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?