High school football press boxes

Orville hit the nail on the head. I have no doubt that you and your colleague were correct in your assessment. Sharing that assessment in front of a high school parent, many of whom can't handle the truth, isn't always a good idea.

 

The OP said his newspaper backs him. I'm sure it will back him when the pink slip comes as well. His SE needs to teach his writers on how to act properly, because common sense isn't prevailing. What would happen if the parent was a big advertiser and the writer didn't know it? And that parent calls the publisher? I'm sure he/she will have your back then.

As for 93Devil calling the SE about press box design, I would be worried that a school district employee doesn't have better things to worry about. It doesn't take an expert to figure out what press box windows should look like. I'll be happy to shoot a few photos of local press boxes to send along for guidance.

 

They aren't for the press except during state tournaments, when the state makes a point of it. If you got rid of the free food and opened all the windows, you'd get rid of the hangers-on. But most of the people there are doing something, and almost none of them are media. We have a school around here that can't have media in the press box, in part, because the coach puts his 80-year-old parents up there. Now, who's going to win that fight?

Hell, at both the major universities we cover, they have boosters in the press box. When they cheer, the SID gets on the mic and admonishes them to pipe down, no cheering in the press box, and I've seen them look at each other as if to say, "WTF?"

You have to be aware of your surroundings. Just as coaches aren't your friends, the press box is not part of your office. People are scrutinizing you at all times.

 

Being right isn't all it's cracked up to be, chief. When you're out in public covering an event, you are a representative of your newspaper, and the image you give off will be assigned to your paper. If you're cool with people perceiving you and your employer as aloof and smug, then vaya con Dios.

From everything you've said here, though, it seems like you're adding unnecessary troubles to your life through your sheer bloody-mindedness. Press box windows aside, this thread is rife with truth and experience. Why you persist in not listening to it is beyond me.

 

I would think then that a college has better things to do than write press releases.

I would think a coach has better things to do than talk to the press for a game preview.

I would think an AD has better things to do than being sure you have a roster and a program in the press box.

In this day and age, people doing something nice for a newspaper (including buying one) should be appreciated.

 

Let me see if I have this right.

Prep writer makes disparaging comments about a team he's covering within the earshot of a parent/reader/possible advertiser of said team in a place where he is a guest. He gets called out on it and responds with more sarcasm, and he thinks HE'S in the right. Wow. Apparently the younger generation is even more clueless about manners than I thought.

No matter how many ways he tries to parse it, Nighthawk is wrong, wrong, wrong, and if he doesn't learn that he may have to get used to a new phrase in his professional life: "You want fries with that?"

 

Word, buck.

 

"so I say to the other writer that these teams are playing to see who gets their butts handed to them next week."

I'm calling bullshit. How loud was this said? Seems if it's in a conversational tone between two people, the third, who is filming, remember, wouldn't be paying attention to a quiet conversation between two pepole -- unless it was intentionally yelled loud enough for that person to hear it. And if it was, you deserve(d) any grief you get/got.

 

Call whatever you want. But with the game being played in a college facility, you can actually hear what's being yelled from the opposite sideline because the facility is so large for a high school game that the facility is very quiet. The parent could have been 10 rows down in the stands and heard every word of what I said in a normal tone. Short of whispering in the other guy's ear, there was no way for me to tell him anything without the other guy hearing it. There's no way I'd yell something like that to someone I'm not talking about. That would have been unprofessional, and I don't even talk smack with my friends anyway.

You don't. There was no sarcasm at all coming from me. The sarcasm was coming entirely from the parent, who is just as much a guest in the facility as I am. I responded as diplomatically as I could. If I got fired for what I said, it wasn't the right situation for me anyway.

That's one of the first reasonable things I've seen on this topic. But I'm not about to apologize when I didn't do anything wrong, because I learned a long time ago that apologizing because you believe it will shut somebody up is wrong. I ended the discussion as quickly as I could and returned to work. I'm not about to apologize for making an accurate comment about a team to a colleague.

And I'm not sure where the belief that I reacted angrily to his cheering in the press box is coming from. I held my tongue. I WANTED to tell him to quit cheering in the press box, but I wasn't sure if I could do it, so I sat there and ignored it. The entire purpose of this thread was to see if there was anything I could do about this guy if I ran into him again in the press box at a future game. That's it. The parent's hostility toward me was secondary, although I was quite annoyed by that nonsense too.

 

I do the sidelines when it's a high school facility. At this facility, doing it from the sidelines is not really an option because it is almost always a doubleheader involved. That means that I've got to write my story from the first game while the second game is going on, or else I'm going to miss my deadline. So I can't really be on the sidelines because I've got to be writing the story at the same time, so I just stay in the press box for both or more games, as it occasionally is a tripleheader in the state playoffs.

At a standard high school facility, I have one game to do, and I will have enough time to write my story and send it without having to write during the game. So in those situations, I'm on the sidelines. I prefer the sidelines, but I don't always have that option.

 

You get a contact high from writing about WWI-era baseball players. That makes you old.

 

Yeah, we say stupid things, but don't group us ALL together