The much-coveted media badge.

As many of you may be aware, gatortrey and I obtained the holy grail of access to a sporting event - we were granted media credentials.  Back in early November, we had discussed meeting in Orlando, FL to check out the Old Spice Classic tournament that tipped off Thansgiving day and featured four games between eight teams each of Thursday, Friday, and Sunday (you can view the bracket here).  Trey got the bright idea that we should at least try to get media access since we were going to be attending parts of the tournament and covering it for Sparty & Friends anyway.  Several of the teams that played in the tournament are the college basketball teams that various S&F authors pledge their fandom to or are at least from the conference they lend their loyalty: sparty – Michigan State, guyinthecorner – Maryland, patphish – Big East (UConn), mizerle06 – Tennessee, gatortrey and mikey - SEC (Florida). 

Trey and I weren’t granted credentials for the entire tournament, only the sessions on final day, Sunday.  We actually attended Friday’s games before knowing whether we would be credentialed or not for Sunday and had planned on being there if for no other reason than to watch some really good basketball and write a post or two about the tourney.  We had great seats Friday (thanks to general admission) and kinda chronicled the games with a post of a bunch of pictures and witty stupid comments.  But, since it worked out that we were granted the credentials, we felt like we should dig a little deeper to let you guys in on what it’s like behind the curtain.

I beat Trey to the Milk House about an hour before the first Sunday session, session 5, was scheduled to tip off (for anybody unaware, the tournament was held at the Milk House at Disney’s Wide World of Sports).  I found out that we had been granted media credentials as soon as I got inside and went back outside to pick up my badge (in the pic up top).  I was pretty nervous heading back to the media room with visions of a scene where a bunch of writers are back there yakking it up in a small area and everybody stops mid-sentence and stares at the wacky blogger when I walk into the room.  In reality, it was a really large room (probably bigger than a basketball court) and pretty quiet with only a few people hanging around at the time.  There were a bunch of tables set up all around the room for us to spread our junk out and pretend like we knew what we were doing with power strips provided (much to my relief…more on that later) in the center of each table.  There were also a few large tv’s in the room tuned to the respective ESPN channel for the upcoming games with a main table centered at the front with all the information you could ever want about each team: media guides, team calendars, school-released packets detailing season stats, up-to-date tournament stats, and conference propaganda.  I got one of everything, of course.  There was also a really sweet spread of free eats set up off to the side contianing soft drinks, coffee (they even had a bear-shaped squeeze bottle full of honey for the coffee), a plethora of different types of doughnuts, popcorn, multiple different cookies, brownies, juice, and pretzels/potato chips.  Needless to say, I didn’t buy any concessions the entire day. 

I had my camera with me but was told there were to be no pictures taken in the media room and we were especially not supposed to have photos taken of each other posing with anybody back there.  Once the badge was around our necks, we were essentially on the job so we had to act like it.  By the way, that’s called foreshadowing in the English-lit circles because it would come into play again later. 

Several college basketball personalities were periodically hanging out in between the games and sessions in the media room including Len Elmore, Fran Fraschilla, Clark Kellogg, and Andy Katz…I feel like I’m name droppin’ like a D-list celebrity.  After many renditions of what I would say to them ran through my head, I finally got the nerve up to intorduce myself to each and said something confident and eloquent to the effect of “Ummm, excuse me…hi (extends hand for a handshake), I’m from, uh, Sparty & Friends (hands my shiny new FedEx Kinkos-printed S&F business card to them) and…ummmm…I’d just, er, I wanted to introduce myself to you and ummm…give you my card.” which came out exactly the way it sounded in my head because I’m smooth and an excellent orator.  My awkwardness aside, every one of them was very cordial and took the time to speak with me for a couple of minutes. 

Being a media member, we had courtside access to observe the games so I picked a spot at a table behind/under the basket on the left-side of the court as viewed through the televised coverage.  Siena v. Oklahoma State kicked off session 5 and trey decided to mosey on in during the rain delay that occurred in the Michigan State v. Wichita State game that wrapped up the session (you can follow our session 5 coverage with pictures here). 

When the games for session 5 started, my laptop decided to remind me that I am in fact a moron and had managed to leave the good computer battery at home and bring the one that only held a charge for about a max of 30 minutes.  So, I had to shut ’er down and keep notes to periodically fire it back up and update the post.  The power strips at the table in the media room became my friend during halftime and the long break between sessions 5 and 6 and I probably wore a pretty good path between our seats at the table and the media room.

I need to give a hat-tip here to trey before I go any further because I had a pounding headache during the Sparty v. Terps game and he rescued my from my misery with some ibuprofen he had with him…I still remember how glorious that Walgreens-brand ibuprofen bottle looked when trey handed it to me.  So, thanks again, trey. 

