A day in the life

On Saturday I covered my first Buffalo Bandits' game for The News. It's always fun to start a new assignment with the raising of a championship banner, and that's what the Bandits (that's a lacrosse team, by the way) did before the start of the game. Come to think of it, I watched the Rangers raise a Cup banner in 1995 during my first game covering the Sabres.

It is interesting how many different aspects to the job there are these days. Let's do a little timeline on my day, just to show you how many parts there are.

10:30 a.m. -- Arrived at HSBC Arena for the morning shootaround. There I actually met the coach, Darris Kilgour; we had talked earlier in the week on the phone. John Gurtler was there. John, who used to work with me in the Sabres' public relations department, is now the Bandits' play-by-play announcer. He did a fine job of introducing me to several people in the organization as we sat on the bench and watch the light practice.

11:30 a.m. -- Did a short interview with Kilgour to gather material for a notebook for that night's game.

12:30 p.m. -- Got home and wrote up most of that notebook. I figured I'd write the first item about the pregame ceremony.

4 p.m. -- Brief nap after watching the end of the International Bowl. Always a good idea.

5:45 p.m. -- Left the house to go back to HSBC Arena. You always want to get there early on Opening Night, as things can go wrong.

7 p.m. -- After chatting with a few people, I wrote the top to the notebook based on what I had seen in the pregame rehearsal before the doors opened. The notebook is about 17 paragraphs long, by the way.

7:30 p.m. -- I had never used a wireless connection on a computer before, and I kept getting kicked off when I tried to log on this one. Help arrived from a bystander, who figured out that the computer automatically tied into any network that was nearby, thus confusing the computer. He finally connected me to one signal, the right one.

7:40 p.m. -- I wrote and published my first blog entry of the night on The News' Web site. I took the approach that it was like sending little notes to friends who might be interested in the game. I think I did about seven of them for the night.

8 p.m. -- Sent the notebook to the office via e-mail.

8:25 p.m. -- Wrote up a description of the first half, more or less, for the story for the first edition (about 16 paragraphs, due as soon as the game ends) and saved it for later.

8:30 p.m. -- Did about a 6-minute interview with John on radio about replacing Tom Borrelli and about the Bandits. John's last question surprised me: "Anyone ever tell you that you look like Keith Olbermann?" My answer, "All the time. I'm not as liberal as Keith, though."

9:15 p.m. -- Wrote more recap of the third quarter; the Bandits seem pretty much in control, so I started work on the top to the first edition story.

9:30 p.m. -- Philadelphia rallied to within three goals with about five minutes left. Writers in this situation don't root for teams, they root for the result to turn out the way they thought it would, so they don't have to furiously rewrite.

9:45 p.m. -- Bandits hung on for 15-11 win. I plugged in the final score and saves by the goalies, and sent it to the newspaper. Our first deadline is 10:15 or so, so I had plenty of time there.

9:55 p.m. -- Interviewed Kilgour and about three players on the Bandits. I have no idea where the Wings even were located in terms of locker rooms, but they weren't the story on this night.

10:15 p.m. -- The video cameraman from the News and I headed out to the players' bench. I did a 2-minute summary into the camera about the night and the game; he would edit in clips of the games and some soundbites of my interviews later. I stumbled slightly a couple of times -- two minutes is a long time without a script -- but no one is expecting Bob Costas out of a newspaper guy. I think. You can watch it here.

10:35 p.m. -- Walked back to the newspaper office (a block), where the first edition was safely in the books. I rewrote the game story and the notebook for the second and final edition, complete with quotes. The game story is essentially a case of taking the top of the initial story, and expanding it with quotes. I added a quote to the notebook from Kilgour, and changed a couple of facts at the bottom.

11:30 p.m. -- Both stories are done and ready to be read by copy editors.

11:45 p.m. -- There's no questions about the stories, so I'm free to go home.

Not exactly 9-5 work, eh?

Cheap plugs

My college friend, Kathye Fetsko Petrie, probably likes books more than anyone I've ever met. Now she's written an essay about that love affair called, "Still Life With Books."

You can find it here.

She writes about how books take the stress right out of her. No doubt, she was thinking about reading "Rayzor's Edge" at the time.

Meanwhile, if you want someone to read to you before bedtime, I can help. Check out a video version of my story on the top Western New York sports stories of the year. I did the voiceover, reading my own story, and the photography department did a great job of supplying the pictures.

Check it out when you need some sleep sometime soon.

From Christmas past

I'm not sure I remember all the excellent Christmas gifts over the years I received over the years. Some are pictured in my copy of the home movies we took back then, which shows -- in classic home movie form -- going from showing off our presents in December to jumping into the lake for swimming in June.

I believe I received practically every football game ever made during the 1960's, including one that wasn't such a hit with me: Electric Football.

