High school football press boxes

Which goes to show you how petty parents have become in the last 25 years. From now on I'd say Joe Pissoff.

 

Get there 1 1/2 hours ahead of time, set up your laptop, put a reserved sign on top of your laptop, then go get some food. Dare someone to screw with it.

 

I strung for a paper this past week. 3A school. Had no chairs in the box except for the PA guy and his spotter, which was some kid. They had four portioned off rooms, with no chairs. They also had no rosters. No programs either. And I overheard the PA guy talking to the AD who said "You know, I don't know if we've had programs at all this year. That's usually done by the booster club."

I'm not joking. The athletic director said this.

He wasn't aware of operations and procedures?

 

I know who you're talking about. A good guy. But he always said that even if it was quiet as a church mouse in there — standard procedure. Hope they kept him on at the Death Star.

That reminds me of the old feller over at Pennington Field who would tell everyone at the start of the second quarter that no dipping was allowed in the press box. You could set your watch by him. Of course, there were always 150 coaches and usually only four writers. (I should note that Pennington has a huge press box, and it's over 20 years old — it set the standard for everything that followed in DFW.)

 

My two cents.

I agree with what Ty said a couple of pages ago about picking your battles. As for me, I don't sweat the pressbox problems. I'm lucky in that locally, all the big schools have room and usually have spaces marked for the local media. There was one high school for a bigger school that never had room because it was a small box and they had radio. Without the radio guys, I could have squeezed in. Any time I covered a game there, I simply walked the sidelines. Their stands on the home side were condemned a couple of years ago and after they rebuilt, there's plenty of room in the bigger pressbox.

When I go on the road, I just go with the flow. I don't bother calling ahead because usually it doesn'tmake a difference. If there's room, I'll stay. If not, I'll just cover from the stands or sidelines. It's not worth the grief. I don't let things like that bother me.

The only time I get sarcastic is when there aren't any extra rosters because I've always found it stupid that they can't copy a few extra rosters and put them in the pressbox. It's never a problem for me because I either have rosters back at the office, with me or there's usually one for the P.A. guy and I can get the names I need. It's just a pet peeve of mine.

I ignore the cheering. It's preps, you're going to get that. As for comments, I don't remember making comments about the local team getting their butts whipped, but I have said something like, "I'm not sure either team wants to win because 'Next Opponent' is probably going to kill whoever they play." But the caveat to that is the regulars in the pressboxes know me and I have good relations with them when I've said something like that, they agree with me.

I do remember one time when I said something on that line that was innocuous and some parent who knew nothing about the sport but ws helping out because Junior was playing took offense. I forget what I said exactly, but one of the regulars stuck up for me and added a comment that was even more harsh about the local team. The moral is know your audience.

 

If you think high school parents are bad, some of the worst homers I have ever seen were the local newspaper reporters wearing team gear, fawning over the coaches, cheering on the players, etc., etc.

So I don't think we need to be all high and mighty picking on parents and such.

 

Man I miss covering games at Pennington. It still has one of the bigger media areas for a HS stadium, and I'll take the unlimited popcorn and hot dogs any day.

 

Even when administration officials are asked or reminded about this before the season, it still is mind-boggling how a parent or teacher wants to quibble about providing a copied roster or program.

Even worse is getting the visiting team 'roster' and it doesn't have full names, or they don't even have one other than what the radio announcer is reading.

 

I'd prefer to be high and mighty about picking on parents *and* homer reporters.

 

Was a Pennington, Friday (Nov. 20), I wasn't hungry before or during the first half (I had been sick the last two days) and at halftime thought I'd enjoy a hot dog. You guessed, all gone. Never had that happen before.

The best days at Pennington Field were during the Regional soccer tournament when they use to have chicken and beef tamales one day. Man those things were good.

 

with all the new stadiums and renovations over the last decade, i bet you could come up with easily 25 high school press boxes in the dfw area alone that would be considered as good as it gets for even some colleges.

 

Birdville is not one of them. They have a room for the press that holds two people. Three if you make your buddies smile.