Two Wires And A Prayer

It was the last regular-season broadcast of HF-L Cougars football. I was fighting a tenacious (and growing) cold. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the night on the roof of the press box.

The incessant wind made the cool autumn air downright cold. I wore four layers. A T-shirt, a sweatshirt, a hoodie, and a hooded windbreaker. And I was still freezing. By the second half, I put on my gloves.

Needless to say, I was prepared. I knew the conditions. I’m like that when it comes to weather. That’s why I stayed out of the wind and inside the press box until the very last minute.

There’s only one good chair in the press box. I sat on it to rest. I’d be standing for the next 2-3 hours. I had to maintain my strength. So I relaxed for a few minutes.

As I reclined, I watched Peter connect all the cables and cords to all the boxes and devices. HDMI cables. Ethernet cables. Coax cables. Electrical cables. They ran all over, like so much spaghetti. Connecting the screen to the video switcher. The mixer to the computer. The headphones. Encoder. Streaming box. Capture card. Media server. Splitter. Power supply. And a little gizmo box that puts things on the screen at the touch of a button.

It was an electronic Grand Central Station.

Peter moved effortlessly. It was the kind of smooth ballet between man and machine made possible only by years of experience.

Years of experience.

Years ago.

Times were different then.

Another day. Another era. Another medium.

Same sport. Different sport.

Oddly, I was both older and younger than Peter during my span as a play-by-play announcer.

I began broadcasting in college. He started in high school.

My career ended in college. His extended through college and into his young adulthood today.

He began with basketball because it was an opportunity before landing his dream job of broadcasting football.

I began with hockey to fill a void before claiming my dream: an open booth in a football stadium that often filled its 70+ thousand seats.

Sure, there were other differences. Granted, I was doing radio while Peter does a complete video broadcast. My prep was contained within the inky aroma of freshly minted mimeographed paper. His involves creating unique graphics and videos for each game.

But the biggest difference in live sports broadcasting between then and now was the technology. Peter needs a large trunk to carry his heavy boxes. I only needed my lap. Everything required for remote radio broadcasts could be contained within something a little bit bigger than a fishing tackle box. Not as tall as a briefcase, but much wider than one. It had a handle on top, so I carried it as though it was a briefcase.

The guys at the studio referred to it as “the football.” It was perfect for a one-man operation (although I always brought a color announcer with me to every game). If I lost it, however, I’d be in trouble. The station had no duplicate. Without it, there would be no broadcast.

There was one other critical thing for live sports broadcasting in those days: a live telephone line.

These were the only wires I used. Two wires. To connect the portable field mixer to the POTS line.

What’s a “POTS line”? It’s an acronym for “Plain Old Telephone Service line.” That’s right. A regular telephone line. Just like you have (or used to have) in your home.

It’s something the phone company would install. A box with four wired terminal screws. It was called a Type 42A connecting block. Western Electric made them. This was in the days before those nifty RJ11 jacks became commonplace. You know the ones I mean. The plastic clips that easily snap in place.

Our equipment had been purchased in the Caveman Era, so it didn’t have the capacity for RJ11 jacks (yes, that means I’m a telecommunication troglodyte). I had to physically wire our equipment to the outlet box. Sometimes that meant removing an RJ11 jack because the telephone company had ignored my instructions not to install one. Some joked we had to know how to tap phones. More accurately, we had to know how to wire ourselves into a telephone line. This was perfectly legal because we paid for the POTS line.

Like I said, there were four screws, each with a different colored wire attached to it. The green wire. The red wire. The yellow wire. And the black wire. For our purposes, the green and red wires were the important ones. And because our equipment was sensitive to polarity, they weren’t interchangeable. The latter two were generally unused unless the line was configured for an additional connection. We never had a second connection.

At least, that’s the way the phone company was supposed to wire the box. To set up for a remote broadcast, all I needed to do was connect one wire from the positive phone wire to the positive terminal on the mixer, and, similarly, connect the negative nodes together. Then I plug the mixer in, turn it on, and—voilà—I’m broadcasting live from a remote location.

Except not always. Sometimes the telephone company didn’t attach the colored wires to the correct terminal screws. Sometimes they didn’t even use the right colors. I would often arrive at an away arena or stadium only to find the Type 42A connecting block wired with alternating blue and white wires. One time, it was all white wires.

There are twelve possible ways to connect two wires to four terminals. Only one combination was correct. I don’t know if I ever had to try all twelve, but sometimes it was close. Eventually, I’d find the correct combination. Then it was on with the broadcast, live on the air.

Well, not quite. I had to rely on a technician at the station to flip the switch in the studio. You see, this was a direct line. The studio could hear me, but I couldn’t hear them. I just started talking and crossed my fingers.

Were there any problems? Sure. Most of the in-studio techies were into music, not sports. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.

And I didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Peter designed his system so he could control and monitor everything himself. That doesn’t mean the technology doesn’t glitch. It just means when it does, he knows immediately and can fix it in a timely manner.

Unlike him, every broadcast I did required three things:

The kindness of strangers.

Two wires.

And a prayer.