Ticket Hell, Judy Rose, and Clemson Tigers

        I've been in a little world I like to call Ticket Hell for the past week and a half.  We have GOT to get tickets out to ACC Championship so we that means packaging up ticket orders, putting in parking passes as needed and creating hundreds of Fedex packages.  Not too much to write about BUT Will Webb was kind enough to send us to the City Club for lunch with Judy Rose. The lunch was the perfect way to break up the monotony of the week, and what an awesome experience! Judy Rose is the Athletic Director for UNC Charlotte and one of the most well-respected figures in the profession.  Judy Rose's bio can found on the the UNCC website (http://administration.uncc.edu/cabinet/Bios/rose.html).  Most recently, she has led the efforts to bring football to to the 49ers, and with great success.  The 49ers will play their opening season in 2013!  She was also the first female to serve on the selection committee NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Committee.  Rose got her start as a GA at University of Tennessee and got the chance to work with legendary Women's Basketball Coach Pat Summit and they remain close friends to this day!  From their, she headed to UNCC where she started out as head Women's basketball coach and tennis coach, graduated to Head Women's Basketball coach and Associate Athletic Director, and then was selected as Athletic Director (i believe that was the order of events?!)  It was so refreshing to hear a positive, non-feminist, outlook on women in this sport profession.  She had a positive experience moving up in the profession, and seemed to offered more opportunities than she could even take (including being a finalist in the run for the head coaching position with UNC Women's Basketball...wow!).  She told us that she was treated, for the most part, as an equal to the men she was working with.  In fact, it was the women who treated her differently because she did not try to put herself into typical All-Women's sports corner.  She could not have been more down to earth and interested in our career aspirations.  Other than sports and careers we just talked about Charlotte, and she even shared with us how she met her husband...kind of just like a girl's lunch!  Sarah and I had so much fun...and I hope she did as well!
        On Friday, it was back to the ticketing grind, except without Sarah because she was getting her Side Line Reporter, which meant that I couldn't get away with leaving work early and subsequently missed out on all bu the last minute of the Belmont Abbey/ Clemson exhibition basketball game.  Luckily, I ran into Will Qualkinbush, got to sneak in through the tunnel with him, and got to hug Ryan as he was running off the court at the end of his game.  I got to talk to Susan, and all of the Basketball staff, Coach Brownell's girls, and even got to talk to Frank Smith (an assistant coach on OP's staff)!  He was very impressed with my weather appropriate outfit, as he once called me out for not wearing a jacket and breaking down my immune system, and one week later I got Mono.  Frank is starting his own drug testing company now and seems to be doing really well.  It was really great to see a member of the old staff...brought back memories!
        After the game I got to meet up with Mackenzie, Ansley Faria, and Amanda Suiter for a girl's weekend of fun!  A girl's weekend of fun got invaded by Will Sartin (I know...how many Wills can one girl know?), but it was SO great getting to spend the day with him and his best friend from home, Brooks.  It was his first game day off in his college career and I was so glad he chose to spend it with us!  Again, on Sunday I woke up and did NOT want to head back to reality.  It is so sad when you go to say "hey! I'll call you tonight and head over to hang out" and then realize that you will be in a different state in a couple of hours and that will be impossible.  I'm pretty sure this will be my last weekend out of town for a while, but these weekends with college friends have been so rejuvenating and have served as a very important reminder to me of the importance of great friends.  I wish I could see ALL of my friends...but those were some pretty good representatives for sure! 

OH YEAH!  And we beat NC STATE!!!! WOO HOO (I will be slightly less excited on the job...obviously I am very objective).  During the game, I stopped by the Raycom Truck and Jimmy (in charge of Raycom Production) gave me a tour of the entire thing!  I could tell that he enjoys teaching people about the profession that he is an expert at.  He was so sweet to do that.  I got to see what the difference is between the Producer, the Director and Technical Director's jobs.  He also showed me the audio room and I got to hear the sound that was coming in from the Parab (the job I did when I worked the game).  While we were in there, Rob (the producer) was trying to figure out which camera got the shot of Coach Steele passing out so that they could use it as a feature story for the next game.  The truck was high energy during the show, the fun, easy-going characters that I know from the offices become ALL business and have no time to joke around. I loved just getting to see how that whole thing works. 

