeling in the moment.

As a coach, that used to bug me.  I was a true believer in the silent bus ride home after a loss, the Billy Martin and Bobby Knight (warning: explicit language) method.  I used to believe in making myself and everyone around me miserable for a long time after losses.  But I'm older now and have seen and experienced a few more things than I had as a 30 year old.

I was wrong to make those feelings the centerpoint of my life.

Women's basketball is a game in which players don't look to the next level as much as their male counterparts.

I've had lots of conversations and lots of interviews with college players in the last 20 years; the men, almost invariably, say playing professionally is a goal. The women I talk to rarely mention playing for pay later in their life.

Women tend to list continuing in school, developing a career, and looking forward to family life.  And I think that shows in the women's game, which is without a lot of ESPN-inspired demonstrative behavior and trash talk before, during or after a good play.

Chess and Boxing?Who knew?

Just my thoughts.  For the record, I also enjoy dance teams, scholastic bowls, livestock judging and a good chess boxing match (#7 on this list) now and again.

And, of course, Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year.

If you're interested, there's a great YouTube video on a study made four or five years ago about the competitive behaviors in female athletes.  Take four minutes and enjoy it.

Going to Extremes for North Central Missouri College

Problogue:  The start of our video broadcast production year is always stressful.  Because North Central Missouri College doesn't have a "broadcastable" sport in the fall, our start to the production year is the start of basketball season, which in 2021 tipped off at 5:30 on November 2.

I was right again...it was stressful, partly because I was gone for two weeks leading up to the game.  

Here's a recounting of that week. 

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After a long vacation,  a series of broadcasts to start the year meant an 85 hour work week (Monday through Saturday) for me at Pirates Digital Media.

Why?

Here's a recap of the facts:

• Mid October trip, two wonderful days in San Diego (first time, won't be the last), 10 more wonderful days in Hawaii (came close to drowning, but didn't ruin the trip).
• Stepped off the plane at midnight October 31.
• Tip off of first televised basketball broadcast November 2nd, followed by five more games over the weekend--that's the 85 hour work week--and then two more the following Tuesday, which meant another 21 hour day.

Here's the narrative, some explanation and opinion:

At North Central Missouri College, we televise our games online.  I choose those words carefully. We're not like other schools at our level (National Junior College Athletic Association) and almost every other collegiate level outside of NCAA Division 1.

I say "televise" our games online because we have an in-house basketball production unit that features a multiple camera set (five cameras this year), a staff of at least five (three live camera operators, a director, and an announcer), three wireless cameras, a wireless microphone system for natural court sounds (placed on the backboards for rim and net sounds, as well as player grunts and sneaker squeaks and ref whistles), an automated scoreboard graphic, and a replay system.

During the broadcast, we feature interviews in the pregame with both coaches, commercial breaks that highlight North Central, halftime interviews produced before the game with our players and other people associated with our school, and a live interview court side with our coaches after the game.

Because our basketball facility is used by the community as a wellness center, we put up our equipment before games and take our equipment down after games.  That is about a four hour process, if everything goes well.

As a producer, it also takes time off-site to set up interviews for the game, record those interviews, and edit and publish those interviews.  We have six interviews for a basketball doubleheader, the opponent coaches are taped on Zoom and our coaches/players/guests are taped in our studio.  Just guessing, I'd say it's an average of one hour per interview to produce completely.

Additional duties are to make sure wireless batteries, camera batteries, and communication radios for video staff are charged and working.  And I set up my own tables and take them down, too, and am proud to do it.

As a play by play announcer, I prepare my game notes and spot charts starting about a week before the day I'll actually use them.  

