Shooting From The Bowels of The Stadium

I guess Lupica no longer gets preferential seating.

 

Saw a couple tweets from Doyel and others that Luppy threw a shitfit about his seat.

 

Big time sportswriters. They're just like us.

 

Well, if he'd attend a few more games instead of pontificating on ESPN and radio, he might've gotten a better seat ...

 

Saw that too and was immediately reminded of Richie Pace.

"I don't do second row."

 

Somehow, John Feinstein has a weekend morning show; he devoted a half-hour yesterday to a play-by-play of his meeting with NCAA executives to complain about the lack of press seating at the Final Four.

 

Feinstein is right that they've cut back on courtside seating but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. They get the crowd closer to the floor and there's still plenty of non-courtside media seating.

 

Generally,what is the priority for media seating at a Final Four. I'm guessing AP and the four primary beat writers for the respective teams home papers, but then who?

 

Team website beat writers are included in that group too.

After that I think it's local-to-site media (AJC in this case), national college basketball media - print and web. I think a USBWA rep gets a seat as well. TV reporters don't get courtside anymore I don't believe.

 

A good courtside TV reporter shouldn't be sitting. I know I never did.

 

Sorry, didn't mean sideline reporter. Meant the locals sports guys covering the teams.

 

I went in 2010, just as a local reporter whose paper happened to be close to the site, and I was pleasantly shocked when I was seated on the floor on the timeline in the front row. I got more camera time than America ever needed.

But those days are gone. The NCAA made a big deal of removing most of those rows of seats. Went to Indy for the regional this year and all but the local media for the teams, a few national guys, and the Indy Star/TV stations were upstairs in the corner at the loge level.

The problem wasn't just the distance to the floor (which wasn't great, but was livable), it was the the relative lack of terracing between the media rows. I couldn't see shit because the dude in front of me blocked my vantage point. I gave up at one of the media timeouts and watched downstairs on a monitor in the media room.

At the domes, there's really no excuse for not having the media on the floor. Three rows-per-sideline are overkill, but the three rows on one side really hurts no one. Just put the media with their backs to the camera side and put the fans closer to the floor on the side facing the TV cameras.