Your football team is losing on national television and that’s the least of your troubles.
I don’t know… maybe it’s because I spent more than a decade in broadcast news and know how easily things can go wrong on live TV that I found this next incident so relatable.
You might too…
Did you see Sunday night’s game between the New Orleans Saints and Seattle Seahawks on NBC? If you did then you likely noticed the game was delayed for 10-minutes while NBC TV crews scrambled to retrieve a fallen camera from the turf.
That’s right; a TV camera mounted on wires collapsed onto the turf during a timeout early in Sunday night’s game, which is pretty bad (see: expensive) in and of itself. But, if you are an exec at NBC and see that your camera almost hit two Seattle players you are probably suffering from major heart palpitations.
With 11:24 remaining in the first quarter the Saints called a time out. That’s when the camera fell… and landed a few yards from Seattle’s star quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and the rest of the huddling Seahawks. Things got worse when engineers righted the camera and it fell again – nearly hit Bobby Engram as the receiver was walking to the sideline.
Bad, bad.
Finally, game officials stepped in and cleared both teams from the middle of the field while NBC crews scrambled to got the camera back up to it’s original position.
The funny part came a few minutes later when engineers tested the camera by moving it up and down the field. You had to chuckle watching Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren look up at the camera with his mouth agape in utter disbelief. But, that was nothing compared to the players reaction. When the camera moved to the sideline, Seattle’s players all cleared out from beneath it.
“I thought it was going to hit Matt,” running back Shaun Alexander said after the game. “You kind of wanted to laugh. But at the same time you were like, ‘What else can happen?'”
Apparently a lot. Seattle ended up losing the game 28-17 and the home crowd booed the three-time defending NFC West champions on more than one occasion.
“It wasn’t our night, I guess,” Hasselbeck told reporters.
No kidding. After falling for a second time NBC parked the broken camera above the Seahawks bench area and players and coaches made sure they did not stand under it.
“I just feel really fortunate it didn’t hit me,” Hasselbeck said before joking about contacting his lawyer.
In retrospect, I guess his night could have been worse.
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