Teen in a CFB/NFL Press Box

If you guys were professional writers, and you see a tee. 17/18 years old in the press box. Let's say at a Cal football or 49ers game, what would your reaction be?

 

Are they doing anything disruptive or anything that impedes you from doing your job?
If so, call it to the attention of the SID, PR director or whoever is responsible for granting credentials.
If not, STFU.
Lots of people are granted admission to press boxes, and often they do not appear to be performing duties of immediate importance. However, unless they are interfering with YOUR job performance, it's NOYMFB what they're doing there.

If the presence of some teen not obviously doing 'legitimate' professional work really raises your hackles, go right ahead and sidle up to the SID-PR guy, and whisper, "hey, what is that kid doing? Is he really supposed to be in here?"

Then it turns out the kid is the son or nephew of the university president or one of the minority owners, and all of a sudden the PR honcho starts to wonder, if YOU have enough spare time on your hands to worry about who should or should not be in the press box, maybe YOU don't really need to be in there.

 

I was on press row for a NBA team quite regularly as a teen. I ran quotes for one of the local papers and the writers at all the local papers could not have been nicer to me, I think in part because they saw a kid who desperately wanted to do what they do.

You see a lot of kids in press boxes these days, sometimes teenagers who are helping out parents who may work there (usually PR types) and sometimes younger kids who pass out stats.

I think it would have to be a pretty extreme situation for you to have any reason to complain about it. It's not your job to police who deserves to be in the press box and who doesn't. If the kid in question has a better seat than you and that bothers you, you're the one with the problem. Get over it.

 

No one cares, unless said teen states they are a beat writer or professional journalist. Then, you'd probably get a few chuckles and/or eye rolls.

 

I was 19 when I started doing a radio show and covering the Vikings every weekend. The Metrodome had two press boxes, and I was often in the auxiliary press box with the other radio guys and various other random outlets. I have plenty of stories about older guys in stained t-shirts who talked and went to refill their food plates so much that I wondered if they thought they were at a Golden Corral and not their job.

 

I got more grief as a 22-year-old in a baseball press box than I did as a 17-year-old on press row at NBA games.

 

I was a freelance photographer for a weekly and shot Big State U games (a school in one of the Power 5 conferences) starting at 17. Neither of the two full-time photogs wanted to.

 

I started my "TV career" as a senior in high school...covering the Packers weekly and doing look-live lead-in shots for packages. I was 17/18 and was a one-man band. After the first few weeks people realized I wasn't just some kid goofy off and I got to meet and get some good quotes from the players that season.
Nearly a decade later, I ran into Favre at a Lions game and he remembered me.
So yeah...17/18 year olds can be productive in the press box.

 

PR staffs often hire college and even high school students for press box help. I did it when I was 17. No, the job doesn't pay much, maybe nothing at all.

Now if the person is immature and being disruptive, or cheering, then you should alert the supervisor.

 

I wrote a major league baseball game story for Associated Press at the age of 18, so I don't have a problem with a teen in the press box. As long as it's a legitimately working teen.

 

As long as the teen has a legitimate function in the press box, yeah. But if he/she is behaving in an unprofessional manner in the box or the locker room, I'm talking to a PR guy ... if one of my fellow scribes doesn't deal with it first.

 

What everyone else says. The Dallas paper has hired high school interns in the past, and I know of others that have students "shadowing" employees, so this is more common than you might think.