Dear dimwit on the phone

As much as we want to believe states are doing it for us, they're not.
Most of the time it's so parents, students and fans can attend as many postseason games as possible.

 

We're friendly with the local TV station, in a follow-you-on-Twitter kind of way. And if somebody asks us at 6 p.m., we might look their phone # up, just to be nice. But not at deadline time.

 

Kansas does a good job of staggering except for the last weekend of May when state baseball, softball and track are all held on the same weekend. I wouldn't mind if one or the other of those was a week earlier, being a one-man sports department. There was one year, though, when the 4A state baseball tournament was played in Mulvane. Got to see the team I cover go one-and-done in an 11 a.m. game, then drove up and spent the rest of the weekend at WSU watching track. More often than not, 4A baseball and softball are in Salina.

 

I now enjoy the scheduling of the tournaments. More overwhelmed sports staffs means more stringer money for me.

 

When I was in TV, I was always willing to share my scores in exchange for others. But cold-calling you without offering to exchange scores? Asshole move.

 

Today I enjoyed the official scorer, who was part of the referee crew, totally punt on keeping the point totals in the book for the fourth quarter of a state championship game. The first three quarters were great. The last one, just blank up and down the page.

 

Yup. I've been pretty busy for the past 4 weeks or so with everything going on. Got even more stuff rolling through this week as well.

 

I honestly didn't mind talking to the TV people if I had a spare moment. I got to know several of them at events and they seemed human enough.

Some of my colleagues took a different view, one even intentionally giving out wrong scores just to embarrass them. I didn't that part was so cool.

 

Yeah, intentionally giving out bad scores just seems like a dick move to me. If you don't want to help, just say you don't.

 

I don't get a lot of calls from TV stations either, but do resent it when they start asking for details. I have a deadline too, dammit, and it's not my problem if your shooter didn't get a program or can't find Maxpreps.

 

One of my friends is the TV Sports Director just to the south of us. I NEVER call him for info on deadline, and he doesn't call me, but we will text each other if we are in desperate need of something. That way we can answer if we have time or not.

 

Were they actually part of the referee crew, or just wearing a referee's shirt?
In my state, they've made the person keeping the book and running the clock -- always either teachers or coaches from the school -- wear a ref's shirt this season. I think it might be a new NFHS rule.