For those who don't remember electric football, two players would like up little toy players on the metal gridiron. Then a switch would be thrown and the field would start vibrating. If things worked well, a ball carrier would go forward, the blockers would bounce into defenders, and the runner would go for a few yards before getting touched by a defender to end the play.

The problem is that it never worked that well. The players would go in no particular direction, leaving a less-than-exciting game.

I had played the game at others' houses as a child, so when one showed up under the tree one year, I believe I said in my 11-year-old voice, "Oh, I don't like this game, you can't control what happens." I believe I got a good-sized lecture about being outspoken and less than gracious.

I thought of all this when reading Bill Plaschke's column in the Los Angeles Times that ran on Christmas Day. Boy, he's good.

Who's next?

Mention Dick Jauron's name around Buffalo Bills' fans these days, and the reaction generally is less than polite. He seems to be the designated fall guy for the current season, one which lifted everyone's hopes in September and October, only to see those hopes crash in November and December.

The debate centers around Jauron should be back next season. Firing the coach is always a popular move when things don't go perfectly, and Jauron hasn't had a perfect year. My guess is if the Bills did indeed give him a contract extension earlier this season, it's difficult to believe they would bite the bullet on that and get rid of him. Owner Ralph Wilson has never paid top dollar for coaches in the past, with the probable exception of Chuck Knox, so it's unlikely he's going to pay more than a million dollars a year for Jauron not to coach and twice that for someone like Bill Cowher to coach.

A couple of points have been raised about Jauron's coaching style in my circle of friends. I'm buying one of them, but not the other. Let me start by being disagreeable.

There's a line of thought that says that Jauron doesn't show enough passion in his job, that football players need to be fully motivated by the coach with a liberal amount of screaming. Baloney. There are all kinds of way to win as a professional sports coach. Vince Lombardi was known to yell. Bill Belichick is prepared. Bill Walsh was cerebral. Bum Phillips was relaxed -- once stopping practice so everyone could come over and meet Willie Nelson. I will say that players sometimes tune out coaches after a while, and a different approach sometimes get their attention back. (For some reason this seems particularly true in hockey, and I have no idea why.) A couple of more wins, and Jauron might be promoted from "boring" to "shrewd" by some Bills' fans.

Jauron's lack of passion, I think, does hurt him in the public relations sense of the job, though. We've heard he's bright and loved by his players, but he never lets the public see that side of him through appearances in news conferences, etc. A little personality sometimes buys a coach the benefit of the doubt. Jauron has a very low profile; it's not like he has his own television show during the week. When Lou Saban fired a piece of chalk at a camera and said on his TV show, "Damn it, it should have worked" in describing a failed play, fans got a look into what he was like. When Marv Levy wrote and sang a Bills' fight song on television -- one of the greatest moments in coaches' show history (not a long list, admittedly) -- fans joined Levy in the fun.

It's important to remember that in most cases, the head coach is the public face of the football team. When that face becomes essentially a blank slate, he's not liable to get the benefit of the doubt.

Scene from a snowstorm

If you watched the TV series, "Get Smart," at all, you certainly remember "The Cone of Silence." That was the device that came down so that the Chief and Maxwell Smart could talk in privacy. Sadly, neither person could hear the other when the Cone was in use.

Which brings us to the snowstorm anecdote of the day.

We had about 20 inches of snow here in Buffalo over the past few days. When that happens, you have to go shovel it from time to time. Which I did.

While working on the front of the driveway, there was a guy down the street a little ways who had stopped his shoveling for a while. He was on the phone, screaming at someone.

"Why aren't you out here shoveling out your grandmother, you lazy bleeper-bleeper?" he said. "I'm bleeping sick of doing this bleep for you while you sit on your bleep."

I think the language got worse after that, as it went on for a couple of more minutes. I was glad I was not on the other end of the phone.

This isn't a comment on lowered standards of language, or on the frustrations of a snowstorm, although it could be. It is a comment on how cell phone users seem to think they are in their own private world -- in that "Cone of Silence," if you will -- when they are talking. They share details with the rest of the world whether that world wants to hear it or not.

Guess what? We usually don't.

So take it somewhere else, particularly when you don't want to be indirectly quoted in a blog.

And Merry bleeping Christmas to you all.

It's tough being 0-15

We couldn't fit this in the paper on Monday night, so this isn't a bad place to share it. Detroit columnist Rob Parker is grilling Lions coach Rod Marinelli about his defensive coordinator, who happens to be his son-in-law. Then Parker goes a bit too far:



Later, Marinelli said, "Anytime you attack my daughter, I've got a problem with
that. ... It was premeditated. I think there's something wrong with that."

Parker said he was just trying to lighten the moment and apologized.

Ouch

How did I go 12 years of my life without hearing about the song "Macarena Christmas"? I did a search for the worst Christmas songs ever, and this one came up.

You'll be happy to know there's a video for it. Well, maybe you won't be so happy.