For $40.....

I just don't get it. This is everything goes well too.

I don't think I would have done it in college.

 

We've managed to hold onto our 12:30 a.m. deadline, thank goodness, and don't do video at all. If I take the right shortcuts I can get back to the office by 10 p.m., take a piss and grab a Coke, and then strap in for 2 1/2 hours of sheer terror that everything breaks just right and every coach answers the phone on the first try.
Even after 25 years, every Friday night when I send my last page, I feel like I'm in an action movie where the clock is ticking down and I have to cut the red wire or the green wire to stop the bomb with 3 seconds left on the timer.
Some of the people asking these things of their staff — and especially their stringers, who are often worse at this than the full-timers — have apparently been told at a corporate seminar that sports writers have all grown three extra hands and have access to a TARDIS.

 

That’s another issue: Not only have deadlines gotten earlier since I was stringing in the 1990s, but now we have high school coaches trying to run the spread offense and throwing 50+ times a game. Ugh.

 

Our state high school association screwed us over. Some time around 2010 they finally relented and moved kickoffs for every game from 7:30 to 7 p.m. Then, for some random reason, this summer they decided to move it back to 7:30 in the name of player safety. Because there is so much difference between it being 92 degrees at 7 p.m. and 90 degrees at 7:30.
Come October all of the games start at 7 again. But this first month is going to be hairy as far as deadline goes.

 

Well, it's kind of obvious that you can add two more "jobs" -- keeping play-by-play, keeping game stats.

That's ridiculous compensation.

 

That's the norm in the age of the spread. I've walked out of stadiums before and started the car and the neighboring team's game on the radio was still in the third quarter.

Long ways off from the Wing-T days when we'd be done and dusted with the game by 9:30 and watching TV scores in the coaches' office at 10:15.

 

We actually have a Wing-T team in town. And they're a state championship contender this year. And they're in a pretty bad district other than themselves and maybe two other teams. AND the state association instituted a running clock rule for blowouts. I'm very, very excited to cover this team.
I foresee at least a couple of games being over by 9 p.m. I think they had a couple last year when this team was up about 40 at halftime and the coaches agreed to run the clock in the second half.

 

Time to find a different job. Newspapers never love you back.

 

Getting to a high school game 15 minutes before kickoff is fine until you run into a situation where there's no roster from the visiting team. That'll make you adjust.

 

Consider that you'll maybe have four hours, possibly 4.5, invested in this game with pregame driving, the game and post-game work.

Let's just say four to make it easy. That's $10 an hour.

Remove taxes, if necessary. Consider the gas to-from and any other expense(s): hotdog, a game program if they don't provide one, etc.

You may end up paying them for doing this work. If not, you're working for a few bucks an hour.

"Yeah, but that's just part of it."

It shouldn't be, after all these years of shit pay for stringing.

"Well, you're getting clips and experience."

Perhaps. The latter probably is most valuable, to be honest, as you learn to navigate the waters.

"It's a little extra beer money."

Pfftt. You're buying shitty beer if this is paying for it.


Poor payment for freelancers. Unpaid internships. Terrible salaries, along with the ongoing demise of the industry thanks to Ogden, Alden, Gannett, et al. Been there, done it, thought it was BS then and still do.

Just say no.

 

You were born too late to cover Delaware high school sports in the '60s. EVERY school in the state ran the Wing-T, because Dave Nelson, a longtime coach for U of D in that time period, invented the formation, and all the coaches went to his clinics. Defensive team meeting sure were boring by midseason.

 

I'm currently getting paid what Fort Lauderdale was paying me in 1989. To put that in perspective, the house I had in South Florida could have been built for $89,000 in 1989 (cost me $129,000 in 1996). It's worth $484,000 today.

It's just one reason --- but not even the main one --- why it's . . . 7 months and 4 days until retirement.