Oh, something that struck me while being at the NCAA games in Anaheim on Thursday:
How disconnected I feel, already, from the people covering the event for media outlets.
Even from the heights of Section 414 I could see people I know down there at the tables on press row. Frank Burlison, Mike Waldner, Billy Witz. And instead of feeling as if I should be down there with them, I watched them almost like I was looking in the primate cage at the zoo. Fully realizing I used to be part of the exhibit.
Do you know what you look like, to people in the stands? When you look distracted, you realize people can see that, if they care to? If you’re staring at a laptop screen during game-action, anyone with the slightest powers of deduction knows you’re surfing the web and not paying the slightest attention to the game in front of you.
It was odd for me to be on the other side. Also odd was not having any yearning to run down there and be among them again. That surprised me, my detachment.
It also was fun, relaxing not to have to worry about studying the game. You don’t see as much as a fan, sitting there without even rosters to look at, because you’re not looking remotely as hard. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re not going to have to reconstruct what happened for thousands of people later on. No dealing with coaches or athletes later, no writing into the night as everyone else leaves the arena and goes back to real life.
Kind of liberating, really.
Maybe I was readier to give up some (all?) of this than I thought.
1 response so far ↓
1 Aaron // Mar 24, 2008 at 2:27 PM
I remember my first game after leaving the sports writing world and it was a strange experience. It was a close basketball game and I remember having the knee-jerk reaction that all sportswriters have: “I don’t care who wins just make it quick so I can make deadline.” But then I realized I’m free from the big D(eadline) and it shouldn’t affect my enjoyment of the game even though it was approaching 11 p.m. Even though I finally felt free to cheer and scream, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the beat writers during the the three lead changes in the final seconds and then overtime. While the fans of each team celebrate or frown after each big shot, I was one of the only ones in the arena who knew that each shot was hundreds of words potentially down the drain and added layers of stress down on press row as deadline quickly approached and the game was still in doubt.
Even though I’ve been out of the newspaper industry for years now (at least on a full-time basis), every extra-inning game, triple-overtime thriller or miracle comeback brings back a little bit of the stressed out feeling you get when your perfect 18-inch story about the team wrapping up the title gets wiped out because the team couldn’t hold on to a 10-point lead in the final 3 mins.
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