• After the first games, the North Central information is simply updated, but preparing for our opponent is a process of converting a roster into workable notes and a scoresheet kept during the broadcast, including
• Finding cumulative statistics and whittling them down to what I'll use during the broadcast, including where teams are nationally ranked among other teams. Also going back go find the team's record last year.
• Finding individual stats for each player and interpreting them (for instance, a free-throw shooter's average of 100% is a little misleading.  Is it 40 attempts or four?  Big difference.  And I look them up). Too many stats are too many stats: I'm interested in points, rebounds, shooting percentages, assists, steals and blocks.  And where they rank nationally in those categories.
• Researching what each player has done in the past two or three games, going back in the stats to see what happened in previous meetings over the past two seasons between the two teams and what current players did in those games.
• Researching some personal information on players, like nicknames, parent's names, best accomplishments, any thing else that might be usable during the broadcast.
• Keeping track of the national rankings.
• Writing a pregame show and in-game notes, which include updates on upcoming games and news from the NCMC campus.

I had my Audio/Visual class come up the other day to see what setup for a multiple-camera shoot looks like, and they asked me why I do that much work, and what extra money I earn by going to that much trouble for our live broadcasts.

Answer: I don't know.  And I don't.

I don't truly know why I go to the extremes to put on a broadcast like we put on.  

I do have some theories...

I have yet to see another NJCAA school, run in-house at least, that does multi-camera/announcer centered game broadcast.  When I was at the NCAA D2 level, nobody produced shows like that either.  I felt we were #1 in the nation then at the D2 level, and I think we're #1 right now at the JUCO level.

I like that feeling a lot.  File that one under the "ego" theory...

I also think that it does the school to have the finest production possible.  Parents and friends watch (from both schools), recruits watch, other coaches watch.  All good for NCMC, although  it's impossible to assign a financial number to it, much to some people's dismay through the years.  I call this the Public Relations theory.

Also there's the Goliath theory...we want to look bigger than we actually are, perhaps.  Isn't that pretty normal on social media?  Don't companies promote themselves in an effort to appear bigger and better than their competitors?  Don't people try to show their best lives to their followers?  No difference here.

How about the "chip on the shoulder" theory?  

I've worked in relative obscurity for much of my career.  My belief is people think, because I have created systems from scratch and have focused on amateur athletics, I must not be any good.  We don't have expensive equipment (I'd rather pay for people's services than high end tech); I don't cater to advertisers,  I don't need the best seat in the stadium and certainly don't want a gaudy press credential around my neck.  I like to be nice to everybody, not just the high flying media phonies and the people they use/abuse to get what they want, and everyone knows it.  

And finally, the legacy theory: I want people to remember us as the leaders in the industry of streaming live sports (at least among student-staff, in-house productions) and I want our students to know that they were the biggest part of that legacy.

Now, about the money. 

I get paid (very fairly) to help promote the school, recruit students for our building digital media program, and produce media featuring NCMC.  I've had to work for money sometimes, and I don't mind being paid, but it does not motivate me.  What motivates me is the process, telling a story, and being good to people.  And to a very real and large extent, not letting people down.

That's why I am willing to work an 85 hour work week.

Grinding, Paths of Least Resistance, and Life Lessons

Problogue:  We all work hard, we all try to succeed.  Some succeed without really sweating it out, just kind of going with the flow.  How is that possible?  Is it "working hard", or "working smart" or something else?

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I have a good baseball coaching friend--a two time Hall of Famer--who doesn't like to describe life in athletics as "grinding".

He thinks that baseball is fun, baseball is a game, and baseball is full of pleasure, even when it means hard work.  "Grinding" misleads.  "Grinding" negates the undercurrent of what makes the game great.

He has a point.

I've tried at times to pursue things that I found interesting but was not particularly suited for or prepared for.  Round peg in square hole stuff.  Trying to grind my way to success.

It occurred to me at some point that maybe I might be more successful if I applied a process I first heard about in the context of martial arts:  instead of trying harder to be good, try softer.

Try softer.

To me, trying softer means to go with the flow, the concept of the martial art's akido.  In my life it's meant figuring out what I do well, what I like to do, and then finding a way to make a living out of that information.

If you want to get spiritual about it, letting the universe take you where it wants to, not trying to guide your rocketship life where you think it should go, is the anti-grinding.

Not that hard work is unimportant.  Not that preparation is unnecessary.  Not that planning is a wasted effort.

