However, last night I swallowed my pride for the prospect of a substantial paycheck by working for The Worldwide Leaders themselves during their telecast of ESPN Big Monday.
(Yeah, yeah, let the letters pour in. The truth, however, is this: groceries aint cheap.)
My official title was “production assistant,” but in actuality I was nothing more than a manservant for every beck and call of the producer (do I smell urine? Because I must have been a peon).
Nevertheless it was great to see the inner workings of an actual, nationwide remote broadcast, something that I hope to get into professionally myself some day. These guys were on top of the ball right from the get-go; even as I ran to get copies or bottled water for people, I was able to see how The Show works.
Every camera op knew the exact location of where their equipment needed to be. Every microphone was tested to absolute, crisp perfection. Even Terry Gannon (a very underrated play-by-play man, in my opinion) pre-recorded promos for ESPN Super Tuesday and NBA Wednesday in pitch-perfect “announcer voice.”
And this was 6 hours before tipoff!
These productions owe a lot to the level of technology they are outfitted with. They had three different channels for CG elements, meaning that they never screwed up on what was put on screen. And multiple non-linear editing systems inside the production truck allowed them to create eight packages before the game. (I’ll admit that probably sounded like gibberish to those uninitiated to broadcasting. Translation: All those promos for other shows with the Gonzaga court in the background, all the Eddie Sutton interviews, even close-up tracking shots of screaming fans, were all recorded and edited before tipoff.)
Everything was timed out so that there were no surprises. Hats off to a crew that overprepared and taught me a thing or two about the bid’ness.
But because everything gets set up hours before tipoff, there are plenty of times where you are forced to sit around and do nothing. It was during one of those times when I found myself sitting alone in the McCarthey Athletic Centre stands watching Eddie Sutton coach his team.
Several of my esteemed colleagues have already weighed in on the subject of Sutton’s arrival at USF, undoubtedly there simply to get win number-800. Old Boss Tim Bross calls the move selfish, and Kevin O’Brien thinks it’s hurting the team.
But there’s more than meets the eye regarding this Eddie Sutton story.
Prior to the game ESPN ran an interview with Sutton in which he stated the reason he came back was because he loved teaching the game to young players. At Monday’s practice, here was a man, 72 years old, going onto the court to run drills with his team. He pulled his guards aside and instructed them that getting open wasn’t a footrace, it’s a stop-and-go, opportunistic ability. He was telling his big men that the proper way to set a screen was to actually make contact, not the matador crap scene too often by big men these days. He even set a few picks himself and demonstrated how to react to the defender’s switch. He wasn’t just trying to coach them on their set plays, he was teaching them what makes those plays work.
I saw Eddie Sutton genuinely attempting to teach the Dons how to play basketball.
I also saw how little his team respected him.
The body language spoke volumes about the team’s attitude toward the coach. As they halfheartedly ran through sets, missing assignments or altogether stopping during plays, Sutton would bark at them about what they were doing wrong. The yelling yielding little results, as the mistakes piled up.
Center Hyman Taylor summed up the team’s feelings by his own practice behavior. As Sutton would yell out plays like “Hoosier,” Taylor would look around confused as the play commenced, prompting Sutton to angrily ask what the problem was.
“What’s the matter? You don’t know where you’re supposed to be?” Sutton would yell.
“I don’t know this play!” A frustrated Taylor would respond.
It seems that no matter whether Sutton’s motives for coaching the Dons are selfish or not, it certainly looked like he was leading a crew that had already abandoned ship. In their opinion, this will be a wasted year for the program, as they are forced to learn the plays and tendencies of a coach who never recruited them, and doesn’t plan to stay beyond one year.
In their view, he is using them.
Sutton said that he just wanted to teach players the game of basketball, whether that is true or not, only he knows. But no matter how badly he may want to teach, it won’t make any difference on a team that thinks it has no reason to learn.
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