I Got a Basketball Jones

Daly called me on Saturday and asked if I wanted to announce the basketball game Tuesday night. With out thinking, I said yes.

Wait, hold on. Basketball?

I know nothing about bsketball. Nothing. How the fuck am I going to pull live play-by-play broadcasting live on the air out of my ass?

Luckily, Silva, who knows more about basketball than I do, was co-hosting. But neither of us had any experience in calling a sports game, especially live. The joke was the whole weekend that it was going to be the biggest fuck up in sports history; just making shit up, talking about completely different subjects, and so forth.

But, from all accounts, we didn't tear down the institution of broadcast announcing. In fact, most of the feedback has been pretty positive.

As I'm walking up to the Field House, I get a frantic call from Kristin. She says, and I'm quoting here:

"David, I need to borrow your car. My roommate's friend is bleeding out of her uterine lining, and I need to drive her to the hospital."

Oh yes, that's what I want; I want you shuttle some random girl I've never met around in my car WITH BLOOD POURING OUT OF HER VAGINA. Why would I have a problem with that?

Fortunately, some RA took the girl, forcing me not to have to make the decision of letting someone bleed, or having afterbirth in my backseat.

I thought this was going to set the tempo for the night. And it almost did. Once I got to the Field House, I meet up with Silva and Kodi, who helped set up the remote so we could broadcast. As they're doing this, Kodi and Mark Hine realize they don't have any batteries for the microphones, rendering them useless. (And, if you are a student at Oneonta, you know they then must be +48 phantom power mics, as this is the only thing you get out of a Mass Comm. education in Oneonta.) So we improvise with some mics that are normally attached to cameras. As we are getting settled, Silva and I ask if there is a way to play music during halftime and timeouts, so we don't have to make idle chatter; of course there is not. We notice a line in outlet on the remote, which meant we could hook up a portable CD player. Silva rushes home to get his. Doesn't find it, and get back with literally 11 seconds before we go on.

But from then on, we did well. One of the mics didn't work, so we had to share one, getting so close we were on the verge of kissing. And the fac that we knew none of the players names, meant a lot of "Shot by Number 27...........................................Kimmy Monroe."

But we actually did well with calling the action, and the color commentary/banter. Since I had no clue what was going on, I would look up stats, randomly add in a "Oh, looks like they're running a Georgetown offense," and come up with metaphors for what was going on. One of the better interactions was:

Dave: "Oh, and she really wanted that ball. She stole that thing like a loaf of bread in an old Arabian market."
John: "......Where the HELL did you get that from?"
Dave: "Aladdin, John."

And so forth. The people that listened said it was funny, and that we actually sounded legit, which was by some crazy sort of luck.

We're going to try to do more games this season. Who knows, maybe I'll get a career as a sportscaster?