If taking the four hours it takes to generate information for a broadcast is "grinding"...if investing three hours setting up the video equipment needed to do a multi-broadcast television broadcast is "grinding"...if being on the air for a five-hour doubleheader and then spending another hour taking down the production so it's ready to go next time is "grinding", then maybe video sports broadcasting as a producer and play-by-play announcer is not for you. 

Running water finds the path of least resistance, and still manages to get places.

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Speaking of running water: my recent trip to the North Shore of Hawaii nearly ended sadly for me, but for a North Shore lifeguard who pulled me out of the surf after I'd been swept out by the undertow and could not get back to shore.

If they had not been nearby and watchful,  I would not have survived.

Funny thing about my near-death experience: the take-away was that 59 year old, overweight midwesterners should be smarter than to think they can do the same things as 20-something athletic Islanders.

Lesson learned.  And thank you to the Sunset Beach life guard.

"What's Your Favorite Sport to Broadcast?"

Problogue: I love being a sports broadcaster, and really like it when people show an interest in what I do and how I do it.  I think, though, when fans ask me questions they are just making conversation or don't know what else to say to me.  I don't want to give them a real short answer to their questions, but more than once I've described the construction of the clock instead of just giving the current time, seeing glazed eyes staring back at me, or worse, staring over my shoulder.  I'll work on my direct answers.

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More than anything else people want to know when they find out I'm a sportscaster is, "What's your favorite sport to broadcast?"

Hmm, let's see; it's a long list of sports I've broadcast that I can consider.

There are the obvious sports that everyone knows about: football, men's and women's basketball (yes, they are different sports), and baseball.

Then there are sports I've broadcast that don't come to mind immediately to most people, like softball, men's and women's volleyball (again, vastly different) and wrestling.

And soccer...that's an interesting one because soccer on TV can be very slow to a broadcaster because you mostly name the people who make touches, and now and then the defenders that mark the offensive players, yet soccer on the radio is extremely fast (especially at the amateur level, where there are more turnovers) because you not only name the players but create a picture in the listener's mind of where the ball is, which direction it's heading, and what the pass or shot or save looks like.

Swimming and tennis can be fun, and not a lot of announcers at my level have had the opportunity to broadcast those.

Auto racing was a brand new thing to me when I first tried it in the mid 2000s...BMX bike racing too...

Mud volleyball is played...in chocolate milk, I think

Softball for disabled adults and kids.

I've done one hockey match.

Mud volleyball...now that's unique.

So I have a bunch to choose from.

Now the envelope, please.  And the winner is:

The winner is that I get really excited to do the next one.  When I wake up in the morning and I have a softball game scheduled, my favorite sport is softball.  When volleyball is the sport that day, that's my favorite sport to broadcast, and so on.  I'm blessed, I think, that I can wake up excited about that day's event to cover, and I know that when I'm done preparing and fortunate enough during the game to avoid technical problems, I'm going to have a good time and enjoy whatever happens in the game.

OK, that's not really the answer, as I dodged that question.  I mean, if a basketball parent asks what my favorite sport is...can I really answer, baseball?

So here's some truthful information:

The sport I'm the best at broadcasting is basketball.  I've simply done more basketball than any other sport, I guess.

The sport that is most challenging for me to do is football.  About 30 starters from each team (I count the specialists and return guys as starters) that I need to know a lot about, plus second and third stringers that I need to know something about, plus tons of stats to interpret and stories to unwind and a three-hour long broadcast done a long way away from the field of play.  I would spend a total of about five hours to create an opponent's spot chart and update my team's spot chart each week.

My football spot chart-with offense only-from 2017

The most fun broadcast is baseball.  On TV, lots of time to tell stories and interact with a color analyst; on radio, so many things to describe and the time to do it.  Also, it's the game I've been most involved with as a player and coach.

The quickest game to broadcast on radio--along with soccer--is volleyball, another sport I have a background in as a coach.  Calling by name the players who touch the ball so quickly in this sport is a-machine-gun approach, but a nice break between plays to recap.  On TV, the beauty of the athletic play is easy to see.  Women's volleyball is a combination of power, finesse and quickness, plus strategic serving; men's volleyball is power, power, power, with tremendous ball handling.

