Camp and Circumstance
Jordan Mackay goes to Camp Cowboy.
(Page 5 of 8)
Media Hounds
Here are the top five lines I overheard in the press corps during my stay at Camp Cowboy:
5. “I hope to get some of those round, brown beef balls.” (presumably thinking about lunch)
4. “Don’t you go to church, kids?” (referring to the endless cheering from the Kids’ Zone one Sunday morning)
3. “My foot may be hurt, but I sure do want that autograph.” (This was not said by a member of the media, but by some weird, chubby guy who hobbled past me after practice finished. It was unclear that he was addressing anyone at all.)
2. “I need a fight, Martinez.” (wistful journalist desiring something to report)
1. “Anyone know why we’re out here?” (a journalist to other assembled journalists on the field after practice)
On the Sidelines
I was nervous about fitting in with the rest of the reporters, so when I first arrived with my bright yellow media pass I strode intently down the long line of press until I found an opening on the sideline, then took out my notebook and began scribbling. When I glanced up at the guys around me, I realized I wasn’t fitting in. No one else was writing, most were just standing around talking. In fact, I saw only two other reporters ever put a pen to pad. The majority of the press was television guys.
We all watched the first hour of practice rather intently. It was the first day and the drills were fairly interesting, as was the interaction of the players and coaches. When the airhorn would blow from the top of the observation tower signaling the end of one drill and beginning of another, the savvy cameramen would observe the transitional movements of the players and then move like a swarm of bees to the next sideline to get the best position for their cameras. With admiration I watched this scurry time and time again, strolling to gaze over their shoulders.
After the first few hours of practice, though, the drills started to become repetitive and everyone’s attention began to wane. Sportscasters turned their backs to the field and started filming their pre-taped introductions, saying in ten o’clock news voices things like “Billy Davis knew things were going to be rough when he got here, but how rough he never could have imagined….” Other guys just struck up standard chitchat with colleagues from other networks they obviously hadn’t seen in some time.
The real work began when practice ended and the players could be approached for a few minutes before they headed to the showers or lunch or wherever they went after practice. Large groups of reporters would gather around the marquee players like Aikman and Irvin. Equally large groups would sometimes assemble without any apparent impetus at all. During my first post-practice interview session, I joined one of these aimless groups to see what would happen. We all stood huddled together in the middle of the field— television cameramen checking their equipment, reporters blowing on their microphones—and after a few minutes Barry Switzer magically wiggled his way to the center of the mass and answered questions for about five minutes. I also joined an enormous unfocused cluster only to have Michael Irvin show up and give his first press conference since joining practice. (There was a huge constellation of reporters that would appear in photo on the front page of the Austin American Statesman’s sports page in a shot taken with a wide angle lens from behind Michael Irvin while he answered questions. I would later hear one press guy asking another if he’d seen the photo, saying “It’s a classic, man. It’s got everybody.”)
But for reporters who have to go to training camp every day for a month, even the interviews must become tedious after a few days. It didn’t take me long to lose interest in the football team. When I asked T.V. sportscaster Michael Coleman of Tyler’s KLTV/ABC about this, he agreed. “There’s nothing. There’s nothing going on,” he laughed. How does the reporter cope with this? “I think we in the media have learned how to pace ourselves in covering this camp. I know the first year we shot every single play and it was like, wow! Once you’ve seen one football practice you’ve seen them all, but the first time you don’t show up and Emmit breaks a leg or Troy breaks a leg your news director’s like “‘You weren’t there?’”
Several newsmen told me that to make things interesting, they look for the story within the story and focus daily on a different player, each of whose struggle is unique and compelling. Overall, though, camp is a monotonous event to report. July and August, the dog days of summer, tend to be a dead spot in the calendar. Unless it’s an Olympic year, there’s only one major sport going on—baseball. All the rest of the year there are three, even four big-time television sports competing for our attention. It seems to me that mass media has cheated a little by turning training camp into such an over-hyped affair. Baseball’s pennant races are still undefined and impatience for football becomes so intense that they’ve just got to get a head start on things. Maybe the WNBA will be able to fill the void.
My Library
