Top ranked press boxes

It usually leaves one feeling, looking and seeing blue.

 

The Big Ten has a ton of nice press boxes. The best ones, though, always seem to get trashed by USC in early January.
And Ohio State's press box looks nice until you stack it up against some of the others around the country. Then the toilet backs up, the janitors stop taking out the garbage and the food gets spoiled. Ohio State fans will constantly remind you, though, that it is THE Ohio State University press box.

 

Batman...ah, memories of Rice-Totten Stadium in tiny Itta Bena, Miss., where the zip code is in fractions. was the late Charles E. "Chuck" Prophet the SID at the time you covered a game there? great guy, but too often as is the case with covering SWAC games, statistics and final game books are an exercise in futility. i've covered my share of 'em and am still waiting on final stats for at least half of 'em.

 

The SWAC would be more hilarious, micke, if we didn't have to actually deal with some of these places. The Jackson State web site once had football rosters that were two seasons removed from being accurate. And we once got our Alcorn State football media guide in early November because they had some sort of payment dispute with the printer.

And yes, Chuck Prophet was the SID/AD/all-around guru for that game. Super nice guy, in all seriousness. Just didn't have much to work with, and was spun from that country folk cloth.

 

I heard Notre Dame's press box is real arrogant. It tried to show me it's super bowl ring once.

 

Batman...you need to cover a "Bayou Classic" if you haven't....i had made a post of asking everybody about dealing with fans at press conferences earlier....well, fans clog up every nook and cranny of the Superdome press box when Grambling and Southern play. it's become a standing joke with that game. waving pom-pons, etc...
and press guides from the SWAC? if you get one before the halfway point of the season from most of the schools, you have just won the lottery. now there are some who do an excellent job, it's just that across-the-board the reputation isn't very good. and i found all of the press boxes in the SWAC are invaded by fan types....

 

Was the layout a decided schematic advantage?

 

Hawaii's press box is hard to beat on the island, but it never travels well.

 

Ugh. Once covered a football game where the university president had his 10-year-old grandson ask the coach a question. Fortunately, the guy had the decency to wait until all the serious questions had been asked. Unfortunately, the nervous kid took five minutes to spit out something about how much fun it was to play football. There were only a few of us in the room, and I'm not sure anyone knew what to do. I was pissed, but kind of flabbergasted. I wasn't on deadline (it was an afternoon game) so I didn't know whether to sit there and take it, jump up and say WTF!?, or just walk out.

 

I covered the last home game of the season at Oklahoma State a few years back. After we filed our stories we went out to eat and saw a little bit of what Stillwater had to offer (not much). Then we saw them taking the wrecking ball to the press box on the way out of town.

 

Sorry, folks. There's Wake Forest's new Deacon Tower and then there's every place else. They actually consulted with members of the media when they designed this palace (which opened this season). It's got extra wide aisles, plenty of room on the table tops for computers and notes, and the work area is far enough away from the lounge area that you can't hear the hangers-on talking at the top of their lungs after the games when you're on deadline. But the best thing is storage space that is built into the wall behind every seat. It's just magnificent and, hopefully, the blueprint that will be used for all future press boxes.

It also doesn't hurt that SID Steve Shutt and his staff are among the best in the business. It's a great place to cover a game.

 

I don't think Texas A&M and Wisconsin should be considered since they've been known to shake.