Press box horror stories

In Oxford one fine Saturday years ago, a cheering Alabama supporter was mildly chided by writers before being told by SID staff to stop cheering.

Lee Roy Jordan was not happy about being told to be quiet.

Hardly compares to SWAC and old SIAC boxes, though.

 

Before they built an enclosed box for the visiting team executives in the press box at The Honda Center in Anaheim, the visiting GM and staff would sit in a few seat at the end of the top row in the press box, which was at the opposite end from where I would sit.

There was a lot of cheering and cussing and pounding on the table.

 

A few characters I've encountered:

- Once, the SID for a major-college softball program tried to act important. It was rather amusing.
- The fan/scribe from the local weekly who sits there and eats the whole time, then asks you what your story will be about
- The local radio guy at some MLS games, who would be pulling his hair oput when the home team trailed
- The stats.com (or some such) dude who would show up in hat and t-shirt, cheering the whole time

Etc.

 

Oh, anybody who ever sat in a press box within 50 feet of Al Davis isn't too impressed with random cheering and table pounding.

 

To SWAC SIDs, the concept of parking passes is like a third grader trying to comprehend advanced astrophysics. Way too many times to count -- and at more than one school -- they've left the parking passes for us at will call.

Finding your way into the media lot at Alcorn State used to resemble Indiana Jones finding his way to the golden idol in the opening scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." First, there's only one road that leads to the campus. For big games, you had to get there at least two hours early to get through that. Then, at the two entrances to campus, they had people -- very chatty people -- collecting parking fees. Make it through all that, and you still have to talk your way past three security guards in the stadium lot just to reach the media lot.
Finally, even though there's 100 spots available (the ones closest to the stadium are in the 40s), they'd invariably assign you one in the 60s that made it so you'd have to walk an extra 200 yards. The good spots are reserved for the two boosters who show up and the maintenance trucks that park there. Presumably so they can be close to their tools when they don't fix the elevator that traps a few people two hours after a game.
Parking and the SWAC ain't exactly peas and carrots.

 

How did you find the energy to write your story after THAT?!

 

More SWAC tales: Basketball team was here for a game and the local school agreed to provide ground transportation. SWAC team rep called from the airport needing money to pay for the bus. He was told to just charge it, submit the receipt when they came to campus and he would be reimbursed. Nobody in the traveling party had a valid credit card.

 

It's the principle of the thing. When you literally have to pass 50 empty parking spots closer to the stadium to get to one arbitrarily assigned to you, and you look out during the game and see very few of those 50 spots actually being used, it's rather annoying.
And how do I know the assignments are arbitrary, you ask? Because on about one of every three trips there the number of the spot they'd give you already had a university vehicle in it.
Want to go on a hobo punching spree the likes of which have rarely been seen? Try to work your way into the media lot at a SWAC game.

 

Chuck Prophet was the SID in charge of media passes for the legendary Valley-Alcorn game in 1984. He literally sent one to every single sports writer in Mississippi (hell, maybe Louisiana and Alabama too). And most of them showed up.

I was just a rookie that year, and it's still one of the most amazing experiences of my career. True story about that game: the attendance figure of 63,808 was pulled out of thin air. They printed about 70,000 tickets and so many people showed up they finally gave up trying to count them. I was sitting next to one of the radio boothes where Valley personnel were sitting, when someone asked, "what's the attendance?" Someone else said, "I don't know, just make up some number." Truth is, there were probably 70,000 there that afternoon. It was a fire marshal's nightmare.

 

I'd kill to park that close.

They're doing construction on campus these days, so a lot of the media have been shifted to a booster lot. Before the game, it's not a problem because there are shuttles running from the lot to the stadium. After the game, it's a 1.78 mile walk to the lot from the media gate according to my MapMyRun app.

 

Yeah, I guess I am being whiny.
It's not the distance at all. I've covered plenty of games at larger colleges where I had to walk multiple blocks from the media lot to the stadium, and I don't mind at all. Hell, I routinely park a quarter-mile from one of our high school fields because it's an easier lot to escape from afterward.

It's more the entire process that frustrated me -- leaving three hours earlier than you normally would to avoid the one-road bottleneck; no parking passes because the SID was either too forgetful to mail them or too lazy to have them printed; having to sweet talk your way past three or four security guards who have no idea who you are or what you're doing there; and then, finally, getting to the spot they told you to go to and finding someone already parked there, which forces you to move a few spots over and keep one nervous eye on your vehicle in case they call a tow truck because you unknowingly parked in some big wig's spot.
It was a stressful clusterfuck, plain and simple. Walking a few extra feet had nothing to do with it.