Sunday in the Park with Ken

This is a photo essay to accompany my travelogue on going to San Diego to see the Chargers-Bengals game.  I spent the game in the pres box and took a lot of photos.  Since it's another big NFL Sunday I thought I'd share a bunch of them.  You don't have to be a football fan.  This is more of a behind-the-scenes of broadcasting post (along with some hopefully fun commentary).

View from the booth.  Pretty nice seats, huh?   I wanted to say to the players, hey could you move down to the hash marks closer to my side?

Tailgating in the parking lot.

By the end of the game with all the grease it looked like this.

Dan Hoard (voice of the Bengals), Josh Lewin (voice of the Chargers), and some blogger photo bombing.

Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts doing their live stand up.

Like I said, great view, but where's the yellow line?

National radio was also on the scene.  I'm sure there was tremendous interest in Omaha and Norfolk for the San Diego-Cincinnati game.  Mark Malone and Dave Sims from Westwood One called the action.  Dave was one of my partners in Seattle.  When I had the chance I should have asked him more questions about the intricacies of football besides which team had the hottest cheerleaders?

Each announcer has his own system.  Here are Dave Sims' spotting boards.  I think orange means they're Jewish.

Josh Lewin calling the Chargers game.  The guy behind him is a spotter helping him identify players.  Either that or he is checking out the Chargers girls.

Dan Hoard calling the game for Bengals radio.  The gentleman to his right is a stat man.  In each booth you have the broadcasters, a spotter, stat man, producer, and audio engineer.   And that's nothing compared to television.

There's Ian calling the game.  Note all the monitors and screens, not to mention lights.  Not included in the picture are all the assistant directors, camera people, and support staff.  And that's just in the booth.  There's a trailer with producers, directors, engineers, graphics guys, stat men, instant replay editors, sound men, and the guy who lays in the yellow line.

Throughout the game, announcers read promos and drop in commercials.  After awhile you become a trained seal and just read whatever card anybody hands you.  I do believe that if a producer handed an announcer a card that said, "Miley Cyrus blows sailors" they would be so focused on the game that they would read it live on the air. 

After the game I joined Dan down in the Bengals' locker room.  I don't know why the announcers need spotters.  The players' names are on their uniforms.

You could easily read their names from here.

The players get interviewed after the game.  Am I the only one who noticed that this guy is just wearing a towel?

Okay.  Just had to include this.  Me and  Hall of Famer Dan Fouts.

Thanks to Dan Hoard, Josh Lewin, Dave Sims, and Ian Eagle for being such gracious hosts and tolerating a total geek with an iPhone camera.