Now, I was SUPPOSED to sit in the announcers booth with Adam and make sure that everybody got what they needed, but it didn't quite work out that way. One of the statisticians didn't show, and so I was immediately promoted from "Booth Assist" to "Special Stats." This meant I got to sit in the broadcast truck with the producer and director and everybody of note. Not quite as cool as siting in the booth, but at least I would get a good behind the scenes peak at what goes on during an NFL broadcast. I was able to hear all the producer and director's orders over the moniutors and listen to the booth conversations as the announcers tried to figure out what to say next.

So, what was my job specifically? I had no idea. So before the game I went off with the producer for a down-and-dirty production meeting. He looked at me and said "Now you've already got the job, so be honest. How much do you know about football." And I said "I guess you'd call me a casual fan. so whatever you'd like to tell me, I'm willing to listen." He said "OK" and proceeded to explain to me that there are three kinds of "stats" guys:
1) Official Stats - These guys track the big numbers like # of plays, run vs. pass, run yard and pass yards, and total yards.
2) Individual Stats - Thes guys track the stats for individual players. And...
3) Special Stats - What happens here is that before hand, the producers decide what they expect the big stories of the day will be. For instance, if they know that Doug Flutie screwed Bruce Smith's wife the night before, then they might expect Bruce to sack Flutie more times than usual, so they would have the special stats guy (that's me) track the number of sacks Bruce Smith had during the game. In my case, there was a rookie defensive back playing for the Redskins who'd been mouthing off for weeks about how he was going to dominate the game, so they had me tracking balls thrown in his direction vs. balls thrown in the veteran D-back's direction, hoping that the veteran would play a lot better than the rookie and they could use the stats to embarass the kid into shuttin' his mouth. Unfortunately, he had a good game, so the stats were no good. I also tracked a few other things, but none of it turned out to be interesting enough to get on TV. I was also tracking Doug Flutie's passing stats, so every time he threw a pass, I had to write down whether he was in or out of the pocket, whether it was a completion or not, how many yards on each completion, total touchdowns, and total interceptions. I also kept track of Stephen Davis' "Run After Contact" stats, which was the number of yards he gained after first contact with the defense. It was a lot to keep track of, but I think I did it pretty well. The problem was that none of the stories I was tracking panned out in an interesting way, so even if you watched the game, you did not see my handiwork this time around. Also, after the game, I was sent down to the field to collect the Fox Sports banners, so I wound up walking out of the tunnel onto the field just as the players were walking in after the game. I had to weave in an out of them to keep from getting squished on my way to the field. Damn, those fuckers are huuuuge! As I walked out onto the field, I passed Darrell Green, who was being harrassed mercilessly from above by the drunken fans. Those fans are rough. I actually felt sorry for the spoiled bastards (the players). The fans were shouting things like "I hope you die." It was really nasty.