televised game preparation??
 

How do you prepare yourself & your partner(s) to work a televised game?

Really?

In advance, nothing different.

Shortly before the game -- find out who tells us when they are back from commercial, and see if there is any special timing near the beginning of the game or for halftime.

I would prepare no different than I would working a game in a special location. All I care about is what delays or changes we will have to adjust to, like a special ceremony or if they want us to wait to put the ball back in play or even if we are using a microphone. Otherwise the game itself is the same.

Peace

no advance notice
 

What about if you do not find out about it being televised until you arrive at the venue that night?

Already answered.

There really is nothing to prepare for. It is what it is. TV hardly changes anything we do.

Peace

I text every official I know telling them I'm gonna be on tv!

I don't text them until I arrive at the venue that night.

My crew did a Fox Sports Ohio game last year. We did not change anything from a "normal" game.
One mistake we did make was not asking when the kickoff would be. We got the teams out for a 7:30 kick and had to wait until the pregame show was over. We finally got the ok at 7:37, way to long a wait. Also let coaches know TV timeouts are 2+ minutes long and keep the teams with the coaches until called Back.
Have fun.

Comb my hair...:cool:

Know your Red Hat/TOC
 

As someone who officiates basketball and has worked as a Red Hat & TOC for football and basketball, I can tell you that establishing a rapport before the game with your conduit to the TV truck is huge.

A little pregame conversation and respect shown by a crew towards the red hat/TOC goes a long way... that person is the one who can totally throw off the flow of a game if he takes a timeout at the wrong time--treating that person like a member of the crew can pay big dividends!

I had my first tv game tonight. I don't recommend boasting about being on tv.

In my college football games, we remind ourselves of the media timeouts - when they happen, their duration, the location of the media coordinator, and who the officials will be managing this. It takes all of 90 seconds time.

Televised game afterthoughts
 

After 2 cancelled games (both teams folded), we finally had the televised game. As I was the scoreboard operator/timer for the game, I met with the TV Crew pregame to see about how timeouts would be handled, which was a red police strobe light flashing during media timeouts at about the 10:00 mark of each period. As soon as the clock got to that mark, I would buzz the horn to signal about the timeout. During the 1st period media timeout, the R & Linesmen tried jumping the gun by having a face-off before the expiration of the media timeout. As the face-off happened, I buzzed the horn as there was still about 10 seconds left in the timeout.

The intermissions happened without incident, as I explained to the on-ice officials that we'd have the full 18 minutes tick off the clock for the intermissions pre-game.

The 2nd & 3rd period media timeouts happened without incident as the R waited to signal for face-off until the red light stopped flashing & I gave a thumbs up.

Then you can't prepare. ;)

Teams have games scheduled for the TV, but the programs are so shaky that they fold? :confused:

I am late in joining the party on this thread but I have a story to tell that will take the cake.

As some of you may know I officiated women's college basketball from 1974 to 2008. When my "intelligent and lovely better half" were first married we lived in Glendale, California, the first two years (1982-84) of our marriage. And I officiated jr. college and college as well as high school basketball in the Los Angeles area during the time.

This was when USC's women's teams won the national championship in 1981-82 and 1982-83 with Cheryl Miller (Reggie's little sister) as USC's star player and Linda McDonald as USC's Head Coach (I have a story about Linda McDonald but I will leave that for another time) and their major rival nationally, league wise, and locally was UCLA. And both of their regular season meetings during the 1981-82 season were televised locally.

None-the-less, at a pre-season women's college officials meeting before the start of regular season, a particular women's college official (a male) gave a presentation about pre-game meetings with one's partner (we were still using two-man (person) crews and still wearing blue and white for games below the what was then Division I level. This particular official officiated the second meeging between USC and UCLA in the 1981-82 season, told us how he and his partner pre-gamed for the second game: The game was an afternoon game and they watched a tape of the game (yeah VCR was modern technology back then) the night before so that they would be ready for anything that could happen in their game the next day. It was all I could do to keep for falling out of my chair and laughing my tuchus off.

I am done know and will go back to bed.

MTD, Sr.

Unless it's nationally televised...you'll probably see more views on YouTube in 48 hours from a shaky cell phone video than msnbc has viewers all year if you really screw something up