Was commiserating with a few friends this morning about this very topic... how much, especially this weekend, with the NCAA basketball tournament in full swing, that I really miss being able to work at my old job.
Even after 20+ years, walking on a court hours before a nationally televised game, when all you can hear are the squeak of sneakers from players at shoot around and whispered laughs and nervous chatter from coaches and staff as they countdown the minutes until tip off... and then being out there again closer to game time — the area full of 15-20,000 people, the same players shooting, the same coaches talking, and all you can hear is the buzz of the crowd, the music, and the bands... as your stomach muscles constrict.
Talking to people you grew up watching on TV, having THEM seek YOU out to get your input...and later hear that they mentioned you on the broadcast and cut to you on the air (mostly by your friends saying "you looked awful!")...
The post-game lockerrooms... full of unmitigated joy on occasion, but always, always ending the season with tears and heartbreak. But having to remain professional in both circumstances.
When friends who aren't in the industry ask about it, I always say we don't really have a lingua franca... so I can describe it, but they cannot really understand it. It's incredibly stressful, doing ANYTHING in front of a national audience with hundreds of reports around ... and at times when we hosted, where we were responsible for all of it... but it's exhilarating and exhausting and ... a terrible privilege. And, as mentioned, I miss it deeply.
Love,
Allie
P.S. Not that this clarifies anything, but, I don't know... it somehow resonates to me as endemic to the stakes and absurdity of it all. A dear friend of mine, a guard on our basketball team, an all-league performer... who came to our school after being his state's player of the year in HS... led us to the tournament one year.
And we ran into a team who lost in the final four that year, and won it the following year (I believe). Anyway, they were known for being aggressive on defensive and they destroyed us. Per usual there was tons of credentialed media there, including several of his home town and home state papers who travelled across the country to see him play in the game. Nice, right?
Well, and I will never forget this, because it is one of, I think, the greatest descriptions (and cruelest) ever set in ink:
His hometown paper described his performance as follows "He played like an unwrapped sandwich in a forest full of hungry bears."
Like I said. A terrible privilege. That hangs on his wall to this day. We wouldn't have it any other way.