Softball is fun with its quick tempo and lots of action (as opposed to the slowdown in baseball with runners on base).  Not much time for stories, even on TV, and certainly not on radio.  Low scoring and pitching, strikes and outs, and defense dominate in good softball.  I can live without the cheering in the dugout (just teasing, ladies, you go do what you do).

I've come to respect the buildup and drama in soccer.  Americans say it's boring but the world disagrees, and I side with the world on this one.  Good passing and the ability to build an attack is a beautiful thing.  Plus TV broadcasting allows time to tell stories.

Swimming, tennis, auto racing, hockey, BMX racing and wrestling were sports I had a lot of help with, working with a good color analyst who did most of the detail work.  Not entirely proud to admit that, but proud to note that I knew what I didn't know, and picked a strategy that worked.

There's only one way to describe my one match as a mud volleyball play by play announcer: it's over now and barely remembered.

See?  The answer to the "what's your favorite sport to broadcast" question is long and winding, and in the time I fully explained myself you would have a clock but no audience left.

And I wouldn't have even gotten close to explaining the in and outs of broadcasting mud volleyball.

The Bygone Era of Tape-Delayed Sports

Problogue: I am sad that I won't live long enough to see all the cool things that can be done on the internet.  Yeah, there's trash and annoyance and lots of sin, but some really great things also.  Like online broadcasting...

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Twenty years ago I was co-owner of TEAM Sports in Kansas City, doing video play by play (with one camera, exactly what people are doing now) of local high school sports.  

Twenty years ago, there was no internet to stream to, so we recorded on SVHS tape and then hustled that tape to Comcast Cable in eastern Jackson County (Missouri) for airing on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Tape delay of high school sports was pretty cool at that time; the game would be played, we did a fair job of putting it on tape, and players/parents/friends/fans were thrilled to be able to see the replay in their home.

We even tape-delayed the state high school basketball and wrestling tournaments for a couple of years, distributing the broadcast tape to cable outlets across Missouri.  I believe it was the first ever state-wide video coverage of those events.

And it was pretty new.  And it was pretty cool...for awhile.  And, importantly, there were interested sponsors.

The truth, though, became apparent to me fairly soon: the fun part of sports is the drama of the game as it's happening.  It's a real life soap opera (click the link if you don't know what a soap opera is) being played out in front of you.  It's what we love...it makes it worth being there, even if "being there" means watching it on TV.

Tape delayed sports is subject to spoiler alerts.  If you know the result and the details, it's really not a lot of fun to watch, at least as a fan.  Maybe players want to see how they look in their uniform, or impress other people that they're on TV, but the drama is long over if you know the outcome.

Radio knew it all the time...live radio sports beats delayed video sports, although in the early 2000s it was close for awhile.

There came a point where we just couldn't find interested advertisers to back delayed sports coverage, and our company came to an end.

We had discussions and disagreements over implementing the internet for broadcasting, giving us the ability to go live.

I decided it was worth the gamble.

My first online broadcast was in the Missouri-Iowa-Nebraska-Kansas (MINK) League, with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes team the Kansas City Grays.  With the help of TEAM Sport's computer guru Mike Perry, we set up a small audio system (maybe WireCast?) to do a game from Blue Springs.

My anxiety over doing the game itself was pretty high, but my head was about to explode when I started getting messages on my broadcast laptop that the system was failing, and that I was continually being disconnected.

I struggled through the game with the notion that nobody could hear it.  And had a terrible feeling, of course.

Come to find out the next day, the system only had the capacity to support five listeners at a time.  So, we kind of blew up the system with an overload of listeners, which helped my attitude immensely.

That fall, I received a phone call from Rockhurst University's athletic director, asking if I could do online streamed radio coverage of Hawks basketball home games.

Rockhurst Hawks

Heck yes!

So I became the play by play announcer and chief engineer for RockU for two years in the NCAA.

