Colo. sports editor hurt at football game (updated: how you can help page 4)

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

When I walk the sidelines, I'm either right at the line of scrimmage or I'm around the defensive secondary, about 10 yards off the sideline. And not having to take photos, it allowed me a chance to keep my attention on players coming toward me.



Here's my own collision story (not me, but a photographer):
I was covering the game from the pressbox this time and we had a part-timer shooting the game.
He would be right on the edge of the field shooting. Sure enough, there was a collision and they had to delay the game to take him off in an ambulance. I don't remember him being hurt much. In fact, he was back at work the next day.

But I found out after the game, the coaches on that side had kept warning him to get back because they saw how close he was.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

I was taking pics at a game back in the mid-1990s, along with a photographer from another paper. She'd been doing this for years, but for some reason she got down on both knees to line up a shot.
Sure enough, a sweep to the left brought the running back and a couple defenders right to us and she had no chance. She wasn't hurt -- surprisingly -- but the players relocated her about 10 feet from she started.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

Also not my collision.

Local TV shooter I knew years ago was filming in the end zone at Kinnick Stadium. He follows the flight of the ball with his camera as it arcs towards the end zone ... where it lands in a layed-out Tim Dwight's hands a split second before Dwight trucks said camera guy.

Got some hellacious video of it. Almost like he was filming his own car accident.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

I was covering a prep playoff game a few years ago and got knocked on my ass by a quarterback who was running a bootleg toward the sideline. It was real tight quarters at this stadium, I got hemmed in by some players and couldn't get out of the way. My notebook went one way, I went another way, and my glasses went in a third direction.

Funny thing is, my boss is back in the office listening to the game on the radio and the announcer mentions, "one of the coaches got knocked over ... no, wait, that's albert77 of the Local Times." Fortunately, I wasn't hurt (except a sore tailbone and a bruised ego). I managed to find my glasses and my notebook, didn't miss a play, went on about my business. The whole time my boss is fretting about the status of his writer, and what he's going to do if I'm hurt. It wasn't until halftime, when the radio broadcast had me on for an interview that he knew I was OK.

Ever since, I've been real careful about watching the action. Sometimes, if it's crowded and fairly tight, I'll actually stand a little behind the line of scrimmage to minimize the risk.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

I only shot on the sideline for a couple of years, but my one near-miss came the Monday before my wedding (game had been pushed back by rain). Linebacker from team A (now on scholarship in the ACC) tackled running back from team B, and I thought I had gotten out of the way in time - not so much. The pile came down square on my right big toe, and it definitely led with an elbow or something else sharp.

Limped around for a couple of days, worried like shit the whole time that I was going to have to sit out my first dance. It finally stopped hurting sometime during the rehearsal dinner and was black and blue for about 6 months. I've got a great picture from the end of my honeymoon, one of those stereotypical "feet on the beach" shots. On the left are my wife's pretty, normal feet. On the right are my fucked-up feet. Right big toe is black and blue and the left one is bandaged up after an encounter with some lava rock.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

Yeah, right after the line about how he may never walk again. Fuck.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

Damn, that's some bad luck there. I loved it when they were close enough to shoot from the end zone -- it looked better, and the chance of getting bowled over was greatly minimized.

My favorite games to shoot were the high school games in Eugene. They played in Autzen and only used half the stadium for seating, so I could stand about 10 rows up on the other half to shoot the game.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

A photog at one of my previous stops apparently had her knee wrecked by a collision at a high school football game a few months after I left.

The closest I ever came was at a high school practice. I was watching from a side of the field leaning against a chain-link fence that was practically against the sideline, and I noticed the ball was headed my direction with a receiver and DB already tangled up underneath it. I bailed out about three seconds before they went crashing into the fence where I'd been standing.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

Get well soon Lloyd. And here's some advice for everyone - LET'S BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

Here's my favorite workman's comp story.

Early in my career the local team goes to the Super Bowl. They sent about 25 of us.

One of the nights there, the SE takes about 20 of us to dinner and everybody there gets trashed. On the way home, one of the guys falls down the stairs in the hotel lobby and badly breaks his wrist.

He gets it fixed and actually works the game in a limited capacity. He wasn't a writer, but was in charge of helping edit the mountains of copy before we sent it back.

We get home after the game HR refuses to pay for the surgery because he was drunk when he got hurt. His defense was that 1. He was on the road for work; 2. He got drunk at something that was arguably a work function with his boss in attendance.

About six weeks after we got back he goes in to have the cast taken off and they discovered that it hadn't healed at all. He had to have two surgeries and since it was some small bone in his wrist, he was in a cast for almost a year and had to wear this electronic thing on his arm to help the bone grow.

The paper refuses to pay for any of it.

The union ends up hiring an attorney on his behalf and they had to go to mediation, which I guess was still a few steps before going to court. This whole process takes a couple months.

Apparently, they were with the mediator about five minutes and the second the mediator heard that he was on the road for work, he immediately declared it a workman's comp case and the paper had to pay for everything, plus it had to pay him for work missed and all that stuff...

He later quietly sued the paper and got about $25K in a settlement from the paper. He went through hell for a few months, not knowing what would be taken care of and what wouldn't, so I think he deserved every cent of it.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

I could not disagree more.

 

Re: Colo. sports editor badly hurt at football game

No way is that the correct ruling.

We had an electrician on our payroll step out of his van while on the job, carrying his tool belt, going to fix something in a building we own. He broke his ankle stepping on our asphalt.

HR tells him its not comp. He was too uninformed to fight it.