I owe you a bunch of blog posts

I know.  It's been a long past week, filled with out of the ordinary events, long days at the office, and feeling a bit under the weather which has led to major blog regret.  I apologize...major literary party foul on my part.  I'm just going to jump right in so bare with me.  

PARAB: Saturday, October 16, 2010

        The Clemson vs. Maryland game was my first time working for Raycom's production side, and I must say that I could not have had a more positive experience.  As a Clemson fan, the ultimate experience is to get to stand on the field and watch a game.  The ultimate experience is to be in borderline inappropriate proximity to C.J. Spiller throughout the entire game.  The ultimate experience is to get to listen to the Dabo Sweeny and his boys talk football in there huddles.  The ultimate is to watch the Tigers cruise to victory...in short, the ultimate is to work the Parab on the field during a Clemson game.  I had the ultimate Clemson (and work, for that matter) experience that Saturday. 

        But let's start from the beginning of the day.  We were expected to check in at the Raycom truck by 8:30 and head up to the Press Box for breakfast.  The first person I ran into in the press box was Mike Hogwood (Raycom sideline reporter), and I got to introduce myself to him, which was cool because he is actually a friend of Uncle Chip's from Greensboro.  We got to meet a lot of the people on the Raycom production team during breakfast while we were waiting to hear our assignments for the day.  Several of those people were ones I interacted with throughout the day and the entire production staff for Raycom could not be more accommodating and fun to be around.  By 9:15 we were told our assignments: Sarah and I would be working the parabs that day, which I later found out is short for Parabolic, because of it's shape.  I don't know if you are familiar at all with this...and again, this is a rookie explanation, as are every one of my production explanations...but the parab is the bubble like shape that you will normally see guys holding on the sidelines of a football game.  

This picture was found on the following website: http://www.dailynews.com/sports/ci_13674073.  Photographed by Michael Owen Baker, Daily News staff photographer.

        More about that later.  We didn't have to report anywhere until 11:15 so we had a large amount of time to simply hang out with the production staff and walk around the stadium which was one of the many highlights of the day for me.  The production truck had a lot of people going in and out of it, and everyone was working on some kind of job, whether it was organizing the pregame show for the broadcast, or editing graphics that would appear when players were being discussed during the game.  We also walked into the "First and 10" truck.  Yes, there were 2 guys who's sole purpose was to move the first and 10 line throughout the game.  Most of their work was done before the game ever started, and needless to say, their is potential to get quite bored if you are working first and 10 for a game in which you are not emotionally involved.  I suggested they bring an extra laptop next time and pull up other games on the Internet to keep themselves entertained throughout the 3-4 hours of isolation in a truck.  SO if in the next couple of weeks you are watching a Raycom Broadcast that seems inaccurate, it could be my fault.  

        We still had plenty of time so I walked out to the empty stadium and looked out over the perfectly manicured field.  The sky was clear and blue and the balloons had all been secured by Central Spirit at the bottom of the hill and were ready for release when the time was right.  There was no one out there, no fans, no football players, and yet you could still tell it was game day.  Death Valley has that intangible quality on a game day and I got chills just walking up and down the steps.  When I stepped out on the field, I got that feeling that I used to get before a lacrosse game in High School.  I don't know if it was that I have never stepped on that field on Game Day, or that I knew I was about to work a device that I had no idea how to operate, or that we had lost the past 3 games, and I could feel the added pressure to win, but I got a nervous feeling that I haven't felt in a long time when I realized that I would not be heading up to the comfort (and I use that term loosely) of the student section. 

