The View From The Broadcast Booth

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, the one day of the year which is not a national holiday but is celebrated as if it were.  What better time could there be to talk about my distinguished television career covering the NFL on NBC?  (On second thought, "distinguished" might actually be too strong an adjective; "short-lived" is probably a wee bit more accurate.)  It is a chapter of my life unknown to all but a few people.

The set-up for my adventure began on September 12, 1983, my first day on the job as the fifth attorney in the Norwest Corporation Law Department.  Soon thereafter I became friends with a veteran banker named Peter Spokes, whose office was right down the hall from mine.  Peter, although probably in his mid-to-late sixties, was a ball of energy, always with a smile on his face even though lots of people constantly seemed to want a slice of his time.  I'm not quite sure exactly what Peter's title was, but if I could have bestowed one it would have been Senior Vice President Of Fun.  He would be the face of Norwest for many of the public relations functions around town, be they ribbon cuttings, ground breakings, sculpture unveilings, or any other similar photo op.  He drafted speeches and press releases, managing to put a positive spin on things, sometimes in circumstances which probably required a fair amount of creative writing.  He seemed to know everyone in Minneapolis, and not just members of the banking community.  If you needed a couple of company tickets to a Twins or Vikings game, Peter was your man.  He came through for me with a ticket to the 1985 MLB All Star Game in the Metrodome, a ticket that had most likely been earmarked for a corporate client.  It is the only All Star game ever to have taken place in the twenty-eight year history of the Metrodome, and the only one I've ever attended.

The most common topic for our "water cooler conversations" was, as you might guess, sports.  A couple of months after presenting me with the All Star ticket, Peter made me another offer I could not refuse. Unbeknownst to me, Peter had a longstanding gig as an NFL spotter, employed by the Minnesota Vikings.  A spotter's job is to assist a play-by-play announcer in quickly identifying players involved in a play.  This identification process is, ideally, performed seamlessly, so that the viewer or the listener does not realize that the announcer is receiving this aid. Every NFL team has a stadium crew which is responsible for the performance of specific functions during home games.  Some of those jobs include the scoreboard operator, the official statistician (a position held by WCCO Radio personality Dave Mona), the chain gang, the closed circuit PA announcer (audible only to those in the press box), a replay operator, and various facilitators who serve as liaisons between the NFL officiating crew on the field and the broadcast media.  Unlike most of the other Metrodome Stadium crew members, Peter's job was not always in effect for all ten home games (including two pre-season games), because some network play-by-play announcers brought their own spotters with them.  Jay Randolph, the multi-sport NBC announcer who was assigned to the game pertaining to this post, was not among them.  His M.O. was to use the spotter who was provided by the home team. For Viking home games, that was Peter.

The Vikings played the San Diego Chargers on Sunday afternoon, October 20, 1985.  (About this time you might be asking yourself, "How could the Old Codger possibly remember the exact date of that Vikings game from so many years ago?"  The answer is quite simple, and will come as no surprise to Momma Cuandito.  Recently, while in the process of going through some of my hoarded junk at The Quentin Estates, I came across the Press Pass which I wore for that game.)  Peter knew I was a big Queens fan, so he asked me several days beforehand if I would be interested in accompanying him to the game to watch him do his thing.  Of course, I jumped at the chance.

We got to the game about two and a-half hours before kickoff.  On the way to the Dome, Peter explained that I only had to comply with two rules in the booth: Don't talk during the live action, and stay out of the camera shots.  Peter introduced me to Jay, with whom he'd worked several times in previous seasons.  Jay was pleasant -- after all, he did not have to acquiesce to my being in the booth with Peter -- but very business-like.  He was an old school broadcaster, kind of in the Ray Scott mold.  He did not believe in histrionics, preferring a simpler, straightforward announcing style.  He had been doing football play-by-play for years, and wasn't about to hyperventilate over this game.

I do not remember any "color man" partnering with Jay for the telecast.  Nowadays that would be unheard of, but I believe Jay was a solo artist, in the same vein as the famed Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster, Vin Scully.  One of the first things I learned is that the on-camera pre-game analysis by the broadcaster(s) is taped about an hour before the game, but when it's shown at the beginning of the telecast, it appears to viewers to be "live," just minutes before kick-off.  (You might notice that during the pre-game analysis, there does not seem to be anybody in the background in the stadium seats.)  Jay, the wily pro, required only one "take."

Jay had a large pre-printed notepad on the desk in front of him.  The notepad listed the "two-deep" rosters (i.e., first and second strings) for each team, accompanied by their respective numbers.  Each player's name and number was written inside a small box, about four inches by four inches, and below almost every player's name was a little informational nugget relevant to each one.  Some examples: "X majored in criminal justice at UCLA"; "Y was drafted by the Braves to play baseball, but football was his first love"; "Z was cut by three teams before finding a permanent home with the Chargers."  Each time Jay would insert the little tidbit about a particular player into his broadcast, he would draw a line through it so that he would not unintentionally repeat the same mini-story later in the game.  It was interesting to see how he chose to intersperse the anecdotes throughout the four quarters.  By the end of the game he had used most, but not all, of his prepared material.

Peter stood directly behind Jay's right shoulder, and I behind Jay's left.  As a spotter, and someone who had obviously memorized the uniform number of every Viking and probably most of the Chargers, Peter's job was to immediately point on Jay's chart to the name of the player involved in the play, such as a ball carrier, a receiver or a tackler.  This often required Peter to designate rapidly more than one player per play.  It was hard to tell how much Jay relied on this assistance; my guess is probably more so for defensive players than offensive, and probably more in the first half than the second.  One thing I wondered, as I watched the teamwork between Jay and Peter, was how much more difficult a spotter's job must be during a radio broadcast, for which the announcer can't rely on his audience seeing things for themselves.

There was one facet of supporting Jay that I found somewhat hilarious, although I did not share my opinion with Peter.  If the spotter noticed an official throwing a penalty flag during a play, he made an up-and-down motion with his hand visible to the broadcaster so that the latter could immediately advise the viewing audience of such occurrence.  In other words, "Don't get too excited about this play until we find out what the penalty is."

From the time the game started there were a just a couple of times during the telecast when the camera honed in on Jay.  The only other people in the booth were a technician, whose responsibility I never figured out, and an engineer.  Of course the four of us cleared out of the way, thereby complying with that second rule of which Peter had warned me.

The game seemed to go by quickly, and I don't remember any of the plays.  I was more intent on watching Jay and Peter than I was The Purple and The Bolts.  The Vikings won, 21 to 17.  On the way home, Peter told me that this (1985) was probably going to be his last year working as a spotter.  Fewer play-by-play guys were needing his services, as they had their own team which traveled with them to their NFL assignment each week.  I told Peter that being on such a team sounded like a tremendous gig, and asked if he knew Don Criqui, a Notre Dame grad (Class of 1962) who by then had been an NFL play-by-play guy for almost twenty years.  Peter said he did know Don, and that Don was not the easiest guy to work with; tightly wound, short fuse, very demanding.  Didn't sound like any Domers I knew.

And so ended my television career, a tenure of one day.  I keep reminding my good neighbor, Sharon Wilson, that due to my experience with Jay Randolph, I am highly qualified to join the broadcast team of her nephew, Brad Nessler, one of my favorite sports announcers.  Sharon has told me many times that she'd put in a good word for me, but Brad must have lost my number.