Any Given Sunday

One of the fun things about my choice of employment is that I get to see how my clients generate their revenue. Over my nearly 20 years doing this, I've had the experience of touring alarm monitoring central stations, seen aluminum wheels for Ford Mustangs be cast, watched Maytag washing machines be assembled, and sat in the broadcast truck for a round of the PGA Championship.

This past Sunday, I was invited to sit in the broadcast truck again. This time the truck was contracted for the Chicago Bear / Miami Dolphin game. As part of that, I had field and press-box access pre-game. Here's some pictures I was able to take on the field between around 10:00 AM and 11:45 AM (click on image for full size).



Some of those pictures include Lovie Smith reviewing his soon-to-be-defeated troops, a Marty Booker / Olin Kreutz reunion, Robbie Gould practicing his corner kicks, Mike McCaskey trying to look like Walter Payton, the entrance to the Bears' locker room, and the world's ugliest camera man.

It's a hell of an experience to see the NFL from that side of the production. The upside of sitting in the truck is that you realize just how big a business the NFL really is. For example, one of the producers is in constant contact with the broadcast center at CBS HQ in NYC. Halfway through the first quarter, the producer was talking about taking a commercial break if "this play goes nowhere" because, if they didn't, they'd have to shift the double commercial break to the third quarter.

The other upside is getting to sit in the truck's soundroom. Seeing the pre-game jet flyby on a 1080i screen with no picture degradation while hearing the jets in 5.1 surround sound is also very cool.