A great, revealing look at the broadcast business behind the game by Zac Crain at SBnation.com
The lunch spread laid out over two tables at the back of the Fox broadcast booth in Cowboys Stadium is standard man-cave, working-lunch fare—a pile of roast beef sandwiches, various chips and dips, a few trays of cookies, a full chafing dish of gourmet mac-and-cheese. Then the sushi arrives. It’s a generous helping, with a fist-sized serving of wasabi carefully sculpted to look like a football, laces out.
A minute later, as if on cue, Troy Aikman walks into the booth, Yogi Bear sniffing out a picnic basket. “Do we have makeup?”
“Hey, your sushi’s here, Prince Valiant,” says Joe Buck, Aikman’s broadcast partner since 2002.
Aikman laughs, but it’s not exactly a joke, since he ignores the rest of the food. It’s 2 p.m., an hour and a half before game time. He takes a small plate of sushi and wasabi to the front of the booth and eats it with chopsticks while staring out at the field.
A few minutes later, Aikman is sitting under a black barber cape, eyes closed, still as a mannequin, every bit as professional while getting makeup applied as he was quarterbacking the Dallas Cowboys for a decade. He’s been in and out of the booth since noon for today’s 3:30 p.m. kickoff. It’s Thanksgiving Day, 2010. But it could be anytime. The game might change, and the venue, and eventually, even the production staff and the broadcasters, but the factory product never does. The Fox crew didn’t come up with this method of televising sports—there was Monday Night Football first, then John Madden and his team—and they won’t be the last to use it.
Makeup complete, Aikman and Buck stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the center of the booth, rehearsing a brief drop-in appearance on the Fox pregame show, previewing this afternoon’s Cowboys-Saints game. Their voices are suddenly TV-loud, but no one pays much attention, instead going about the business of getting prepared for the broadcast. As they run through a few takes, Aikman and Buck suck on Halls cough drops, which they will do for the rest of the day, keeping their throats loose and ready.
Before the next rehearsal, Ally Muntean, the local stage manager, ducks in and adjusts the flag pin on Buck’s lapel. She walks back over to where I’m standing and introduces herself, telling me to help myself to the food next to us.
“Just wait on the sushi until Troy’s done.”
Interesting article, and you posted it just before a big media event. I think the article may say more about the writer than the subjects.