It was a beautiful fall day in Columbia as I arrived at the stadium. Making my way through the parking lots of tailgaters and rabid fans who arrived over five hours before kickoff, there was a feeling in the air that today would be the day the Tigers to get back on track. Sure enough, the mood was dead on.
As I arrived at the stadium I walked up the to 6th floor press box and checked out things from the upper deck. I then walked down to the field and into the locker room to help put on jerseys. After jerseys were put on the shoulder pads and lined up nicely in front of the lockers, we put out a new pair of socks and gloves for each player.
Once all of the equipment was set up, most of us gathered around the TV to watch the Oklahoma State-Texas game. As we watched that game, we were all talking about how much joy Kansas’ loss earlier in the day brought to all of us. Once the players arrived, I walked up to the press box to assume my duties up there.
During our pre-game show we have a number of guests and due to the large crowds in the booth, I usually like to vacate the booth once the show starts until about 15 minutes are left before kick-off. There’s nothing for me to do during this time and I usually use it to walk around the field one last time and get a feel for the game from field level.
Once the game started it did not take long for us to realize that the Tigers were back in form. Mizzou scored their first touchdown with just over a minute into the first quarter, and put two more up before the end of the first 15 minutes. At that time, it was clear, the Tigers were back, and this game was all but over.
The biggest storyline of the evening was Mizzou’s defense. The defense held Colorado to a shut out; something Colorado had not been held to since 1988. The defensive explosion ended the third longest scoring streak in the country and was the highlight of the evening.
During the 4th quarter our post-game show producer came up to the box and informed us that there was a problem with the phone line and we would have to move the post-game show elsewhere. We contemplated moving it down the to wooden deck located at the south end of the field; however, there was not enough time to move all of the equipment down to field level. Instead we settled on doing the post game show in our regular broadcast booth, since most of the equipment was already set up.
The problem with this was that if players are somewhat unwilling to go all the way to the 3rd floor of the press box, it was going to be even more difficult to convince them to go to the 6th floor. Luckily, we decided instead to record interviews in the locker room and use those on the show instead of having the players live on air.
With 3 minutes to go in the game I took a Marantz, a recording device, down to the field to meet with our sideline reporter, Chris Gervino, and help him interview players. The nice thing about doing the interviews this way was that we were able to get four players as opposed to one or two and the players were much more willing to do the interviews since they only took about a minute and were done in the locker room.
Since our defense played such a strong game we interviewed Defensive End Stryker Sulak and Linebacker Brock Christopher. From the offensive end of the ball we were able to interview Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin. After our four interviews we walked back up to the press box, took the elevator to the sixth floor and set up the interviews to be played on the post game show.
Our coach for the show was defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus. Coach Eberflus talked about some changes made on the defensive side of the ball, which were key to the evenings victory.
After the show we parted ways and as we did we shared in the teams new battle cry: “2 o’clock on Saturday,” a reminder that the biggest game of the season is always the next one.