        I reported to my station at the 20 yard line 45 minutes before kickoff for a quick rundown of what I was going to be doing during the game.  I found out that I would be holding a Parabparab.  The things you want to pick up are any clear contact with the ball (kicks, big catches, etc...), tackles and fumbles, and banter on the field and in the huddle among coaches and players.  It was like discovering a whole new part of the game the first time I heard each of these sounds.  I found myself experimenting with the best way to capture the most clear sound.  I found that I almost wanted to try and get up AND over the sound, so for me holding the parab up higher and tilting it slightly forward often worked best.  You have to be careful about where you point it, because if you are aiming at a play, but the parab is also in line with the band, that is all you will hear.  I mean, this device picks up a clap from across the field, so you can imagine what a marching band would sound like in your headphones. 

        Highlights of the game were: Actually enjoying the parab (many find it boring but I found it fascinating!) Getting to enjoy a game day experience at Clemson on the field.  Standing next to C.J. Spiller for the vast majority of the game...I didn't reach out and touch him, against the wishes of many of my friends, for fear of being fired.  Almost getting tackled 3 times!!!...So close to making sports center.  The last time it happened I seriously considered NOT running backwards out of the way.  Overall, I learned a lot that day and enjoyed every tiring minute of it!  

TBC...with more adventures from this week!

COMING SOON (as in hopefully tomorrow):

Monday Night Amazing Race with Charlotte Sports Commission and Visit Charlotte

ACC Media Day: Basketball

Clemson Game

University of Charlotte Collegiate Football, at Raycom Sports

        Sarah really set the tone for the day this morning when she sent me a BBM that read "Can we be casual today on this rainy morning?"  I was off to work in my jeans before you could say "Brooks Brothers".  When we got to work this morning, we realized that we LEGIT had nothing to do, so we had to get creative.  And thus began my learning experience at the UCCF RS (University of Charlotte Collegiate Football at Raycom Sports).

        We decided to head up to the production hall to do some voice over work for fun.  Unfortunately, our trusty production intern, Duzan, was in God's Country (Clemson, for those of you who are sadly uninformed) today, and he was the one who offered to set us up to do some VO practice.  Instead, we decided to mosey around the production area to see what we could learn.  Luckily, they were feeding the ACC Football Impact show.  Don't worry, I didn't have any idea what that meant either, but I'm going to take my best stab at explaining it.  So they were "feeding" the show to a network in Atlanta.  I am not going to be able to describe this technically right, but my best understanding is that essentially, they are running a show from our raycom office and sending it to a the local network, which in this case was located in Atlanta.  So when we (as in Raycom) run it, they (as in Atlanta, or other local network) have the ability to record it, and they have 2 recording options from which to choose, HD and SD (standard definition).  From the Raycom end, Peter Rolfe was sitting at a desk with a phone, waiting to answer any questions or respond to any problems that the Atlanta network might have dealt with.  During the feed, they noticed a little glitch in the show.  It was so small that it almost seemed like an effect, but it was indeed something that needed to be fixed before it aired.  Luckily, Raycom feeds it twice with a couple of hours in between each feed, so they have time to fix any glitches.
        And I finally figured out the commercial thing.  So you know how there are all these different commercials some local, some that you see nationally?  Have you ever wondered how they are placed during commercial breaks? I have. But it's cool.  So the larger, national or regional companies make deals with networks like Raycom and so Raycom has those commercials "on file", pull them, and place them in the show BEFORE it gets fed to local networks.  Now the local networks have deals with local companies and so they have the local commercials on file.  When Raycom feeds the show to Atlanta, it is fed with the larger company's commercials already placed in it.  So those are set.  But it also has room for local commercials that the Atlanta companies can place at their discretion.  The space just is fed as a period of black. I'm sure I have massacred TV language and the general explanation of how a television show is run, but that is my general understanding.

