NEW ORLEANS — The story of Tremendous Bowl LIX is within the playing cards.
And by playing cards, assume of a giant sheet of heavy-stock paper loaded with info — participant names, numbers, statistics and generally annotated trivia — all the time inside attain of the broadcasters calling the sport.
They’re known as “boards” and so they’re often created from scratch by the play-by-play announcers and colour analysts within the days main as much as a recreation, a meticulously organized research sheet that gives a commentator with detailed info in a pinch.
Fox is broadcasting Sunday’s recreation between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, and though the community will provide each conceivable digital camera angle, not one of many greater than 100 million viewers will get a transparent glimpse of the boards used within the sales space by Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady.
Precisely what these boards appear like is unclear as a result of Fox didn’t make Sunday’s recreation announcers accessible to The Instances.
However it’s possible that their boards are just like these of different Tremendous Bowl announcers, who depend on the sheets as extra security internet than script.
Play-by-play broadcaster Kevin Burkhardt, left, and colour commentator Tom Brady might be within the sales space for Fox calling Tremendous Bowl LIX on Sunday.
(Stephen Maturen / Getty Pictures)
“None of it is read,” mentioned legendary CBS play-by-play man Jim Nantz, who has labored seven Tremendous Bowls, together with the newest one in New Orleans when Baltimore beat San Francisco. “You don’t read your broadcast. They’re little reminders.
“During a commercial, I’ll go back and look just to see if there’s anything that might steer me toward a story line should this next series of plays lead me there — oh yeah, I want to get this in.”
Like his recreation calls, Nantz is steeped in nostalgia. So at his dwelling in Pebble Seaside he retains the boards from each soccer and basketball recreation he has ever known as, all neatly organized although some might need ring-shaped espresso stains or possibly a smudge of ketchup from his halftime scorching canine. He has known as 502 NFL video games, together with final month’s AFC championship between Kansas Metropolis and Buffalo.
“It’s like having every term paper, every piece of homework that you accumulate from first through 12th grade and in college,” he mentioned. “I have them all in order, their own stack based on each year. They look fresh and crisp, mint condition like I’d just put them together a few hours earlier.”
Some boards are neater than others. Troy Aikman’s handwriting, for example, is so exact it virtually seems like calligraphy. And Dick Vermeil’s boards? They have been appropriate for framing.
“If there was a Michelangelo of boards, it was Dick,” mentioned Fred Gaudelli, longtime producer of “Sunday Night Football.” “They were like works of art.”
Vermeil’s boards have been as colourful as a Bourbon Road king cake. First, they featured the crew colours — so the Eagles could be in inexperienced — then final season’s stats have been in crimson, this season’s stats have been in black, and blue for profession stats. Tutorial stats have been written in purple, and damage standing was in pink. Filling out a board would take him a complete day.
Whereas Nantz constructed each board from scratch at first of every week, Vermeil would use small items of white tape to cowl outdated stats, and write on that to replace them. What’s extra, he would have one smaller board for each crew within the league — say one for the Eagles, one for the Chiefs — then conjoin these two halves when these groups have been taking part in one another. It was all about effectivity for him.
“I think there are a lot of people still using them, because I gave them out to anybody who ever asked for them,” Vermeil mentioned. “I had them printed off at about 100 at a time.”
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NFL play-by-play announcer Joe Buck exhibits his broadcast “board” from Tremendous Bowl XLV (45).
Joe Buck’s first Tremendous Bowl board was written in blue — as in, blue language. He wrote a cruder model of “Forget it” throughout his first one simply to remind himself to not get too severe and that it was solely a recreation, even when the entire nation was tuned in.
“I started to get a little cleaner with my personal reminders just because I would end up inevitably just giving the board to somebody,” mentioned Buck, now play-by-play man for “Monday Night Football.” “If it’s to some school auction, I don’t want ‘[forget] it’ written on there.”
NBC’s Mike Tirico doesn’t use paper for his boards anymore, however as a substitute depends on a digital pill that permits him to scroll to any info he wants. He has a backup pill, too, simply in case one goes darkish.
However again when he was utilizing paper, he would sort the knowledge and go to a close-by copying retailer to have his boards printed on card inventory. If he was working in an open-air press field and there was a risk of rain, he would take the additional step of getting the boards laminated.
As soon as, his ornate spreadsheet sparked the curiosity of an individual requested to print it.
“He looked at me and said, `Are you some sort of a high-end gambler or something?’” requested the man working the copier. “I said, `Nah, I’m just a nerd. I like to follow the game closely.’ After they saw me five or six times they kind of figured out I must have had something to do with the broadcast.”
No one is extra skilled at calling ballgames than Al Michaels — Do you consider in sphericals? — however he doesn’t assemble his personal boards. He depends on “Malibu” Kelly Hayes, who has been his spotter for each soccer recreation since 1978.
Al Michaels walks on the sphere earlier than a recreation between the Washington Commanders and Chicago Bears in October 2023.
(Andrew Harnik / Related Press)
(A spotter makes use of a unique board than the announcer and acts as one other set of eyes, standing subsequent to the particular person on air and, on a given play, tapping names to establish, say, the supposed receiver, a defender who knocked the ball away and the defensive finish pressuring the quarterback.)
“I have access to other forms of information that will come to me either by talking to our research team, I can go back and forth with them in the middle of a game, and also I have other printed material I can get to if I need to,” mentioned Michaels, a fixture for 4 a long time on variously Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights.
“So on the board it’s essentials. Where a guy went to school. What year he is in the league. Height and weight, and maybe a certain highlight in his career. You can’t put too much on there, because for the most part, for Kelly, it’s pointing out who made the tackle, who created a fumble, the guys who are coming in and out of the game. … We’ve kind of thinned it out to the essentials. There’s not a lot of time to look at it and read a lot of the information that’s on there.”
Curt Menefee, Fox studio host, had a rudimentary technique in his early days as an NFL Europe play-by-play announcer.
“I showed up in Amsterdam, and I literally had a brown paper bag that I had torn in half and opened up and just kind of wrote names and numbers on that,” he mentioned. “[Color analyst] Brian Baldinger said, `You know that’s not how it works, right?’ It was a process, but I started off from scratch.”
Former NFL operating again Daryl Johnston, a Fox colour analyst, is aware of easy methods to put a superb board collectively.
However as soon as… fumble!
“I was doing a Giants game and we were staying at the W in Hoboken,” he mentioned. “We went down for breakfast and I put my board off to the left side and left it. Got up, paid the bill, went out, got in the car and drove all the way out to the stadium. I had to have a runner go all the way back, crossing my fingers that it was there.
“I’ve left them at home one time and had to have my wife FedEx it.”
For some, that’s the stuff of nightmares.
“I guard my boards very carefully,” Nantz mentioned. “It’s like, my phone, my wallet, my Rolex watch and my football boards. They’re under full protection. And not necessarily in that order.”