That led to twelve wonderful years online, both audio and video, with William Jewell College, and now 2+ years at North Central Missouri College.

During that time we also formed broadcast networks for a couple of high schools, led by high school students wanting to have the experience.  I helped initiate the first-ever NCAA Division II conference-wide broadcast network, and have done internet coverage of national basketball, baseball, volleyball and softball broadcasts.

The point is, after 2005 or so, none of that would have happened using the tape delay concept.

"Live" is king in sports.

The internet allows everyone to go live if they choose to.

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Jon Gruden: Wow.  Takeaway: you shouldn't be thinking it, but if you are, you better not write it down anywhere.  But still, we should know by now not to think it.

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We have a staff of 10 people who are interested in our sports broadcast production team at North Central Missouri College, where we start our video basketball coverage on
Pirates Digital Media November 2nd with a Women's/Men's doubleheader.

Our multi-camera approach is pretty impressive with the right numbers of staff, and not only is this group good by the numbers, I think they're  going to be pretty good when they get going (maybe great!)

Blog 9: Narrowcasts, Facebook, and Zuckerberg's Wallet

Problogue: I've been so blessed to have broadcast sports beginning in the late 70s on AM radio, through the current broadcast boom on the internet.  The internet, I think, has extended my time on the air by 20+ years.

Plus...a thanks to Albany TV, and Mark Zuckerberg holds his breath for six and a half hours...

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I've started a number of broadcast networks for online sports.

It may have been a bit audacious to call them "networks", since they normally had just one way to share the programming.  But, in typical marketing fashion, it sounded good.

My networks have always been connected to one school or one team, becoming the "voice of" that school or team.

(Quick aside: why aren't video broadcasts known as the "eyes of" the team?)

As an announcer, being associated with one school or one team is really a lot of fun.  It is your team, you live or die with them, you can be partial on the air (to a degree) and you normally get to know the people around the team pretty well.

And you get to know the parents, friends and family for which the broadcasts are intended.

That's why I try to sometimes use the term "narrowcast" instead of  "broadcast".  Our team broadcasts are intended for the parents, friends and family.  And those that are stakeholders in that team, like alumni. And, of course, the same kind of audience from the opponent on any given day.

But we certainly never, ever expect to see viewers in the thousands or millions.  We don't deal with advertising folks who insist on doing business in Cost Per Thousand.

Over the years I've become very comfortable with narrowcasting.

I'm not sure that I treasure anything more than just doing the job, except for maybe getting a sincere compliment from one of the stakeholders of the broadcast.

Here's the one of the best compliments I ever received:

After a basketball game on the William Jewell College Sports Network, the opposing coach came across the floor immediately after the game and shook my hand.  Before he talked to his team.

"My wife was watching the entire game and said it was wonderful, " he said.  "She wanted me to come right over and thank you, and now I can't wait to watch the replay."

That's what it's about.  You can't replace that feeling I had with money or followers or retweets. (Punchline: his team lost the game that night.)

May you have the same experience someday in your broadcasting life...

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On Monday, NCMC broadcast student Jaden Varner and I were in Albany, Missouri visiting Albany TV and visiting with their producer Jered Rolves before a local softball game.  Albany TV streams their sports broadcasts on Facebook, and by now you know what happened to Facebook Monday...

Albany TV of Albany, MO

If you don't know what happened to Facebook Monday, they were shut down from approximately 10:40 a.m. CDT until around 5:00; Jered was facing the rare dark side of online broadcasting, a situation in which he might not have had a home platform for his broadcast.  And he was going to let viewers down because of it.

He was a lot more composed than I would have been, honestly, and FB came back just in time for the first pitch...although Albany TV had the option of recording the game and showing it later, in athletics live is everything, which is the subject of a coming blog.

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Did you hear this, although I don't know how it could be official: given the information (all bad, it seems) about Facebook recently, and given the outage on FB Monday...Mark Zuckerburg's net wealth dropped six BILLION dollars while FB was down.

The Zuck

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Speaking of Monday...I sure missed the Mannings on Monday Night Football....you?