        After our lecture, Sarah and I took a field trip to South Park mall to perform some research on clothing pieces that we might use for several CCF events.  After surveying a few floors, we found several options that I am sure will work well, so we decided to treat ourselves to a lunch break at Arther's.  Going through the lunch line, ordering simple sandwiches, I remarked to Sarah about how terribly we used to eat at the start of this internship, and how much better we had gotten.  That lasted through lunch.  On our way out of the mall, we took a convenient wrong turn that led us right past Yoforia, a frozen yogurt joint ( I tried to write "Fro Yo here...it just doesn't sound right coming from me).  I'm still contemplating whether or not to hold a grudge against Sarah for 'making' me walk into the store. But I'll be honest...I did not put up much of a fight.  

        When we got back, we went to our next 'class' with Professor Pitts on Sponsorships.  He showed us the contracts and presentations he has come up with for each of the prospective sponsors.  I asked Will if it was hard to be a Sales Person, like whether it's not easy to sell something that people are not necessarily excited about buying.  He said it was hard, but he enjoys what he does.  We talked about how it was hard to sell something that is not so much a physical product, but more of an experience.  We also talked about how to target prospective clients.  For instance, why would Bank of America want to be a title sponsor of the Bowl game?  Their logo is literally on every piece of collateral we use for both of the games already because we are using the Bank of America Stadium, so they would be paying extra for advertising that they are pretty much already enjoying the benefits of.  We also brainstormed some more innovative ways to cultivate relationships with prospective sponsors.  Productive class.  

        Our last lecture was with Chad Swofford on marketing strategy.  We have 1 pair of tickets to give away during the entire period leading up to the game.  What I want to figure out is how to best utilize the tickets in a way that is fun for our followers, but also promotes increased followership...Have I mentioned that I reserve the right to use questionable words in these posts?  One option I discussed was maybe putting it out there that we need to reach a certain number of followers and once we do that we will be giving away tickets.  We could use our current followers to invite their friends to the site, in the hopes that we will have this contest...the problem is that we don't know if people will care enough to invite friends.  It's frustrating because we are trying to promote 2 games that are essentially irrelevant until at least November.  Anyways we had some interesting conversations about all of this.  If you haven't already PLEASE follow us on twitter: @MeinekeBowlGame, @ACCFOOTBALLCLT, and @ExtraPointPass and "Like" us on facebook.  I'm trying to reach a social media goal here people.  Help me make the grade.  

***Disclaimer: I am fully aware that the analogy was QUITE corny.  Thanks for baring with my sad attempt at creative writing.***

Stop the Flu BEFORE it stops you!

        Good news folks.  This kid will not be getting sick in the flu season.  I know what you Clemson people are thinking: 'Bryson can go through a year without getting sick? Impossible.'  But I'm getting 8 hours of sleep almost every night, and I got the key ingredient to health through the winter today...A flu shot!  Thank you, Raycom Sports.  It was funny to see everyone's reactions to the shot, until I got up to the front of the line and realized that the needle was 2 inches long.  Yikes.  Oh well, if I don't have an adverse reaction to the shot, I will be flu free this year!
        In other, more applicable, news, I have signed up to crew for the Clemson vs. Maryland game next weekend and I am really excited to see and work in the production side of Raycom.  From what I've heard, whatever responsibility they give to the utilities staff should be pretty simple, maybe even a little bit boring.  BUT, I'm just excited about working and being right in the middle of all of that game excitement. 
        I got the call today.  The wake up call.  I am 4 months out from being potentially unemployed.  I've started looking at job openings, but it's not like it was before I got this job, when EVERYTHING was potentially interesting to me.  I've narrowed down what I want to do, and there are not as many opportunities.  Also, I hadn't been searching for opportunities with other bowls before, and now I don't know where to go to find the available postings.  This is the bad part of being a glorified intern, as soon as you settle into one job, you've got to making your next career move.  Kind of scary!
        OK, y'all.  If you are living in the Charlotte area, I'm plugging it to you again.  Buy your Extra Point Passes.  If not for the benefits at restaurants like Fox and Hound, Morton's, and Ruths Chris, then do it because it's good for Charlotte and a great way to support the games!  We want to KEEP the ACC Championship in North Carolina, and we need to make the first year a major success to do so!  Go to www.extrapointpass.com to purchase your passes.