Anywho, having courtside access gave me a new perspective and appreciation for the games.  Being the scrawny little punk I am, I never really developed into a decent roundball player so I hadn’t spent much time around guys that are 6′-8″ and 230 lbs.  Witnessing those guys banging around under the basket was pretty impressive.  Their speed while running cutters, body control driving into the lane for some off-balance shot attempt, and focus while getting hacked and still managing to get the ball through the net made me pretty jealous that I couldn’t do it too.  The refs also deserve a hat-tip for letting them play throughout all four games.  There was a lot of contact but few whistles so the games had flow and momentum swings that made for exciting basketball.  I can’t think of any third-party influence over a game in any sport that can drastically demoralize a team than refs calling a game too tight.  But I digress; that’s a discussion for a later post so thanks go out to the refs for calling some great games.

There were about a couple of hours in between sessions 5 and 6 and since we were media members, we didn’t have to leave the arena like the typical ticket-holder.   Instead, we were able to head back up to the media room, chow a little bit on the great junk food, and network with other writers.  I had the opportunity to meet and speak with a couple of newspaper beat writers, one for Georgetown who was cool enough to talk with me for probably 20 minutes about the football coaching situation at Tennessee. 

Session 6 began with Georgetown v. Maryland and the crowd had really turned out for that matchup.  Whether intentional or not, it was basically Maryland fans on one side and Georgetown fans on the opposite side.  Georgetown ended up running away with the game but the fans were pretty vocal for both sides most of the way.  Tennessee v. Gonzaga was the game that followed and wrapped up session 6 as the tournament championship game (here’s our post with pictures for session 6). 

Remember that foreshadowing from earlier?  Well, here’s where that kicks in…since we were “on the job,” we also weren’t allowed to be fans…and I tend to be a pretty vocal fan during Tennessee games.  I’ve never been much of a heckler; I prefer to use my energy yelling smarter stuff like “Aw, COME ON REF!” and ”BOX OUT!” or “BOTTOM!!!/MONEY!!!”  But, since I was supposed to be professional about the game, I had Trey on notice to horsecollar tackle me if I made an effort to lunge over the table to choke a ref, Josh Heytvelt, or the latest Vol free-throw shooter to miss from the charity stripe.  It was a little rough not being able to cheer but I think we both did alright.  I’m sure trey can tell you that a couple of times during heated moments I yelled something with my hand over my mouth.

After the final game (a Zags victory over the Vols), we hung out on the court for the trophy presentations and then headed back up to the media room.  One thing I forgot to mention earlier about the media room was that in the back, there was an area partitioned off for the post game interviews.  First, Mark Few and a mohawk’ed Jeremy Pargo came in to talk about the game and take questions.  Then, a dejected Bruce Pearl and Tyler Smith made their way in for the same routine.  We sat squarely in front of the coaches and players, probably 10-15 ft. away.  I know I felt like an insider by getting to participate in the postgame press conference/interviews (see pic below - miz is in the third chair from the right with the blue shirt and the goofy ears and trey is behind the camera).

UT postgame interview.

After everything wound down, Trey split for his warm and cozy house across town while I departed on my cold and wet journey back to Jacksonville.  The drive was good because it gave me time to kinda reflect on the whole experience that seemed to happen in a whirlwind.  I didn’t really know how to treat the whole situation while it was going on realtime other than just soak it all in and attempt something like a live-blog of the events.  Hopefully, the updates in the posts didn’t seem too cheesy and were a decent representation of out perception of the games, experience, and access. 

I have no clue how many other sports bloggers have been given media access to an event with the magnitude that the Old Spice Classic holds.  It seemed somewhat significant, like we had been given the opportunity to represent sports blogs, or at a minimum Sparty & Friends, to a legitimate sports organization.  That may be an extreme reach but either way, we hope we presented ourselves as professional and that the experience will open future doors, for ourselves at a minimum, and show that we’re not too loony.

Before we completely finish up, we’d like to sincerely thank Charley Green, the Old Spice Classic media coordinator, for taking the time to review our application and then reconsider us after being originally rejected for not meeting the basic criteria.  Mr. Green was extremely professional in the manner that he considered our application and even offered pointers on ways we can get similar access to other future sports events.  And, we fully intend on parlaying this experience and opportunity into attempting to receive media access to future events so the advice from Mr. Green is much appreciated.

I think I can speak for Trey when I say the experience and access as members of the media was incredible, and hopefully, the first of many for Sparty & Friends.  It was great being viewed as members of the media especially while almost every person we met had no idea they were talking with a dorky engineer and a nerdy lawyer, two guys who have absolutely no training/schooling in the media/journalism field but were granted access to be a part of it for at least a day.  I hope that between this post and the post from each of Sunday’s sessions, we were able to somewhat accurately convey our excitement coupled with the overall experience.

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