Getting My Bearings

        Do you ever feel like you get to a new place and suddenly you become completely incompetent?  I had to go get gas today which was a painful event because although my gas was terrifyingly low, my funds have gotten terrifyingly lower, and there is no check in the mail for a little while.  I drove to the gas station but had to go around the block before I got into the station because I got in the wrong lane.  I pulled up to #3 and realized that I parked my car on the wrong side.  I put a few dollars in the tank and quickly realized that I would have to go back and put a few dollars more...I am now a few dollars away from being completely broke.  Yikes!  I don't know what I'd do if I weren't staying with Ann and Bobby...my aunt and uncle are the best. 
        The gas thing is just the start of this new discomfort with mundane tasks.  I'm second guessing everything, whether it be my morning routine or just a matter of interacting with people...I think I may have even lost my knack for sarcasm- scary, I know.  In fact, I would even venture to say that I may have become slightly awkward.  I don't even know how to "go out" in Charlotte.  Carrie and I went for a drink with some friends from college (Christie, Heidi and Lauren) last night, and I felt like all eyes were on me...like who is this girl and why does she think a sweater, jeans, and a ponytail is an appropriate ensemble for this establishment.  I feel like a freshman again!  Does everyone feel this lost in a new chapter in life?  I can't wait to get my bearings and finally get back in a groove. 
        Today was a kind of slow day in the office, but we did do our firs "Football Friday Giveaway" on twitter.  It's fun to get to come up with contests, pick prizes, and pick winners.  I think it's probably because I've been around athletic departments for so long but it seems odd to me that people get so excited about gear...but it is cool that it's so easy to make someone's day.  It's the simple things in life, right?  I did get offered tickets to a panthers game and ended up giving them to someone else, because I wasn't sure about my plans this weekend and Megan really wanted them.  But man, I think I am certainly in the right industry and definitely working with the right people! 
        At one point, Sarah and I were bored so she suggested that we head up to production to see what kind of stuff they had going on.  This guy named "Worm" is actually from Greenville, SC and is EXTREMELY talented at what he does.  He is almost like a one man team.  He goes out and shoots footage, interviews people, and comes back and edits, adds graphics and special effects, and creates a package.  He is in charge of many of his projects from start to finish.  His stuff is really good and people at Raycom have said that he will make it big...I believe it after seeing his stuff, and would love for my brother, Will, to get to meet this guy before he heads on to bigger and better things!  Worm also invited us to tag along with him at some point on one of his shoots and I am so excited to explore that area.  I really lucked out interning with Sarah because without her passion for broadcast, I probably wouldn't have thought that exploring this side of Raycom was an option. 
        I finally got to hang out with Ansley Z tonight and I loved getting to see and hear about what she's going to be doing with her 8th grade science class.  She is literally living 2 miles away from me and her roommate and friend, who are both doing Teach For America with her, were perfect for her.  I'm so glad she is in a situation where she has a support system because I know this is going to be a challenging year for her.  She is so passionate about her kids already, and I'm looking forward to Ansley getting to see the fruits of her labor through the kids that she will be teaching.  While having a drink with friends last night a couple of them were discussing how much they dreaded going to work everyday.  That so did not resonate with me, because this is the first time I have consistently been early anywhere.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still tired in the mornings.  But I am excited every morning to go to work.  I get in my car, put on some good music, and find myself enjoying the 8 am hour.  I can't remember the last time I enjoyed anything about being conscious before 9:30 in the morning.  Am I growing up or am I just extremely fortunate to be in a field that excites me?